Background

Discuss about the Management Report Rock Paper Scissors.

Doing business in the current world requires critical analysis of several business situations, processes and events. There are different challenges that a new business faces before it is fully established. Moreover, if good planning is not done before opening a new business, the intensity of the challenges appear to shake the business, threatening its survival. There are certain theories, principles and models developed in the world of business that are important in business management. These three items are critical to consider when planning to start a new business or improving an existing one.  In Australia, doing business is not as easy it may appear to be. This is because Australian culture values quality and consistency. Furthermore business situations are dynamic and require constant strategic measures and not just talent. Business models, principles and theories of management are critical in analysis of Australian businesses.

Rock Paper scissor is a business enterprise that specializes in hairdressing. This business was started one year ago by an entrepreneur who won a major national award in a competition concerning hair dressing. The business has suffered challenges due to poor management and policies guiding its running. It has ten full time employees who are mostly demotivated given the current status of the business. It is hard to clearly make conclusion if the business is making profits or losses. This is because there are no proper kept records that can help to track the performance of the business.

Objectives

The objective of this report are:

• Identify the key challenges facing the business
• Help the management understand the requirements necessary for the business to thrive
• Analyze key functions that are critical for the business to start making profit.
• Make recommendations

management concepts, principles and theories of management

These concepts, models, principles and theories of management will be incorporated in the following analysis so as to understand various aspects that concerns Rock Paper Scissor.

Planning the business

Planning is a key function in managing a business to its success (Santos & Vianna, 2014). While good planning plays a vital role in enabling the future of the business to be clear, it is not considered mandatory by some entrepreneurs who stick to the old ways of doing business and this is the main reason why they fail to achieve. Strategic planning, to be precise, is a business element that should be considered first when the idea of opening a business or improving one, comes in mind (Dibrell, Craig & Neubaum, 2014). According to Sharpin, strategic management involves formation and formulation of plans regarding activities that are vital to a business.  Strategic planning involves making plans and analyzing internal and external environment in an organization and determining ways in which they affect the organization or business (Aras & Crowther, 2010). This analysis covers the current state of business, the projected future state, objectives and strategies to be undertaken and evaluation of plan.

Objectives

Evaluation and assessment of environment

This involves business environment in Australia. Business environment is attributed to affect an organization’s Strength, weakness, opportunities and threats (SWOT).  External business environment presents opportunities as well as threats to a business while internal environment is concerned with business’ strength and weaknesses (ExcelleMalmstrom, Johansson& Wincent, 2015). SWOT analysis is considered a big step when planning for an existing business or when improving products or service delivery. To improve the current business situation of Rock Paper Scissor, external environmental factors and their impact on this business need to be reviewed. Demographics patterns of an area is a factor that affects this business.

In Australia, with regard to hairdressing, the active consumers of this service are mostly women and girls. More specifically, young and middle aged women are constantly looking for the best salons to make their hair. This group of demography should be viewed as an ally to hairdressing business. From business perspective, out of this knowledge, this should form a specific target group. Schools and colleges in the area comprise of high concentration of such groups and should be considered high leads. Corporates and organizations in the area should be considered potential customers supplier. Knowledge of economic status and demand patterns of these groups is critical from this point of understanding (Clark & Stewart, 2012). Australia culture is a spending culture and most people particularly women are willing to pay the ultimate price to secure or improve their looks. However balance of service provided and financial potential of target customers need to be balanced.

Identification of competitors is as important as identification of business allies (Ching-Chow, 2009).  While competitors may be viewed as a threat to business, they are important as they help to better quality in service delivery. That other hairdressing salons are smoothly running, should pose such a question to Rock Paper scissor as where the business is going wrong. Competitors are essential tools and exploring their activities to understand where they are doing better is great step to take. Quality, consistency and professionalism are key attributes of a well doing business (Arengo & Biazzo, 2013). Employees at Rock Paper Scissors lack professionalism in that they are late in for work and are not keen in ensuring customer satisfaction. It is also reported that the employees could be offering free services to their friends, thereby contributing to financial constrain the business suffers. Poor services to genuine customers is the after match for this. This is a major boost to other competitors as the customers may opt to try other places. This has enabled competitor to have an upper hand. Careful analysis of competitors’ strongholds, weaknesses and advantages will play a vital role in planning Rock Paper Scissor to success.

Analysis

Planning for changing technology is a mandatory step that needs to be taken. Technology has tremendously changed ways of doing business from traditional primitive ways to advanced modern ways (Jelonek, 2013). In a blink of an eye, a breakthrough innovation somewhere has changed the way of doings business. It is no longer business as usual. Businesses should keep pace with today’s dynamic technology. Rock Paper Scissors management need to be on look out to see what is being phased out by technology, from equipment to service delivery methods. Society is also changing with technology and what was previously not important may be important today. There are necessary tools to look out for in regard to changing technology so that a business remains updated and ahead of competitors. The use of internet and surveillance camera within the business premises will help the management curb challenging situations. This for example, will help deal with theft, lateness, sluggishness among the employees and to ensure employees maintain the highest codes of professionalism while executing their duties. Using of social media marketing to promote the business will be a great idea. In the same way, customers are able to give feedback using social media. This will be used as a tool to gauge how the business is doing.

Internal environment that affects the hairdressing business will be critical in assessing its performance (Carpenter, et al, 2010). This assessment is done by identifying favorable and unfavorable success factors. These factors are input factors that include human and financial resources, processes that includes methods and strategies, and output which is the final outcome. Human factor is found to be unfavorable factor that need to be checked (McGahan, 2012). Employees are not competent enough and their code of behavior in the work environment is questionable. Recruitment strategies need to be revised so as to avoid unprofessionalism in future. For better outcome, the Rock Paper Scissor will need to improve human input and operating strategies.

Mission, vision and values

Development of clearly stated and well written mission and vision has been for a long time found to be a working plan towards achieving a future goal (Suddaby, 2010). Mission and vision statement are usually reflective on aspects such as essential values, guiding principles and the future of the company. They tend to give tentative answers or suggestions of what to do and where to be in the future. For Rock Paper Scissor, it is important for the management to ensure an agreement with the employees on why the business exists, what they seek to achieve and whom they are serving. Mission and vision need to be build based on deep-rooted values and core principles that are not easily changed. The vision should describe the hairdressing business in terms of key accomplishments, reputation inside and outside of the business and relationship with stake holders, mostly employees and customers. Mission should be based on such vision statements. It is therefore important for the business to have a written vision and mission.

Planning the business

Strategies and goals

Determination of objectives and strategies is an excellent way of gauging the validity of plans as well as gauging achievability of set plans. These objectives and strategies should aim to achieve certain goals.  Strategies should be clear and goal oriented (David, 2011). It will be necessary for the management to come up with clear strategies that will put the business to profit making path. This plans and strategies will need to be discussed with all stakeholders to ensure that everyone is working according to the plans put in place. Strategies that need to be put in place should solve the current challenges facing the business such as demotivation of staff members, dishonesty and unprofitability of the business. Plans that need to be put in place should consider near and far future requirements and should emphasize on how to make continuous quality improvement as change in times may require.

Organizing the business

Organizing of business operations, human resource and available resources is a major driver towards success of any business. Rock Paper Scissor lacks a good organizing force. Things tend to run with hardly any form of organization. The fact that the management can’t actually tell whether the business had made any profit since its formation is a clear indicator of disorganization in the business. There are no measures put in place to govern how processes should run. Although the time schedule for opening and closing hours of the business are outlined, the employees are unpunctual and arrive late. Their shifts and workloads are undefined. There is no effective way to measure the performance of workers. Business environment is not well cultivate to attract new customers and retain new as there are no customer feedback platforms. The uncertainty in the business profitability emanates from poor organization of processes.

This section will look at how Rock Paper Scissor proprietors would manage the business to control processes that are closely connected to its prosperity. This includes management of human employees, customers and resources required for running of the business effectively. Adoption of strategic management principles when addressing these factors is an important measure (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014)

Employees

Recruitment of employees is an essential process in regard to quality of workforce in an organization. Rock Paper Scissor as a business has ten full time employees who work in shifts. This number is not justified given that the salon business don not have performance measures nor business traffic logistics. Members of staff are mostly demotivated and are usually unpunctual. Dishonesty among the employees is also a major challenge facing the workforce of this business. It is therefore necessary to come up with a way to manage the employees. Lost motivation of employees could be recovered through promotion of competent staffs, remuneration adjustment and involvement during decision making. The management should come up with codes of work ethics to curb dishonesty in service delivery, business property misuse, stealing etc.

Evaluation and assessment of environment

Customers

Customers are the main stakeholders of any business. They need to be treated with great care and constantly need to be shown that they matter a lot. Customer knowledge is an important step while analyzing business needs (Taherparvar, Esmaeilpour, & Dostar, 2014). One way of doing this is by putting in place measures that will provide best quality service. Customer feedback is vital in making decision to improve service or products offered. Rock Paper Scissor fails to maintain good relations with their customers. There is no sure way to gauge customers’ experiences in the salon. Provision of service assessment options to customers is a great way of winning customers by showing them that their feedback is valued. Information from negative feedback will help improvements to be made where possible. It will also be an essential tool for quality control and cost harmonization. Rewarding loyal customers will help maintain them and attract new ones. However this should be done wisely, maybe as an option of extended services that customers would value but that add little or no cost to the business.

Resources

Good resources management is a vital attribute of a business that is keen to maintain its smooth running. Human resources are important in a service business. Managing of this resource will help a business achieve its financial goals. Measure of the minimum amount of work that can be done by a single employee with required profession is an essential workforce element. To make profit, number of shifts in a day and opening hours are essential items that will determine how much a business can make out of them. Rock Paper Scissor needs to consider revision of opening and closing hours of the business. Most customers are available for hairdressing in the evenings and during weekends.

Record keeping is a challenge that is facing Rock Paper Scissor. This means it is difficult to track resource inputs for comparison with output. This leaves the business in a situation that is difficult to tell whether it is making profit or loss. This lack of proper records of business events and transactions contributes to employees’ dishonesty. Good and modern ways of keeping records and financial reports should be put in place to eliminate theft and for purposes of audit.

It is recommended that the management of Rock Paper Scissor should:

Adopt an action plan that will help to review business’ strategies necessary to achieve set goals and objectives on annual basis

Identification of competitors

Develop customer feedback system

Deploy data management system that will record all transactions and retrieve when required

Come up with a management structure that will control the running of business

Use technology to market and promote the business

Make clearly written and well visible mission and vision statements

Conclusion

From the study of Rock Paper Scissor and analysis of its current situation, it is clear that the challenges the business is facing are caused by lack of good structure and running principles. Different theories, principles and models have been explored during this analysis. It can be concluded that the resulting tentative solutions should be essential considerations that will transform the business and help it to success. Managing key aspects of this business such as employees, resources

and customers has been found important. Mission and vision, which have been found to be part of core values of the business, will need to be clearly known by all the stake holders of Rock Paper Scissor. Motivation of employees and appreciation of loyal customers will help improve staff and customers relationship. It was found that one method of improving service quality is by deploying of a customer feedback system.

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