Compete Web Solutions Plan - Assignment Example

Business: Web Services Contents Contents 2 Task 3 Products and services 3 Sales and Marketing 4 Task 2 4 Project Plan 4 Timescale 5 Task 3 5 Task 49 Causes for resistance from existing staff 9 6 steps of management change process 10 Task 5 10 Task 6 12 Monitoring Financial Performance 12 Cash Flow 13 Reference List 15 Task 1 Products and services The range of products and services that can be ideally offered by a web services company that is dedicated to providing complete web based and internet based services to small and medium enterprises can be enlisted as below. Design & Development: This includes designing and development of websites for small enterprises that are custom made and completely unique for each client. Marketing & Analysis: This includes developing content and maintaining the aesthetic value, functionality, ease of usage and scalability of an existing or a new website for the convenience of the client. Hosting & Maintenance: Such services include launching the website on the online platform and making it popular on the web platform. Such services allow for successful packaging of the entire range of services being offered by the company. In terms of secondary services, Compete Web Solutions can also offer: Development of E-commerce Renovation and Upgrades of websites Training on website maintenance Construction for Database Education seminars on internet and websites Development of Applications like message boards, chatrooms, online polls and live video and audio feeds. Sales and Marketing The company shall initially begin its promotion through distribution of sales folders detailing about the company and its range of services. The content of the report shall also carry company staff details, its history and key strengths along with prices and packages available to the potential clients. In addition to the folders, the company shall also post information about the company over its dedicated company website which shall also include a whole host of additional information meant for the use of small business owners. In combination with the above mentioned efforts, the company plans to send faxes and bulk mails to a comprehensive list of small and medium sized companies within the region. Te Company shall additionally design a compact brochure that shall be provided to interested clients for quick reviews and understanding of company offerings. These brochures shall also be used by mailers on their client visits and shall be provided to interested parties. Compete Web Solutions shall also engage in using billboards in major business areas and newspaper advertisements in leading business dailies (Grey, 2012). Task 2 Project Plan Compete Web Solutions plans to acquire Pennsylvania based Accounting Web Services that cater to the local accountants of the region and shall now act as a regional head office of Compete Web Solutions. With this acquisition, the parent company plans to target three main industry sectors of the region as a start up. In due course, the company wants to specialise in catering to these specific businesses alone namely, construction and real estate, apparels and clothing and groceries chains. The reason behind choosing such a varied and disconnected set of business is that these businesses are largely local and specific to each region and is untouched by global presence which might take away the regional website business from the company. Additionally, these companies sell products that need constant updates and regular website maintenance. The project shall look through a comprehensive analysis of the company’s marketing and sales mechanisms to be employed by the company, the plan for its administration and use of manpower. The project shall also look through manpower planning and job role assignment and management. Timescale The total timescale to be allotted for implementation for the project shall be as below Time Period and Activity Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Analyzing the rational of the proposal Gathering knowledge about business area Devising Manpower planning Researching on communication channels Research and analysis on financial performance measurement and importance of cash flow Presentation Preparation Task 3 The organizational structure shall comprise of one administrative head and the rest of the staff shall be working under him organized into functional groups (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2008). The former managi8ng director of the company shall continue his role and shall act as the new managing directors under Compete Web Solutions. The Managing Director shall have the reporting of the Managers of different divisions including Web Developers, Sales Head, Chief Administrator and the Finance Head. Only in the case of Web Developers, 2 members shall be reporting to the Managing Director instead of the single head of the division primarily because both were prese3nt in similar positions under the former company of Accounting Web Services. Additionally, Web Development is the Key Business of the Company and has the highest number of staff allocated to it which needs more than one key manager. However, within the 2 managers, work shall be divided in such a manner that each one specializes in a specific role within the functional division of Web Development. To provide more clarity, one Web developer shall be responsible for handling business needs of different clientele including the real estate and the apparel businesses. The second web developer shall use his expertise to handle the existing client base of the company and also manage the business coming from the grocery chains. Hence the tasks are divided based on the business being handled. The Web Developers shall have about 16 staff working under them. Out of these one Web Designer and 4 Executive Web Designers shall look after the layout and pattern of website design as per the business and the requirements of the clients. This set of people shall perform the most critical role of designing the webpage and shall require2 dedicated office staff and shall seek help from 2 home based designers for aligned activities that do not require many instructions. The second group of staff shall comprise of Web Developers who are engaged in handling the functionality and content of the web pages. They shall also look into online promotions and development of web pages as per the expanding needs of a business. They shall handle fresh web pages clients as well as the ones that have been already developed and need restoration and development. The team shall include 2 executive web developers’ stations within the office premises and reporting to the Web Development Managers and two home based web developers being handled by the executive web developers. The third group includes Technical Development and User Support. This team shall employ 6 home based support staff reporting to a single office stationed officer because the nature of their work is highly standardized (Baligh, 2006). They have specific and standardized features like shopping cart, payment portal and such other designing and development work and therefore it shall be easy to handle home based workers within the division. The Sales head shall be helped by the Sales Executive for sourcing businesses while the administrator shall have an executive under him for handling daily business operations and HR issues. The finance head and his assistant shall be responsible for handling company finances. Figure 1: Organizational Structure for Accounting Web Services The 25 member team of Accounting Web Services shall be structured as per the functional organizational structure. The functional approach is a form of organizational structure that groups employees according to the specific jobs that have been assigned to them (Daft, Murphy and Willmott, 2010). These roles are classified on the basis of similarity in job role and hence the people are segregated into groups. The benefits of functional organizational approach are 1. Specialisation: functional teams have the scope of getting highly specialised in their job roles. Each unit carries out a specific task and receives experience and training over it to become specialists in their field of activity. 2. Efficiency: Specialisation in tasks makes one get highly efficient with their jobs. Such efficiency also brings about high quality work into the jobs. 3. Productivity. With the specialisation of tasks and efficiency in job role, the team becomes capable of delivering quickly which in turn leaves them with time to do more work and hence increases productivity. Task 4 Causes for resistance from existing staff The two primary causes of resistance from existing staff of Accounting Web Services shall come because 1. The staff of Accounting Web Services has to coordinate with 15 other new members who shall be working from home for the company primarily due to lack of office space. In this context, it might get extremely difficult to communicate with the staff through the mailing system or through telephonic conversations alone. Training to such staff for induction and company operations shall also be quite limited due to lack of availability of staff every time. Hence it shall not be surprising if such workforce falls short of expectations in terms of quality of service and delivery as desired by the company. It is therefore justified if the staff desires new office space for working properly and efficiently (Kritsonis, 2005). 2. The second cause for discontent among the existing staff of the company can come from the fact that addition of staff to the team is too he to be managed by one administration and one managing director. The company might want training officials before it can manage new businesses, new roles, new clientele and a whole bunch of additional staff. 6 steps of management change process Change Management Process deals with the implementation of alterations within the system of the company in such a manner that there is o degradation of system and organizational performance and availability. The core area of change management requires that all changes are identified well in hand and are planned for much prior to its actual implementation (Levasseur, 2001). The six steps involved in the change management process can be enlisted as below: 1. Defining the change management processes and practice: this involves outlining the change process and the manner in which it shall be implemented. 2. Receive all kinds of change requests: after communication of the change process, all kinds of alterations and objections regarding the change process should be well received in order to ensure smooth flow of the change process. 3. Planning for change implementation. After due consideration to the plan and requests for alterations, the actual change process must be brought into the implementation scene. 4. Monitor the implementation of changes and make alterations to the process wherever necessary. 5. Evaluation of reports for implemented changes: this requires the team to secure feedback post the change process for examining the trends in acceptance of the process. 6. Modify change management as necessary: for any problems associated with the change management process, the plan needs to be altered where it is critical. Task 5 Effective communication is the key to attainment of organizational goals of the company. In the absence of fruitful communication, no company can survive for long. This is because the entire coordination of tasks and work is done by way of interacting with each other and also communicating between different departments of the organization. In a similar scenario, it is important that Complete Web Solutions enables proper flow of information between different departments of Accounting Web Services and also between the parent company and the subsidiary. This is necessary in order to ensure that work of the subsidiary is conducted in a manner felt appropriate and desired by the parent company. The information flow from the top management should be well communicated within its subsidiaries so as to align regional goals of the company with the comprehensive corporate goal (Nelson, 2001). It is also seen that the new company shall cater to three specific industry niches and this shall entail a switchover from the core business functioning of serving accountant clientele to serving business clientele. The present staff of the company has to be provided with proper training and facilities in order to make them aware about the different types of roles, business functions and its needs and the manner of handling such business clients. Such training also becomes a very critical part of corporate communication. In the absence of such training, the existing staff would be at a loss of knowhow on how to perform their roles effectively leading to failures on account of business and sales generated business. For effectiveness in communication and motivation of employees through adoption of an effective system of communication, it is suggested that Complete Web Solutions employees the mailing communication within the internal system of the company to communicate with the employees and make them aware of their roles and responsibilities individually. Such an internal mailing list can also be used for appreciation of work and be shared with the rest of the team to motivate the employee for high performance. Additionally, all official communication that is channelled through the written format is deemed to be important and hence taken seriously. Mail communications also remove ambiguity in tasks and can form the base for solving any disagreements within the workplace. Hence internal mailing communication can be a very efficient method for communication and motivation of employees (Oberg and Walgenbach, 2008). Another critical communication channel that is an important source of motivation for the employees is face to face meetings. This form requires high level of interaction between the managers and the subordinates. Face to face meetings bring in a lot of clarity in expression and transmission of information. The subordinate feels important when he is talking personally to his manager. Also, increased communication between the manager and the subordinate leads to increased understanding and efficiency in tasks. Meetings also allow for face to face appreciation for good work and quick redressal for grievances. This increases efficiency in tasks and improvement in individual and hence team performance. Task 6 Monitoring Financial Performance Financial team is the best resort to know the daily, weekly, monthly and the annual performance of any company. In such a scenario it becomes extremely important to have high control measure and monitoring techniques for this critical division in order to prevent frauds and be assured of accurate financial reporting to the management and concerned parties. Exercising strong controls helps in maintaining efficient operations and strong internal audits bringing in confidence within the company’s management. Complete Web Solutions plans to have a comprehensive business budget annually that shall also encompass regional annual budget allocations and budgetary targets. This annual budget shall be available to each region for the purpose of going forwards with planned implementations and performance measurement. The budget serves as an excellent measure to measure actual performance against targeted milestones with the help of financial data. Compete Web Solution plans to have a quarterly review of the actual performance in relation to the planned budgetary outlay in order to have checks and balance in relation to the performances. Any deviation from the budgetary estimates shall be reviewed every quarter and the necessary steps for reallocation, additional funding, reduced allocation and changing benchmark performance shall be done at every quarter. Such budgetary monitoring and control shall allow for quick and timely fixing of problems associated with business targets and finances. Delay of which might lead to larger expenses and huge deviations that might get unmanageable for the company at later stages. Hence the problem shall be addressed when one can manage it. Reviewing budget on a regular basis is understood in most organization as an effective reporting and monitoring strategy for reporting of budgetary performance. The development of efficiency monitoring leads to enhancement of accountability on the part of finance managers as well as task managers who are questioned and held responsible for providing convincing reasons for defrayments and deviations. Cash Flow The Cash Flow statement is an estimation of the financial health of a company. The Cash flow statement provides with the details of the inflows and the outflows of the finances within the company which proves to be a technical checkbox for the reconciliation of the balance sheet and the income statement (Needled and Powers, 2010). The cash flow statement is critical for survival and sustenance of the regional office because it presents the amount of cash that is available to the company despite it running in profits. For example a company might have enough profits but might lack cash for running daily business operations which can stall business and cause losses in the coming times. Hence the cash flow statement becomes critical for the survival of Accounting Web Solutions. Another aspect of the critical nature of the cash flow statement for the subsidiary of Complete Web Solutions is that the company gets to know about the expenses that have been actually incurred thereby providing an account of expenses that are yet to be incurred or liabilities that needs to be paid for. Hence, the cash flow helps in reconciliation of expenses and liabilities that have been paid for and those that are yet to be paid. Such knowledge is important to ascertain the proper allocations of finances for the payment of such expenses which ensures smooth financial functioning of the company (Drury, 2008). Thus, changes in the position of cash bring out the information about the money management required in order to prevent the business from running out of money or not. Reference List Baligh, H. M., 2006. Organization Structures: Theory and Design, Analysis and Prescription. New York: Springer. Clegg, S., Kornberger, M. and Pitsis, T., 2008, Managing and Organizations. London: Sage. Daft, R., Murphy, J. and Willmott, H., 2010. Organization Theory and Design. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Drury, C., 2008. Management and Cost Accounting. Connecticut: Cengage Learning EMEA. Grey, C., 2012. A Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations. London: Sage. Kritsonis, A., 2005. Comparison of Change Theories. International journal of scholarly academic intellectual diversity, 8(1). Levasseur, R. E. 2001. People Skills: Change Management Tools—Lewins Change Model. Interfaces, 31(4), pp. 71-73 Needled, B. E., and Powers, M., 2010. Financial Accounting. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Nelson, R. E., 2001. On the shape of verbal networks in organizations. Organization Studies, 22, pp. 797–823. Oberg, A. and Walgenbach, P., 2008. Hierarchical structures of communication in a network organization. Journal of Management, 24, pp. 183-198. Read More