Business planning Essay Example

Question 1

All staff implementing a business plan should have appropriate skills and knowledge to perform to ensure the business objectives are met. First, ensure that you understand areas where you are deriving qualified labour, skills, and capacity (Berry 8.2). Second, match labour force supply with the actual demand. Lastly, highlight high priority activities because they can drain resources.

Question 2

The performance measurement systems must be tested after implementation of a business plan to ensure the identified measures are appropriate. The first step of testing the systems involves selecting two critical activities that are in different areas and measures that will be used to test. Additional, you must ensure that there is enough data to test. The second step is collecting the data such as monthly sales figures, marketing activities and so on and ensuring that the data is accurate and relevant to the test. The third step is the analysis of data; the data collected data will be converted into information using the identified measures to generate sales report, identifying completed tasks relating to a marketing activity. The last step is to compare actual performance and forecasted performance and analyse results.

Question 3

Benchmarking can be used to evaluate the performance of performance management system. Standard benchmarks have performance objectives that are measurable and can pinpoint problems performance problems of new systems.

Question 4

Companies must produce a series of financial and non-financial reports to provide information on their activities and viability. These reports play different roles. One of the reports is a balance sheet, which lists all assets, liabilities, and equity of business and can be used to determine a firm’s ability to pay the debt and its net worth. Income statement lists a company’s revenue and expenses and can be used the cash available for dividend pay-outs if the company declares a dividend during the period. Non-financial reports such as sustainability reports and should address all material issues affecting stakeholders.

Question 5

Product failures

All occurrences of failures must be reported through the pre-established procedures. The accurate and relevant data should be captured at the time of failure and make product failure as part of risk management (Innovation & Business Industry Skills Council 68). A plan should have a communication system that allows transfer of data to the relevant person.

Variances to business plans

Variances in the business plan should be reported to the relevant managers to develop corrective actions. The root causes of variance should be determined by analysing the relevant data.

Question 6

A business should include performance measures for each objective. By comparing actual and planned performance in various areas, you can identify the objectives that have not been met, for instance, what employee does, what employee is achieving, sales target, levels of accuracy, quality and quantity. The variance analysis between actual and planned determines the effectiveness of objectives.

Question 7

It is important to review and revise key performance indicators to help address weaknesses to ensure that organizations can work towards meeting identified strategic goals. Also, it is important to revise indicators to ensure that they are SMART that will help staff know exactly how their performance will be measured, incorporate changes in plan and ensure changes are communicated throughout the organisation.

Question 8

An important method of coaching is establishing and managing relationship with the employees. There must be willingness to participate in coaching as well as mutual understanding what relationship is all about (Megginson and David 18). In addition, setting goals is also crucial as it will ensure that you remain focused on what you want to achieve.

Question 9

The effective coach should have effective communication skills and ability to recognise the meaning behind communication. These skills include:

Effective questioning

A coach should question effectively to assist employees to inspect and resolve problems (Pokora and Connor 38). Through effective questioning, a coach can reach goals in terms or relationship with the staffs.

Active listening

The skill of active listening is also important for a coach to build effective relationship and conversation with the staffs. A coach should not only be able to hear words but also feel the emotion behind those words.

Question 10

System process should be reviewed to ensure that all measures are in place to ensure improvements are applied consistently and provide the identified results (Innovation & Business Industry Skills Council 85). The following step should be taken: define the scope of review, clarify objective of reviews, review key documents, seek objective review of continuous improvement, deliver appropriate reports, and give a recommendation to stakeholders.

Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the plan.

Strengths

The owner, Peter, has over 25 years of experience as architecture in designing creative and practical solutions for inner urban apartments.

Proximity to the target market, Brisbane

Huge market, Brisbane has a population of 1.8 million people

Low prices

Weaknesses

There is a high level of competition in the industry

Global financial crisis has caused severe downturn in housing

Works Cited

Berry, Timothy. The Book on Business Planning: how to Develop and Implement a Successful Business Plan.
Palo Alto Software, Inc. 2003

Innovation & Business Industry Skills Council. BSBMGT617 Develop and Implement a Business Plan — Student Workbook.
Innovation & Business Industry Skills Council, Limited. 2015

Megginson, David and David Clutterbuck. Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring. Elsevier ButterWorth-Heinemann, Oxford. 2004.

Pokora, Julia and Connor, Mary. Coaching & Mentoring at work Developing Effective Practice. First Edition: The McGraw-Hill Companies. 2007.