COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

COURSEWORK SUBMISSION COVERSHEET - 2016/17

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1745471
Student Number:
MG5590
Module Code:
Business Planning
Module Title:
Grahame Fallon
Module Tutor:

Assessment Number/Name: Final Assessment

e.g. Coursework 1, Coursework 2,
Presentation, Final Assessment

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The submission of this coversheet is confirmation that you have read and understood the above statements.
Title: Reflective Report

Table of Contents
1. Introduction:................................................................................................................. 3
2. Teamwork: ................................................................................................................... 3
3. Strengths and weaknesses of our group: ....................................................................... 4
3.1 Weaknesses : ..................................................................................................................... 4
3.2 Strengths: .......................................................................................................................... 4
4. Learning experience: ..................................................................................................... 5
5. Conclusion: ................................................................................................................... 6
References: ...................................................................................................................... 7
1. Introduction:

Reflecting back upon your experiences is an important capability for all professions in
order to enhance communication skills, future performance and conflict resolution. The
purpose of composing this reflective report is to illustrate about how I managed to work in
my group for this course Business Planning and how this has developed my practical skills
for industries. This report will allow the readers to understand my accomplishment by being a
member of a team and particularly what role I played as a critical thinker, presenter,
researcher and an analyzer. (White, 2005). I will be able to suggest the possible
improvements for business plan as well as portray the team dynamics and the communication
style followed in this business plan. For this purpose, we were asked to develop a business
plan for Firelight Smoke detector that can be plugged in to any switch and serves the purpose
of detecting smoke as well as carbon monoxide. This device is user friendly which can be
used domestically as well as commercially and is highly engineered to reduce the risks of
malfunctions. Our business plan was divided in 5 different departments that included human
resource, finance, marketing, sales and strategy; each of these departments were assigned to
every individual in the group.

2. Teamwork:
The role of effective contribution played a key role for our group, it is important to
critically reflect upon it. Effective communication within the team dynamic is quite essential.
(Peterson 2012). We made sure that all of us would show up for the group meetings and if
someone isn’t available, we would be able to keep in touch with them through a video call.
Similarly, this was further supported by research by allocating tasks of each department to the
group members, (Wu & Xiao 2011) focus upon team members to have clear understanding of
their roles and agenda. Every team member contributed to be a reasonable thinker by
applying strategies (Danks, 2012). Our group was able to exchange information with each
other without any ambiguity that helped us to achieve our goals through clear understanding,
effective communication and work as a cohesive team.

My team members defined the corporate objectives for our business plan which
included long term as well as short term objectives that determine the success of an
organization. (Mayrhofer, Farndale and Brewster, 2018). Extensive market research was
carried that took into account the 40% of the false alarm incidents in England, an investment
return is higher when marketing budget is taken into account Fischer et al., (2011). Also, the
market share of the smoke detector was taken into account that stated, European companies
market share is 70%. Market segmentation and positioning was carried out by the members
dealing with marketing, they targeted the upper middle-class families and made use of
psychology pricing £39.99 per unit in order to penetrate the market. Additionally, a crucial
role was played by our team member who dealt with the finance, an initial investment of £
34,000 was to be contributed by each member and all the profits/losses were to be shared
equally among each other. (Downey, 2018).

Our finance team member was responsible for financial maintenance, providing
information regarding costs and profits, working alongside me to analyse the costs incurred
from hiring of two sales executives and projecting how much salaries would they be given
monthly. Additionally, as projected from the sales forecast developed from the marketing
research, a cashflow statement was designed which predicted the profit for 3 years. The
predicted profit for 3 years would be £3,137,298.0 which would be used in future to increase
our staff, buy more fleet and expand our operations. And lastly, one of our team members
was also responsible to analyse the pitfalls for this business plan. This team member of our
took into account the number of competitors available in the market and the new
development of technology could act as a barriers towards our business. Basically, this team
member was responsible for the risk analysis, that included the lack of brand image,
technological aspects, competition in the market that could hinder our business plan.

3. Strengths and weaknesses of our group:

3.1 Weaknesses :

Reflection also gives me an opportunity to rectify the weaknesses we faced while

developing our business plan and how we could improve our performance. In order to make
improvement in a particular set of tasks; courage, persistence, motivation and determination
are the key aspects (DuPont 2013). One of the challenges faced by our group was effective
delegation as well as time management which hampered us. We realized that it was hard to
delegate tasks to team members as we had conflicting schedules, workloads and other
important commitments. For me, I believe this was one of the significant handicaps in our
group. We should have thought about delegating tasks in. amore effective and efficient
manner that would help each and every individual. Similarly, it was a bad idea to give every
member of the group different business departments, some of the group members were very
unclear about what they had to do. For this we should have practiced delegation that offers to
save timings, help in accomplishing group tasks and analysed the strengths and weaknesses
of every group member before allocating the tasks. (Ellis, 2012). We faced disputes between
individuals to schedule meetings on time, undertaking business planning activities in a timely
manger and allocating periods to complete our tasks sufficiently. We could have improved
this by better commitment towards attending meetings and acting as an their own agent to
make sure the activity that we have planned out is completed on time. (Atkins & Lowe
2011,). Our team could have been more realistic about time and should have been determined
in taking responsibility to develop the business plan in adequate time.This understanding has
proved to be a very valuable lesson for me in my future. I would make sure that in future
projects sufficient planning and ample time play a crucial role in group activities.

3.2 Strengths:
]
On the other hand, our strengths can be described by the oldest team models known as
GRPI model which was developed by Plovnick, and Fry in1977 which consisted of goals that
we defined, the role played by every individual, processes that included the strategies and
decisions regarding the business plan and finally maintaining a harmonious interpersonal
relationship with group members. (Mayne, 2012) This model helped us to ease the process of
prioritizing, establishing our project as well as helps us to prioritize our goals as a team and
aided to frame into a clear action plan. In addition to this, by setting up priorities we were
able to identify cascade of problems that helped us to provide solutions. (Kornferry.com,
2009)

4. Learning experience:
I felt very ambitious towards the business plan as I wanted to structure the goals in the
business plan that would give me the knowledge and understanding of making an official
project that was realistic. Our business strategy solely concentrated on customer service,
financial feasibility, staffing and resourcing, market penetration and projection of new
technology. (Sugars, 2005). I picked up all the important aspects as I was determined to
adopt a good mix of cash inflows, cash outflows, recruitment and selection techniques and
learn about the different marketing models and theories are used. I was confident and
motivated to learn more, this way I got to have a practical experience of how different
business departments should work in coordination with each other in order to achieve the
goals (Sanyal and Wamique Hisam, 2018). Similarly, I didn’t panic when things weren’t
going right, when we face conflicts I was the only person who remained calm.

I played a role of the HR manager in which I was responsible for the recruitment and
selection of the candidates. I prepared the job description for the two sales executives that we
would be hiring. A payroll as well as training budget was also designed by me for the
candidates. For the screening process, a set of situational questionnaires were prepared for
them. Furthermore, I also played an important role in the legal implications which included
registration as well as buying the patents for the company. And lastly, I also negotiated with
our vendors and after the careful evaluation I chose the vendor with the reasonable price and
good quality which served as a best fit for out business plan.

5. Conclusion:
By working on this project, I have gained vast knowledge about the processes used by
human resource managers and how they ensure that the company is able to maximize its
operational efficiency by choosing the right people at the right time. (K' Obonyo, Godrick M
and Patrick B, 2014) In addition to this, the continuous emergence of outsourcing vendors
from France helped me to develop negotiating skills as well as helped me to critically analyze
which vendor would be most suitable with our business plan. (Mahmoodi, 2012) Besides this,
my researching skills have increased tremendously which would help me in the future for
carrying out any type of research. I believe my motivation skills have improved significantly
that helped me to encourage my group members when they were stressing out over the work.
While working there were many conflicts which we faced with each other, now I know how
to resolve conflicts by making decisions mutually and listening to everyone’s consent. Also,
it has helped to develop HRM strategies in reference to a Firefight that has helped to create a
conclusive argument in presenting the business plan. As we had to collect data, analyze it and
then present it in front of our professors has given me confidence and a sense of achievement.
My communication skills have clearly advanced and in the future, I can easily make business
plans and strategies for any department as working in teams helped me to have a better
understanding of the work carried out by different business departments.
References:

Atkins, S. & Lowe, S. 2011, Agents of change – a call for effective leadership, University of
Boston Press, Boston, Mass.

Danks, W. (2012) ‘The dynamic boardroom communicator’, Communication Performance

Management, 3,(4,) pp. 82-90.

Downey, J. (2018). Making a success of your business: Essentials checklist. [online]

Cimaglobal.com. Available at:
http://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Thought_leadership_docs/MAking%20a%20success
%20Checklist_FINAL_July09.pdf [Accessed 22 Nov. 2018].

DuPont, A. 2013, Communication in action – a review, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Ellis, S. 2012, ‘Intellectual teamwork: social and technological foundations of cooperation’,
Journal of Sociology, vol. 32, no. 6.

Fischer, M., Albers, S., Wagner, N. and Frie, M. (2011). Practice Prize Winner—Dynamic
Marketing Budget Allocation Across Countries, Products, and Marketing Activities.
Marketing Science, 30(4), pp.568-585

K' Obonyo, P., Godrick M, B. and Patrick B, O. (2014). Human Resource Management
Practices and Firm Performance: A Study of Manufacturing Firms in Kenya. International
Journal of Management Excellence, 3(1), p.392.

Kornferry.com. (2009). [online] Available at:

https://www.kornferry.com/media/lominger_pdf/teamswhitepaper080409.pdf [Accessed 26
Nov. 2018].

Mahmoodi, K. (2012). NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES AND SKILLS IN

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS. [online] Available at:
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/42807/Mahmoodi_Kosar.pdf?sequence=1.
Mayne, L. (2012). Reflective writing as a tool for assessing teamwork in bioscience: Insights
into student performance and understanding of teamwork. Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology Education, 40(4), pp.234-240.

Mayrhofer, W., Farndale, E. and Brewster, C. (2018). Handbook of Research on Comparative

Human Resource Management. Edward Elgar Publishing

Peterson, H. (2012) Teamwork dynamics, Smithfield Press, New York.

Sanyal, S. and Wamique Hisam, M. (2018). The Impact of Teamwork on Work Performance
of Employees: A Study of Faculty Members in Dhofar University. [online] Iosrjournals.org.
Available at: http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jbm/papers/Vol20-issue3/Version-
1/C2003011522.pdf [Accessed 29 Nov. 2018].

White, L. (2005). Writes of Passage: Writing an Empirical Journal Article. Journal of

Marriage and Family, 67(4), pp.791-798.

Wu, Z. & Xiao, L. (2011) ‘Team builder: a CSR tool for identifying expertise and team
strengths’, Allied Communications,12 (10) , pp. 32-47.