Strategic Plan
The objective of this report is to present a business plan for an organization that I would like to plan and set up in near future in Australia. The first part of the report presents an analysis of company and the industry using strategic tools, undertakes SWOT analysis and lists the key strategic challenges the potential organization may face in the future.
The latter part of the report presents organization purpose, strategic options, proposed strategic plan and recommendations.
Part 1- Company and Industry Analysis
The growing issue of obesity among the Australian populace has grabbed attention of the society on their inactive lifestyle, poor eating habits, poor health and weight management and growing obese and related health problems like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
These concerns and the increased awareness towards obesity and associated health problems have initiated change of culture towards good appearance, habits like avoiding sugar by 44 percent Australian adults (Welltodo, 2016) and health and wellness programs.
This presents an opportunity to venture in the Australian market with cost effective solution with the establishment of a health and wellness centre to maintain weight and control and reduce obesity through physical fitness, healthy food and nutrition, health coaching, counselling and lifestyle changes for long-term results.
The proposed company business name ‘Health and Wellness Solution Centre’ that will operate in the health and wellness industry in New South Wales, Australia. To set up this business organization in future is viable as there will be an interrupted demand of such services and there will also be a constant supply of buyer
owing to the fact that high population comes under obese problems as one in every four children is overweight from age 2 to 17 years and two in three Australian adults are overweight in 2014-2015 (AIHW, 2018) and there is growing health consciousness.
Health and Wellness Solution Centre will be set up in Raymond Terrace town near Newcastle in New South Wales. This is because Raymond Terrace is the plumpest place with 70.8 percent of Australian adults that are either overweight or obese (News.com.au, 2016).
The venture proposes to offer personalized health and wellness sugar-free products from centre and through its website along with health training/ coaching and health and wellness counselling for lifestyle changes. The company will set up under a partnership business structure with two owners.
The Australian health and wellness industry is analysed using the PESTLE model to highlight the factors that can affect the company business and selling operations in New South Wales, Australia.
Political Factors: The country has a stable political and regulatory environment (Lloyd, 2015) which is positive for the growth of the health and wellness industry. The stringent labor laws, taxes changes and consumer protection laws needs to be considered as they can impact the business operations in case of non-compliance.
The government supports the startup through grants under entrepreneurs’ programme (up to 50% of expenditure (capped at $ 250,000), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) kick-start (up to $50,000 to grow and develop the new business),
Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF) in the health and wellbeing area (SmartCompany, 2018). The Australia has an image of low corruption and less political pressure/ interference thus, a safe destination for investment in business.
Economic Factors: The country is one of the largest capitalist economies. In 2017, the GDP growth was 2.7 percent which accounted for $1,418,280 million in 2018 (Countryeconomy.com, 2018).
The rise in interest rate, raw materials prices, labour costs negatively impact this industry (Health and Wellness solution centre sales and profitability) while the increase in income, purchasing power and customer spending positively impact the industry thus, Health and wellness solution centre.
Social Factors: The changing demographics, eating habits and lifestyle, awareness towards in the society impacts health and wellness companies demands in the country. Around $8.5 billion each year is spend by Australians on gym memberships which accounts for $1,000 each month by an individual (Suncorp, 2015).
The mounting health consciousness and choice for healthy lifestyle is positive social trend for increasing sales of Health and Wellness products and solutions from the Australian societies.
Technological Factors: The country is a developed nation with a strong technology infrastructure. The access to latest technology is positive factor to smoothen the business and supply chain operations, cost reductions, efficiency improvement and for internal and external communication with supplies and customers.
The technology factor will be helpful to promote the new business, attract, reach and interact with the target customers and give better service like yoga and heath training to the customers (Skurikhina et al., 2016).
Legal Factors: This includes discrimination towards age, disability, and gender, fair business policy, employment policy, minimum wages, tax obligations and industry specific regulation to avoid legal burden, like fine, penalties and proceedings.
Environmental Factors: There is need to consider the business impact on the environment including carbon footprint, pollution and water and energy conservation.
The analysis is done using McKinsey 7S model of Health and Wellness Solution Centre to identify the internal factors.
Strategy: Under the corporate strategy, the company will follow growth strategy initially through market penetration to gain market share. This will be done by setting an affordable pricing strategy and offering promotions (Gyepi-Garbrah and Binfor, 2013), changes in health and wellness service package and combo offers to increase volume per customer and by using multiple marketing channels.
At business level, the company will adopt a differentiation strategy to keep the focus on quality of services and products to clearly differentiate its offerings from the competitors. The functional strategy will include marketing, talent management, distribution to put the products and services within reach of target market.
Structure: A formal functional organization structure will be developed so that the employees are group based on specialization (specific skills and knowledge) for operational efficiency and to increase the customer satisfaction and also to retain customers.
Style: The company will promote democratic style of leadership so that there is opportunity for organizational members from different functional department to participate in the decision-making process and to encourage open discussion.
Staff: The company will follow industry best practices to attract and retain potential employee. There will be a performance management system to manage the workforce and indentify the training needs and to keep the turnover rate lower. The financial and non-financial rewards and recognition policy will be clearly defined to the organizational members.
Skills: The skills that are required in the business are interpersonal skills, negotiation skills, technical skills, general management skills, marketing skills and relationship management skills.
Systems: The business intend to have in place a number of systems like expense control system (Gyepi-Garbrah and Binfor, 2013), performance management system, financial management system, customer relationship management and human resource information system .
Shared values: The culture of the business will be defined by the shared values that will be adopted by the company thus, the company action will be based on values such as reliability, quality, efficiency, accountability, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and work transparency.
| Strengths
° Good business location due to high obesity problem ° Good products and service range ° High quality sugar free –products ° Competent counselors, coaches and trainers ° Socially responsible brand ° One stop solution for health and wellness products and services |
Weaknesses
° Low brand awareness in NSW region ° Initial Low budget for promotions and branding ° High operational costs |
| Opportunities
° High growth potential of health and wellness industry in Australian cities (Hoeger et al., 2018) ° Increase in public health awareness ° Positive social trend towards lifestyle (incorporation of fitness) and eating choices and habits (Huang et al., 2015) ° Preference of consumers towards health and wellness programs ° E-commerce retail expansion |
Threats
° Direct competition from existing established brands/ companies ° Competition for new entrants ° Indirect competition from Woolworths and Coles that have increased their healthy product offerings to meet the growing health-consciousness products demands (Euromonitor, 2018). ° Increase in government regulation/ compliance (environment, employment, consumer protection) for health and wellness industry |
The projected strategic challenges for Health and Wellness Solution Centre are to optimize the centre experience due to technological changes. This is because the centre forms the primary engagement point with the customers and with the technological changes the trend of smartphones the customers are more attracted towards online services and products.
Thus, this will increase the efforts to retain offline customers and attract the online customers to remain competitive in the health and wellness industry. Also, this requires the business to develop strong brand presence in the e-commerce market (Lin, 2017) to maintain its grip in the initial years as well as to increase the awareness of health issues due to poor lifestyle and eating choices.
Another related challenge is to make use of different channels and to reach and attract new customers. This demands the business to be innovative towards the multi-channel marketing such as print advertisements, television ads, and digital marketing.
Thus, analysis of target markets and an effective allocation of resources are required for different channels towards marketing spend to get significant return on investment.
The availability of skilled workforce and to retain them in the company is a key strategic challenge (Bahn and Cameron, 2013) for which the company needs to develop and apply robust recruitment and selection strategy and offer a good working culture with an attractive compensation package.
Increase in competition from other health and wellness companies (Pronk, 2015) such as other wellness centre, local health clubs, heath spa, fitness centre, home trainers, companies offering organic food products is another key strategic challenge that has an influence on the likelihood of future success of Health and Wellness Solution Centre.
This is because the competition is for same target markets where the competitors may engage in high promotional spending and price wars as well as may offer high pay package to attract the trained employees from other companies operating in health and wellness industry. Thus, the competition is for customers as well as skilled workforce.
Part 2 – Strategic Options and proposal
The purpose of the organisation is to provide one stop solution to customers for their health and wellness needs of products and services for long-term results for a healthy lifestyle and choice and to lower the risk of obese related health problems and healthcare costs burden.
Summary of internal and external analysis and key strategic challenges
It can be summarised that the political factors such as less political restriction on doing business, stable environment, safe investment destination and low corruption country image, growing GDP, changing social trends positively influence Health and Wellness Solution Centre in the operating environment of Australia.
However, the legal and environmental factors can affect the business profitability. The technological environment also positively impacts the business with regards to improving business functions and marketing reach but also promote growth in online trend that can affect the offline business.
It can be summarised that the internal elements of strategy (corporate, business and functional), functional business structure, systems, shared values, democratic leadership style, staff and skills are aligned in a way so that the organization achieve its purpose.
The key strategic challenges indentified are optimisation of Health and Wellness Solution Centre experience because of technological changes, develop strong brand presence in the e-commerce market, increase the awareness of health issues due to poor lifestyle and eating choices use of different channels for marketing, effective allocation of resources, availability of skilled workforce and their retention and competition.
In this competitive business environment, there are several challenges for the business in the market. For Health and Wellness Solution Centre, it may be a big issue for the firm to make people aware about the services as people are not fully aware of the increasing health concerns like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc. and related solutions.
It will be challenging for the firm to develop public awareness of the health aspects. In addition, the increasing competition in healthcare sector will also be a big challenge for the firm because there are different firms in Australian health care sector which are competing with each other based on the prices and facilities.
The increasing competition has an adverse impact on the revenues and profitability of the organization in the market.
Suggestions (multiple options): Innovation plan, strategy map, etc.
Innovation plan can be one alternative for Health and Wellness Solution Centre to handle the competition in the Australian market. For this, firm needs to consider the differentiation strategy that can be useful to integrate the innovation in the health services.
The organization can spend on new technologies and techniques that can be helpful to make the efficient services for the clients and make them satisfied. At the same time, it can differentiate its services by providing training to its staff.
The development of new knowledge and skills will be helpful for the staff members to provides new insights for the service development and serve the customers efficiently. It is required in the health organization to provide the best services so the clients could get the best purchasing experience and wellness benefits (Perkins et al., 2014).
In relation to this, new techniques and practices related to health and wellness aspects such as Yoga practices can be innovative for the firm to serve the customers and make them satisfied.
At the same time, the consideration of the strategy map can be effective for the firm to evaluate the performance in terms of customers, financial, internal perspective and learning and growth perspective.
It is because these aspects are crucial for an organization to improve performance criteria and take better approaches for the performance development at regular level.
The use of strategy map can be helpful for the firm to create value by connecting all four business objectives including financial customer, processes and learning and growth in the cause and effect relationship (Gomes et al., 2013). It means the firm needs to focus on its financial aspects by improving the financial measurements such as profits, revenues, etc.
At the same time, customer oriented practices like quality services, competitive prices, value to the services, customer service, etc. are significant for the firm to add value to its services and enhance the market share. Along with this, internal processes such as the payment process, delivery and return policy, etc.
should be integrated to value addition for the customers. The improvement in internal processes brings the better quality for the services to the customers (Al-Hosaini, and Sofian, 2015). In addition, the learning and growth aspects are crucial for the firm to provide training and learning opportunities to the employees so they could provide the better services to the clients and meet their demand for high satisfaction.
(Source: Perkin et al., 2014).
Concerning to this, the firm can integrate both models to develop and innovative culture to facilitate the new ideas and collaborative thoughts in the business. It will collaborate with the outside partners to integrate new technologies to enhance its services; it will also develop new concepts and integrate these ideas into the service portfolio to serve the customers efficiently.
In addition, the firm can co-develop services with the customers to meet the needs of the customers and provide the enhanced value for them. The firm can also manage the product development budget to determine the returns on investment (Perkins et al., 2014. With the proper management of process and generation of sales of new services, the firm will be able to sustain its profitability.
From financial perspective, the company needs to add value for owners and investors. From customer point of view, company needs to deploy new products and services and crate increased value for the customers and solve their issues and concerns. In concern of process, it can be beneficial for the organization to create and manage better process for meeting the objectives and promises (Rothaermel, 2013).
In concern of the learning and growth perspective, it can be significant to adopt effective leadership and develop skills and culture for the generation of new ideas in the business.
The following recommendations are made to successfully implement the business plan of Health and Wellness Solution Centre in Raymond Terrace, New South Wales. It is recommended to gain a comprehensive knowledge of the laws related to employment, discrimination and environment, consumer protection and industry specific regulations/ standards and tax obligations in NSW.
This is required to obtain licenses and documents to initiate the business and fulfill the necessary requirements. Another recommendation is to establish health and wellness quality criteria (Baum et al., 2013) in the service plan to offer to the customers that promote the company strategy valuable for customers in long- term and to develop business reputation in the competitive marketplace.
It is recommended to company to understand and make use of social shopping trends to attract customers and increase sales (Lee, 2016). It is also recommended to develop collaboration with community stakeholders (Kraak et al., 2014) and non-government organization (Elliott et al., 2014) to promote health and wellness of people and develop image of a socially responsible business.
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