M3 Assignment 2: Business Plan Breakdown 3—The Simplified Financial Plan

 

Assignment 2: Business Plan Breakdown 3—The Simplified Financial Plan

This is the third milestone of your business plan—the financial plan.

Tasks:

Research the costs, financial statements, cash flow, and risks of your chosen project. Based on your research and the knowledge you have gained from the course, create a simplified 4- to 5-page financial plan including tables and charts. For the financial plan:

• Estimate the capital requirements, use of capital, start-up requirements (if applicable), and other probable costs involved in the implementation and subsequent operation of your project.
• Identify the sources of financing.
• Define a payback period.
• Prepare cash flow projections.
• Prepare a projected balance sheet representing the end of the first calendar year of operations and defining assets and liabilities, both current and long term.
• Prepare income statement projections for the end of the first calendar year of operations, including charts showing gross revenues, gross profit, and net income.
• Define the meaning of a break-even analysis and prepare an analysis appropriate for your project.
• Prepare a ratio analysis, including the definition and value of the following ratios (whichever applicable)—current, quick, debt, debt-to-equity, average inventory turnover, receivables turnover, payables turnover, net sales to working capital, net profit to sales, and net profit to equity.
• Prepare a list of possible risks associated with the implementation and future operation of your project and describe the significance of each of them.

Submission Details:

By the due date assigned, save your paper as M3_A2_lastname_firstinitial and submit it to the Submissions Area.

See Attached Documents

Running head: BUSINESS PLAN BREAKDOWN

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BUSINESSPLAN BREAKDOWN 7

Assignment 3: Business Plan Breakdown 1 – The Choice of Business

Jason Simpson

Argosy University

Top management plays a crucial role within an organization through value proposition and enhancing the adoption of strategies to strengthen the company’s position. Significantly, leadership plays a vital role in the implementation of innovative practices within an organization. In this regard, leaders often function as change agents by not only creating a vision but also highlighting the need for organizational change and enactment of the identified change process (Aarons, Ehrhart, Farahnak & Hurlburt, 2015). The importance of this initiative is emphasized by the fact that implementation of continuous and transformational change enables a firm to remain competitive. As a result, leadership innovation and implementation of change initiatives are subject to supplemental research as it equips effective organization strategies for sustenance in the highly competitive business environment (Gilley, Gilley & McMillan, 2010). Considerably, the implementation of change practices has in the past been inhibited by the inability to modify organizational leadership styles (Mustafa, 2017). Therefore, implementation of the organizational change initiative highlights the importance of adopting innovative leadership styles.

Vision: To ignite and empower employees with innovative leadership strategies to enhance implementation of organizational changes and overcome challenges, and attain aspiration. The mission statement for the change initiative is; driven to positively impact organizations through the advancement of leadership approaches that facilitate the integration of organizational change management practices to strengthen the company’s position. Through this, the initiative seeks to emphasize the importance of incorporating innovative leadership strategies as they facilitate change processes thereby cementing a firm’s competitive position within the business environment (Aarons, Ehrhart, Farahnak & Hurlburt, 2015). Significantly, its core belief and culture is enhancing cohesion between the top management and employees thereby creating a positive impact on staff morale and productivity (Mustafa, 2017). The role of innovative leadership is the facilitation of effective communication to the staff members by the top management. Therefore, leaders will be required to operate from a broader perspective particularly during the generation of ideas and improvement of organizational practices during the change process.

Venture Description

The implementation of organizational change practices is dictated by the adoption of innovation and change management practices to support the initiative. Notably, most companies adopt a bureaucratic type of leadership for undertaking different roles and responsibilities (Mustafa, 2017). While this leadership approach has been successful in most ventures, it does not offer a proper structure to organizational management, particularly in the enactment of change practices (Gilley, Gilley & McMillan, 2010). This heightens the need to integrate innovative approaches such as the Genome Framework that provides the top management within a company a clear set of understanding on how to provide their workforce more freedom within the working environment. Consequently, this will create a sense of cohesion amongst the staff members (Aarons, Ehrhart, Farahnak & Hurlburt, 2015). Additionally, the top management will be required to incorporate other performance improvement measures rather than solely focusing on the completion of responsibilities and attainment of the set objectives.

Organizational objectives can be attained through effective cross-functional approaches. This initiative aims to facilitate implementation of organizational changes through the adoption of innovative leadership strategies and effective change processes. Both innovation and the change management models provide a solution to business challenges in the highly competitive operating environment (Gilley, Gilley & McMillan, 2010). Pointedly, the initiative will be participating in the management consulting industry with the sole objective of evaluating leadership innovation and change management problems encountered by organizations. Through this, the initiative seeks to propose the need for organizational changes through the adoption of innovative and change management practices (Mustafa, 2017). Implicitly, the initiative intends to offer validated leadership approaches for organizational development through the description of varying leadership dimensions. For instance, the Full-range leadership model is a researched approach emphasizing the importance of transformational leadership as a source of motivation to the employees (Aarons, Ehrhart, Farahnak & Hurlburt, 2015). In this regard, the initiative seeks to propose different innovative leadership styles ought to be integrated into company’s and effective change management practices to enhance a firm’s competitive position. Considerably, this initiative has a strategic advantage in that most management consulting firms have focused on finance and accounting services while sidelining the need for best management practices which is an integral component of success (Mustafa, 2017). Organizational success is determined by the integration of effective management approaches that foster positive relationships between the top Mangement and the employees. While most organizations have been successful in the past, the ever-changing business environment emphasizes the need for effective change management practices.

Justification

The Master of Science in organizational leadership comprehensively covers the importance of leadership within companies. Competent leadership is integral to the implementation of suitable changes for an organization. Primarily, this highlights the type of knowledge, skills, and competencies required by a leader to facilitate an effective organizational change. Significantly, it is essential to highlight the relations between leadership competencies and successful organizational change. Based on this, the proposed initiative focuses on innovative leadership strategies and their impact on effective change management practices. While the Master of Science in organizational leadership provides a background overview of leadership within organizations, the initiative seeks to propose a set of leadership approaches and change management models for organizations. Therefore, this initiative focuses on innovative leadership strategies and their influence on change processes which forms an integral component of the registered program.

Research Methods

The feasibility of this initiative will be analyzed through surveys. Implicitly, the survey methodology will entail sampling of organizations to ascertain their need for training on innovative leadership and change management practices. Different data collecting techniques such as the use of questionnaires will be used after which the data will be validated to improve the accuracy of the responses. Significantly, the survey will provide the statistical inferences regarding the different leadership and change management problems faced by organizations. Through this, the need for the initiative will be highlighted. Therefore, surveys will be used for providing the relevant information required to supplement the initiative.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths
· Customer demand
· Lack of competition in the external environment
· Apparent skills and capabilities
· Provision of a different services
· Focus on a specific market niche

Weaknesses
· Obstacles regarding the investment capital needed to launch the marketing campaign.
· Limited research on the initiative
· Declining customer base

Opportunities
· New international markets
· Great potential in new markets
· Loyal customer base
· Capitalizing on new technologies

Threats
· Competition
· Change of customer needs
· Cost sensitive market

References

Aarons, G. A., Ehrhart, M. G., Farahnak, L. R., & Hurlburt, M. S. (2015). Leadership and organizational change for implementation (LOCI): a randomized mixed method pilot study of a leadership and organization development intervention for evidence-based practice implementation. Implementation Science, 10(1), 11.

Gilley, A., Gilley, J. W., & McMillan, H. S. (2010). Organizational change: Motivation, communication, and leadership effectiveness. Performance improvement quarterly, 21(4), 75-94.

Mustafa M (2017) Leadership Innovation and Implement Organizational Change and Lead a New Initiative through Adoption of the Innovation and Change Management Practices for Shiraz Industries Private Limited Company: A Survey from Pakistan. J Bus Fin Aff 6: 278. Doi: 10.4172/2167-0234.1000278

Running head: BUSINESS PLAN BREAKDOWN

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BUSINESS PLAN BREAKDOWN

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Assignment 2: Business Plan Breakdown 2 — The Marketing Plan

Student’s Name

University Affiliation

Marketing entails the art of identifying customer needs and providing services that meet their interests. Despite this, customers have varying preferences thereby highlighting that each organization is characterized by specific needs that ought to be addressed (Lynn, 2014). Primarily, their characteristics define their needs, which features they benefit the most. Target market segmentation refers to the art of categorizing consumers in that the business offerings can be tailored to match the receptive customer segments (Lynn, 2014). In this regard, market segmentation seeks to define customers based on the business services features that they value the most. From a high level, the objective of the marketing strategy is to identify the target market and establish a marketing mix that will be appealing to the target consumers (Lynn, 2014). Considerably, the primary objective is not coming up with a specific marketing strategy but rather focusing on the value proposition to the target market.

In the wake of the evolving business markets, organizations face an increasing need to understand their leadership requirements. Pointedly, this is highlighted by the fact that leadership is integral to the implementation of suitable changes within an organization (Lynn, 2014). In this regard, the marketing plan for the business initiative is tailored to identify specific leadership and change management practices needs faced by organizations in today’s complex business environment. Implicitly, the marketing plan will highlight on the different service features available to address the needs of different organizations (Mustafa, 2017). As highlighted, target customers have varying preferences thereby heightening the need to integrate different service features relating to their interests. This signifies the importance of identifying the potential customers and their respective needs relating to innovative leadership and management of change practices (Mustafa, 2017). Therefore, the marketing plan incorporates different product features to address unique customer needs.

Establishing viable target customers is the core initiative of the marketing plan. Considerably, no two customers can share unique needs as preferences often vary. Significantly, it will be inefficient to develop a marketing plan for a single target customer. With this, the marketing plan will identify the common attributes among the customers (Lynn, 2014). Through this, the business initiative will identify the customers it can serve the best, the target segment. Significantly, the target segment must be classified based on unique characteristics to enhance ease in the provision of the different service features (Lynn, 2014). Therefore, the marketing plan intends to target the market segment by identifying unique needs among the viable consumers..

Positioning Statement

To the best partner for selecting, developing and incorporating world-class organizational leaders.

Products and Services

Today’s business environment is constantly evolving thereby heightening the challenges faced by most organizations. While some of this challenges can be addressed, understanding the leadership requirements for the organization is critical. Considerably, it is essential for companies to integrate effective leadership models for use in developing the next generation of leaders (Mustafa, 2017). The business initiative intends to work in tandem with other organizations to provide a range of services including a clear definition of the talent requirements, taking into consideration the business implications of falling short of (or meeting) the highlight requirements. Significantly, the initiative plans on creating a comprehensive model that emphasizes on what good leadership is for an organization now and in the future.

The business initiative seeks to develop a compelling leadership model that will become an organizing framework for the integration of talent management and facilitation of change management practices. Significantly, this model will enhance assessment of innovative leadership approaches to ensure the organization incorporates strategies to positions it better in the competitive business environment. Considerably, organizational leaders can be assessed through the use of the model, organizational teams aligned to it and incumbents measured against it. Additionally, the business initiative can leverage an organizational current business model by establishing and implementing varying principles. These include developing a rigorous process for engaging the senior team in a thorough consideration leadership needs, issues, and relevance of the existing business model. Consequently, internal communications will be enhanced to introduce the new business model and its ramifications to the different organization levels. Besides, tools, methods, and systems will be enhanced to build capacity in the different areas targeted by the business model. Therefore, the incorporation of a new business model will better position the organization in the competitive landscape by filing in important leadership positions within the company.

The business initiative offers compelling change approaches to enable your organization to adapt to the rapidly evolving changes in the contemporary society. Technological advancement in the modern society is a trend that most organization ought to leverage on. However, incorporating new organizational processes is a significant challenge faced by most companies. This highlights the dire need of developing an absorbing change management business model to better the current organizational processes and equip the company competitive advantage. Therefore, the business initiative seeks to partner with organizations for the structuring of an effective change business model that fits their unique needs.

Pricing Strategy

The business initiative will adopt a fixed bid contract as its pricing strategy. With this, the business initiative or project will be completed for a fixed fee which is determined by the company’s unique needs or interests (Craciun, 2013). The importance of this pricing strategy is that it is our risk to complete the defined objectives within a specified deadline. Failure to complete the objective within the set deadline will require extra hours from our personnel as it is the firm’s dedication to meet the needs of the target customers (Craciun, 2013). By alleviating the risk from the customers, the pricing strategy offers a friendly approach thereby ensuring that high-quality services can be provided at fair prices.

Promotion plan

The business initiative will be marketed through advertisements and business exhibitions. Additional, an interactive website will be developed for easy access by corporations in need of the services. The promotion plan will mainly target organizations facing leadership and change Mangement challenges. Additionally, companies in need of consultation of the different leadership approach for use will be target market of the promotion plan. The marketing will be conducted for six months after which a review will be conducted to ascertain its effectiveness, primarily, this will be based on the project’s revenue and sales. The objective of the promotion plan is to increase sales of the services offered by the business initiative within the next six months. Therefore, the marketing department will oversee the promotion plan activities to ensure effective dissemination of information to the target market. Specifically, the promotion plan will target both local and international organizations for the provision of the highlighted services. However, stiff competition is expected in the international markets as local businesses are more likely to purchase the different service features.

References

Craciun, C. S. (2013). Pricing of Consulting Services. International Journal of Academic
Research in Economics and Management Sciences, 2(1), 47.

Lynn, M. (2011). Segmenting and targeting your market: Strategies and limitations.

Mustafa M (2017) Leadership Innovation and Implement Organizational Change and Lead a
New Initiative through Adoption of the Innovation and Change Management Practices
for Shiraz Industries Private Limited Company: A Survey from Pakistan. J Bus Fin Aff 6:
278. Doi: 10.4172/2167-0234.1000278