Please read below case and answer below questions:-
1) What were the difficulties Maria would have encountered in identifying and recommending her solutions? How would you have addressed them?
2) How could commitment to implementation has been gained and the proposals delivered more quickly?
3) What could she have done after the end of the project to ensure that her recommendations were not lost and could be implemented?
4) How might Maria have described her KTP experience in her CV?
CASE: Wessex Custom Design
Wessex Custom Design Wessex Custom Design (WCD) was a small/medium enterprise located in Swindon. It had been established for approximately twenty years, with a turnover of £6 million. The company consisted of four divisions: Wessex Corporate Imaging, whose main business was the provision of high-quality outdoor signage; Wiltshire Property Services, a growing shop-fitting business; Wyvern Engineering, providing commodity steel and aluminium fabrications to industrial customers; and PowCo-RX, a business exploiting powder coating technology. Historically, Wessex Corporate Imaging tended to account for around 65 per cent of group turnover. The strength of the company lay in the quality of its production and creativity. It therefore applied for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership whose objective would be not to address short comings so much as to establish how the company collectively could build on its strengths and enjoy healthier levels of growth and profitability. Turnover had stagnated in the region of £5.9–£6.2 million in the three preceding years. Senior management was of the view that the group was under-performing and that fixed costs were at too high a level for the turnover achieved. Productivity was therefore a key issue. The company’s approach was largely product-oriented and its style was opportunistic and entrepreneurial, driven by the talents and instincts of its two senior executives and joint owners. A key weakness was the lack of communication and coordination between the four divisions, some duplication of resource and misaligned accounting and IT systems which frustrated an easy management overview of the operation. The application was successful and an associate appointed – Maria (24), a talented and vivacious Polish girl who had recently graduated with a first in business studies from the nearby university. Early into the programme, WCD successfully divested PowCo-RX at a good price, thus generating a cash windfall which helped to ease their borrowings and improve the cash flow. This also meant that the associate could concentrate on the important strategic and operational issues rather than be drawn into the crisis management situation which might otherwise have been experienced. Maria conducted a detailed analysis of the external business environment, the individual markets in which the various businesses were operating, their competitors and the WCD companies themselves, using proven academic models such as STEEPLE, SWOT, value chain, etc. She was also able, somewhat resourcefully, to source competitor financial information which brought into focus the sub-optimal profitability and relatively high overheads in the group, notably Wessex Corporate Imaging. These findings identified specific strengths and weaknesses for each division, together with recommendations as to the appropriate strategy for each. Some of these were quite radical: Wessex Corporate Imaging’s offerings were considered too highly engineered and too high quality for a marketplace which had become more cost-conscious, Wiltshire Property Services were recommended to consider a more up-market positioning focusing on higher added-value opportunities with more carefully selected customers and Wyvern Engineering were encouraged to diversify their client base without prejudice to existing relationships, targeting particular market sectors. The findings, together with observations on corporate versus divisional branding, operational style, performance monitoring and marketing processes (including website and brochures), were shared with company management in a series of meetings which Maria handled quickly as they could be implemented, rather than preferring a ‘big bang’ policy. However, it was further down the organization that Maria had problems: comments like ‘why should we change, we’ve always done it this way’, ‘what does a girl straight from college know about our customers – and who is she to tell us our products are too fancy?’ and ‘what are we getting for the money we are paying her?’ began to be heard. Thus the proposals foundered for some months, as there was no visible implementation plan owned by the business’s leaders. Fortunately, a new sales and marketing coordinator had been hired from within the industry. He readily appreciated Maria’s findings and recommendations and committed to make them happen. Unlike the owners, who were perhaps held back by their long-standing relationships with some of the opponents to her plans, and unlike Maria, who was young, very bright and dynamic – but inexperienced, he could impose change by virtue of the position he had been hired to occupy and his length of time in the industry. In summary, the group would in due course need to define its vision, mission statement and key values; implement the agreed operating strategy; optimize the potential for investing in new technology; divest off-strategy interests; improve the site environment and reception area; use CRM software as enabling technology; assign responsibility for marketing tasks; create a management information system; use latest view and moving annual total in financial reporting; decide on the key performance indicators to be used to monitor the business’ health and invest in leadership development and staff training. Even by the end of the KTP, Maria could identify additional revenue somewhere in the order of £350,000, quantified savings of £6,000, free publicity worth £1,000, a 15 per cent saving in energy bills and carbon emissions, unquantifiable efficiencies in terms of time saving, improved project management, waste recycling and staff motivation and morale. In the following financial year, WCD were trading 30 per cent, or £2 million, above the level at which they had stagnated at the time of the KTP application.