BS7026 Fundamentals of Business Management Assignment Sample 2024
Introduction
An individual report is required to be prepared from the perspective of a HR manager of an IT company based out of the UK, called ECO IT. The company provides sustainable IT solutions to its customers with greater focus towards cost-effectiveness and easy integration. It is streamlining its operations to reduce the carbon footprint and make its activities environment friendly.
The directors of the company have taken specific roles to oversee different areas of business for its successful growth. One of the directors was entrusted with the responsibility of design and implementation of financial policies within the organisation.
The other directors of the company were given the responsibility of collecting data about the customers and services provided by the business and use the data iterations in a coherent way to build strategies for business growth. Other job roles included sorting customers according to their locations and modifying the products offered so that they can use them in their native languages.
Recruitment and training of employees as well as preparing an effective marketing plan were also some important areas of contribution from the team members of the organisation. The recruitment phase was conducted to select candidates with higher employability skills that are suitable for the company.
A business simulation game called Simventure was conducted and the report will discuss the key learnings of real business world that were learnt from the game. The role of HR manager in Training, Design, Sales and Marketing as well as Finance of the business organisation will be taken into consideration.
It will also highlight the application of the knowledge gained from the simulation game in the decision-making process. The report will take into account the effectiveness of the decisions taken by the HR manager to generate more revenue and increase the sustainability of the business practices.
Marketing
The marketing department of the company applied different marketing theories to increase the efficiency of the marketing practices adopted by the company. The key marketing concepts such as 7P Marketing Mix, Stakeholder Mapping and Balanced Scorecard have taken into account in making the significant marketing decisions for the organisation.
7P Marketing Mix
The 7P Marketing Mix is an evaluation technique used in marketing and consists of essential marketing factors such as Product, Price, Process, Promotion and other factors. In the case of this report, the product used is IT solutions and it is more of a service than a product. Hence, the product development team attempted to provide as much value as possible to the customers availing the service.
The company also concentrated its efforts on finding out exact requirements of the customer so that the limitations of the existing products can be addressed. Reassurance was given to customers that the products will effectively serve the customer requirements after modifications were done in the product design.
The team ensured optimum performance of the product, thus resulting in generating profit after a few months of running the business (Han et al. 2020). Price was another important area which requires enough attention from all the teams in the organisation. The product price was set to be slightly higher than that of its competitors however sales increased once the customer developed faith in the quality of the products being sold to them.
Stakeholder Mapping
The company used Stakeholder mapping in order to provide real values to the stakeholders without losing its own independence in the decision-making process related to design and production. The management required to keep the external stakeholders informed about the product development in order to receive necessary information about the essential suppliers and distributors that can be used to sell the product to a larger customer base (Thabit and Raewf, 2018).
The balanced level of interest and influence of the stakeholders on the company operations helped ECO IT to deliver quality products to the market.
Balanced Scorecard
The company used a Balanced Scorecard to evaluate its financial performance and take key financial decisions with more clarity and accuracy. The scorecard mainly helps to develop a strategy for the organisation that is not only limited to financial growth of the company but can also influence the holistic development of the business.
According to Pomering (2017), it helped the company to direct its resources to development of better technology and train the employees in the respective technological applications in order to improve the product quality. It led to better customer satisfaction rate, resulting in higher Return on Investment for ECO IT.
Finance
The company entrusted the responsibilities of managing the finances of the business on one of its directors. The company used certain accounting principles to conduct its bookkeeping operation in order to pay back its investors. The financial activities of the company was important to look after as it was required to fix prices for its products and subsequent profit margins. The company management showed deep understanding of the pricing strategy used for specific products to be sold in specific markets (Dost et al. 2019).
Economy Pricing
Economy Pricing is mainly limited to very low profit margin but the business is highly scalable as it appeals to the mass market. The number of people buying such products will increase due to the low price of the product. ECO IT used this pricing strategy at the initial stages of business however did not receive an appreciable response from its customers (Dadzie et al. 2017).
Penetration Pricing
Any new product requires to be launched in a market where a limited number of people are aware of its presence or its qualities. In order to deal with that lack of familiarity, a company can organise for effective promotional techniques. However, the low price of a new product often attracts more customers into buying it and the strategy used here is Penetration Pricing (Postula and Raczkowski, 2020).
For instance, ECO IT officials determined to keep the price the same as that of the competitor to introduce its product in the market with competitive pricing. During the course of 3 months of business, losses were incurred and a new pricing strategy was adopted.
Skimming Strategy
This pricing strategy is used to generate high profits at the beginning stage of a new product. The companies that develop any innovative product or service and offer it to the market can decide to keep the price of the products at a relatively higher side.
The companies keep the prices of the products higher as long as other competitors allow them to do so. According to Tkachenko (2020), once the market is flooded with cheaper alternatives, the company also reduces its product price to fit the market demand.
Premium Pricing
In this segment, the prices of products are set at a comparatively higher rate to ensure that higher quality products are sold at higher prices. It mainly appeals to the customers based on quality of products as well as the social status advantages attached to it. ECO IT has taken the decision to sell their products at premium rates and has grown considerably with this pricing strategy for its product (Johari et al. 2019).
Human Resource
The Human Resource manager mainly focussed on the application of theories of Human Resource Management in order to bring out greater productivity from the employees (Kung and Zhong, 2017). The HR manager played a vital role in recruiting fresh talents for the company as well as organising dedicated training programmes for their development.
Staffing
The HR manager was responsible to select suitable candidates for the organisation, who can create innovative leads for innovative IT solutions.
Employee Development
Market surveys conducted by the research teams help the management to gain insight about the future market demands in the IT field. The HR manager is required to organise training sessions for developing the employees so that the company can cater to the market demands (Kung and Zhong, 2017).
Compensation
Compensation is provided in the form of salaries, incentives and other non-monetary benefits to employees that can help to stay productive and increase the employee engagement in the product design and product development phases (Mahadevan, 2020).
Motivation
The HR manager played an essential role in motivating the employees for ensuring long-term growth of the company. It helped the employees to keep their morale high during the difficult times of the business of ECO IT and finally driving the company to consistent growth (Ayentimi et al. 2018).
Operations
The operations that were conducted by EcoIT are considered as an organization in which the necessary facilities of the organization seemed to be provided by their customers at lower prices. According to Strohmeier (2020), along with it, it always tries to enhance their enhances the technical and commercial values of the customers and tries to plan some adequate steps for minimizing the carbon footprint and makes IT space eco-friendly.
The main role of the HR is to set an objective for their teams and needs to track their progress eventually. Beside this, also needs to monitor IT servers and systems as the employees can work comfortably and meet their targets in a significant way.
Operational management theory helps a HR manager to enhance their business practices, operations and efficiencies by maintaining a suitable strategy. The best practices an HR manager can perform are to use the least number of resources and engage the talents in their organization for meeting their customer requirements at the highest possible standards.
In case of EcoIT organizations lots of efficient engineers are present in the organization for providing reliable and cost effective solutions for the necessary IT problems. According to Ahammad et al. (2020), apart from that an HR manager needs to develop the departmental policies for the growth of their organization and needs to maintain effective communications with their employees for enhancing their productivity adequately.
The other responsibilities of an HR seemed to be creating a detailed report of the cost, monitor the HR internal systems and metrics.
HR needs to perform all these effective terms and needs to bring the modern technologies in their workplace which can help their employees to work rapidly and complete their task within a specified time period.
According to Pak et al. (2019), the HR sometimes watches the activities of the help desk as any employees facing any problem in their systems report it to their operational managers. Meantime, once the problem does not get solved by their operational managers, HR managers need to monitor the facts wisely.
Lastly, HR needs to identify the right employees for their organization and decides to assign the right task for the right employees. In this way, operations of the HR can seem to be enhanced and the work gets completed within the time period it is effective for their employees as well as for their organizations.
Technology
HR managers need to be technologically sound and show keen interest among use of modern technology that other organizations seem to be adopting for enhancing their effectiveness for IT solutions. In this way, an HR can adopt the modern technologies in their workplace by reducing lots of pressure among their IT specialists and urges them to provide more accurate solutions for their clients.
According to Kianto et al. (2017), the modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Internet of things can be used in their organization as the organization has just started their business they need time to implement these technologies. HR has identified that in the last couple of months they observed a loss, in order to regain themselves in the proper track they needed to take proper decisions.
However, in changing their pricing range from 350 to 360 and makes it the same with other competitors for the needs of the organization. Meanwhile after five months it has seemed to be observed that they have regained their preposition and started to expand their business in other locations.
According to Ahammad et al. (2020), beside this, as the role of an HR is to identify their insight products in which EcoIT was lacking and it needs to be improved for their further progress. In the meantime HR needs to find some appropriate employee for the right place for enhancing their weakest zones by providing adequate training and other facilities.
In this way EcoIT can reassure their customers that their product design has been changed completely and no further issues seem to arise.
The role of the HR managers does not seem to end here, they need to prepare a market research in which they need to identify their prime competitors. Along with it, the current situation of the organization has been also researched on the basis of competition level as well as in their profit margins.
In this way, it becomes essential for the organization to understand the strategy of other organizations and based on it, they need to take adequate measures and enhance their profits properly. According to Pak et al. (2019), despite all these things an HR needs to find some solution how their products can be developed better than the other competitors.
In Spite of that, modern technologies that need to be implemented need to be bought at a lower cost by searching in the markets and need to identify the amount their customers are paying for getting a similar product. EcoIT needs to take some time for implementing any kind of modern technologies, initially there needs to provide a training f0or their employees to operate those machines significantly.
Conclusion
Description of the experience- Being a part of an HR in a startup organization such as EcoIT is seemed to be quite difficult, initially lots of items need to be considered. A wide range of ideas and in-depth knowledge in the relevant field helps me to make strategic decisions and makes the organization profitable.
According to Adeani et al. (2020), conducting the role of an HR does not provide a knowledge about the HR also helps to understand the marketing, Finance, operations and use of modern technologies and organization. It seemed to be quite difficult to choose the right person in the right place. Lots of things need to be learnt by watching the roles of the great leaders and enhancing my skills for further enhancement of EcoIT.
Feelings- The feeling that comes from inside is very good by being an HR as all the employees provide a keen interest about my speech and the way I take decisions. In performing the role of an HR for a startup organization is like taking huge challenges in own hands and needs to provide adequate training and facility for their employees who helps them to enhance their skills and perform better.
Evaluation- As I have taken this challenge it helped me to identify my own power and skills that I can also provide a direction for the number of employees in achieving a common goal. I work hard to monitor all the necessary points regularly and it boosts my self confidence to a greater extent and provides a belief that I can also handle tough tasks and helps the employees from other departments in completing their task properly.
Analysis- Analyzing each and every segment of the organization seemed to be a difficult task for me in the initial stages. As I am obliged with handling the pressures and remains calm and composed in the later stages when the EcoIT has faced profits and launches a new workplace for enhancing the business operations properly.
Conclusion- Based on the above discussion it can be concluded that an individual coursework has been prepared in which the role of an HR in different segments was discussed properly. In conducting this entire report I have gained enough knowledge about the role of HR and provide a reflection on the basis of it. I learned that the low pay is affecting the business life quality and increasing the stress level of the employees.
Hence, it was decided to arrange pay hike up to 10%. As a HR manager, I have conducted the training and development sessions for employees in order to improve the working style and develop the business. The decisions taken had a positive impact in employee perfomance and organisational efficiency rose to 87% with a cumulative profit of 28,689 pounds.
The insights gathered from Business Advisor section of the business simulation game, Simventure, was helpful to take the key decisions. It consolidated the business reports at one place and provided actionable insights that were applied to drive the company to higher organisational efficiency.
Action Plan- The necessary process that an HR needs to maintain I am quite used to with this system and prepares a plan that I need to monitor all the facts regularly. According to Adeani et al. (2020), along with it, it needs to take proper decisions for the organization and motivates employees regularly for providing quality performances.
Reference list
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