MGT8022 Assg Resubmit

8/10/2019 MGT8022 Assg Resubmit

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MGT8022 ASSIGNMENT 1 MARK SHEET PROJECT-BASED MANAGEMENT

(Note to markers indicate level of achievement for each row by highlighting relevant text or cell - do not provide a numerical score for each row)

Poor

(Fail)

Basic

(Pass)

Adequate

(Credit)

Good

(Distinction)

Excellent

(High distinction) Mark

ASSIGNMENT

REQUIREMENTS (out of 70)

0 to 34 35 to 41 42 to 48 49 to 62 63 to 70 /70

Critical analysis of the project

business case

It has been suggested that a project

business case provides

ju st if ic at io n for undertaking a

project, in terms ofevaluatingthe

benefit, cost and risk of alternative

options and the rationale for the

preferred solution. Its purpose is to

obtain management commi tment

and approval for investment in the

project. The business case is owned

by the (project) sponsor

Write a critical analysis of the

chosen project business case in the

form of an essay about the issues

that you think are important in the

context of the business case for

Little, or no,

analysis of the

topic

Basic analysis of

the topic, with

limited use of

theory to support

the analysis

Adequate analysis

of the topic using

appropriate theory

Good analysis of

the topic using

appropriate theory

Clear, concise and

comprehensive analysis of

the topic, supported by

appropriate theory, figures

and tables.


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RESEARCH & ACADEMIC

THEORY (out of 30)

0 to 14 15 to 19 20-22 23 to 25 26 to 30

/30

Critical analysis uses appropriate

theoretical principles as a framework

for analysis

Little or no use of

theoretical principles

Limited use of


Adequate use of


Good use of


Extensive use of theoretical

principles and appropriate

application to the project and

its environment

Argument is well structured, logical,

and well reasoned (compelling)

Little or no structure

and no logical

argument

Poor structure and

poor argument

Appropriate structure

and argument

Good structure and

argument

Well structured, logical, and

well reasoned

Figures and tablesare effectively

used and adapted in the analysis to

clearly illustrate/compare/contrast

theoretical principles with project

practices.

Little or no effective

usage of figures and

tables

Limited usage of

figures and tables

Adequate usage of

figures and tables

Good usage of

figures and tables

Excellent usage and

adaptation of figures and

tables

Evidence ofresearchis provided to

support the analysis and argument.

Little or no evidence

of research

Little or no evidence

of research beyond

the study materials

and set text

Adequate evidence

of research beyond

the study materials

and set text

Considerable

evidence of research

beyond the study

materials and set text

Evidence of extensive

research beyond the study

materials and set text to

support the analysis and

argument

Evidence ofknowledge of study

materialsand general knowledge of

the project management domain is

provided

No indication of

knowledge of study

materials

Indication of limited

knowledge of study

materials

Indication of

adequate knowledge

of study materials

Evidence of

considerable

knowledge of study

materials and of PM

domain

Evidence of extensive

knowledge of study materials

and of PM domain


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Quality of resourcesevidence of

use of research resources from

quality sources (e.g. journal articles,

texts, conference papers, etc)

Poor quality sources

of reference

materials (e.g.

websites, Wikipedia,

etc)

Limited quality of

sources of research

Adequate quality of

sources of research

Good quality of

sources of research

Excellent sources of research

resources, including journals,

texts, conference papers, etc.

Citationsare effectively and

appropriately provided (and

consistent with the Harvard

referencing system)

Little or poor use of

citations

Limited use of

citations

Adequate use of

citations

Good use of citations

to indicate use of

theory in analysis

and argument

Extensive and appropriate

use of citations to reflect use

of theory in analysis and

argument

List of references is providedand

shows quality sources

Inadequate or no list

of references

Limited list of

references

Adequate list of

references

Good list of

references

Comprehensive list of

references

Harvard referencing systemis

used and conforms to Harvard style

as defined on USQ Library website

(e.g. alphabetical order)

Little or no use of

Harvard system of

referencing

Basic or limited use

of Harvard system

Adequate use of

Harvard system

Good use of Harvard

system throughout

the assignment

Comprehensive use of

Harvard system in

accordance with conventions

* Total Assessment Mark

(out of 100) /100


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Penalties applied to... Marks to be deducted for... Range of

penalty

Actual

deduction

Mark sheet to be attached to front of assignment No mark sheet 10

Turnitin Report to be submitted with assignment No Turnitin originality report

(mark of 1/100 allocated until report submitted)

10

Page Numbering - page numbering to comply with normal

conventions (e.g. set text by Summers & Smith -

Communications Skills Handbook)

No page numbering at all 6

Poor or inadequate page numbering 1-5

Language Skills - grammar, spelling, clear and concise writing

style, correct punctuation

Numerous mistakes indicating poor editing 6

Some mistakes 1-5

Appendices - additional and relevant information to support the

discussions and arguments in the body of the text

Lack of use of appendices where required, or

appendices inappropriately used

1-6

Overall Presentation logically structured, easy to follow Poorly organised and/or hard to follow 1-6

Word count Word count is unnecessarily excessive 1-4

** Total Deducted Mark (TDM)

Overall Results

* Total Assessment Mark (TAM)


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** Total Deducted Mark (TDM)

Final Assignment Mark = TAM - TDM

(capped at 1/100 until Turnitin originality report received)

Comments and feedback from Marker:

Ways to improve:


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The balance of this page should be left blank.

Please start or attach your assignment on the following page

(which has been separated by a section break)


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ASSIGNMENT 1CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A PROJECT BUSINESS CASE

BUSINESS CASE FOR YATSALS STICK FX PRODUCT LINE EXPANSION (2180

WORDS)

COURSE: MGT8022

STUDENT DETAILS:

Shobana Ramamurthi Student No:0061020029

Email:[email protected]

Signature:

Shobana Ramamurthi

Date: 14-Apr-14

Disclaimer:Much of this information has been sourced from internal company information and systems.

This information is not to be made public for confidentiality reasons.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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1. Introduction and Background

Yatsal Distributors is a wholesaler of around 2500 GM (general merchandise) products across 23

major categories that sell to the IDV (Independent Discount Variety) industry for consumer

purchase in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands off the coast of Australia.

Yatsal has just brought to market a newproduct line of stick on products branded StickFx.

This product line has 36 individual products. In addition, Yatsal is looking for growth

opportunities and has set a ambitious target of growing at the rate of 20% over the next

years. This business case is to assess whether the proposed project to address the issues and

accelerate the growth rate will indeed provide the necessary outcome.

2. Business CaseYatsal currently faces multiple business challenges which makes them uncompetitive in their

market segment. The purpose of this business case is to provide necessary information and

justification around the proposed project which will address issues around Yatsals product

development, sales and marketing processes to make it competitive among its peer segment in

the market.

Business Problem

Business problems faced by Yatsal have been identified and broadly divided into followingcategories

Product Development

Marketing

Sales

Product Development

Yatsals product line categories personal, pets, cleaning and stationery are the weakest

among their 23 product line categories. New product planning is skewed towards short term and

there are no long term strategy, roadmap and research and development efforts in place. The

product manager currently decides on each new development without consultation with other

department heads or sales personnel. This was the case with a newly launched product StickFx.

Current state of new product development is limited to only certain categories like electrical,


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hardware and craft, however in categories like kitchen, stationary and pets there is very little

developments.

Marketing

Yatsals marketing department currently operates as a function of the business with an internal

focus instead of external customer focus. Marketing efforts are reactive and marketing control

processes are not effective. The current marketing communication information is not available

until after the products come into stock so it can take some time for the sales personnel to learn

this information and pass it on to the retailers. Many competitors in the industry carry one or

more of the category solutions that Yatsal carries. Some of the competitors have a better

distribution model that is more efficient, smaller minimum orders and more areas for FIS

delivery areas. Competitors could move to a similar corporate strategy focus on specializing in

category solutions. There are price wars from the competition in competing categories.

Competitors could have a more advanced reordering model and distribution network that would

enable them to have the right products in at the right time and in the right quantities.

Sales

Yatsals current sales processes are not very effective as the roadshowprogram is the main

selling tool. The effectiveness of the roadshow program is limited as information such as retailer

historical information, RRPs (Recommended Retail Prices), clearance prices and the

classification of products essential, core and range are inadequate and not shown during the

roadshows. Planning or preparation for the sales process is underutilised due to the complexity of

obtaining data. Yatsals current CRM system is very basic and relies on the sales personnel

updating it manually at the end of each sale and after contact with each retailer. There are high

number of out of stocks due to an ineffective just in time ordering model in the buying

department. There are delays in processing, picking and packing orders during peak times. The

pricing of essential products are uncompetitive due to a cost plus margin pricing strategy model.

The ordering tools like website and roadshow programs do not offer enough information when

promoting the products. Based on the consumer value assessment for Yatsal and the major

competitors for their stick on hook ranges, the consumers rating for Yatsals indicate that their

rating is lower in Handy Products, is not cost effective, hard to understand instructions in the

package and longer time to fulfil orders.


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Benefits

Yatsals business objective for the year is to achieve a sales target of AUD $20 Million which is

20% growth target from last year, expand in to new territories and industries and expand their

new StickFx Product Line to 120 products from current 36. Theproposed changes will help

increase the sales and in turn achieve sustainable growth of 20% year on year, expand into new

territories that are not already covered as well as increase the market share through increased

number of IDV retailers carrying Yatsal products thereby increasing the customer reach. The

improvements in marketing operations will help to get the new products in to shelf faster, which

will result in quicker order fulfilment

Risks

Following are the risks assessed as part of the proposal. There is a fierce competition in the IDV

industry and competitors are scaling up faster than Yatsal and launching new products. Hence

there may not be sufficient time for Yatsal to revamp its growth strategy. The price to cost

margin for Yatsal is high and the pricing needs to be made competitive for comparable products

in the market. However such pricing differentiation may not help in achieving growth targets

unless volume can be substantially increased. Due to technical revolution, Yatsals stationery

products have been facing a year on year decline of 5% in revenue due to replacement with

online products. Hence expansion in stationary product lines may not yield desired businessbenefits and there is a pressure to expand new product lines in the market to grow the business

and gain market share. Yatsals business objectives and sales goals are aggressive and the

timelines are ambitious to achieve them. There will be costs involved in engaging the external

consultants and internal resources utilization for project management and landing of deliverables.

Timeline and Cost Benefit Analysis

The overall elapsed time for the project will be around 1 year from the date of approval for theproject. An external consultant for project management and consulting will cost about 100,000

AUD for the year. The number of sales personnel needs to be increased from 8 to 12 and this will

cost around 200,000 AUD per year. Also, we need a project team to be formed with one resource

from each of the 3 departments (product, marketing and sales) with 20% utilization of their time

on a monthly basis for this project, throughout the year which is approximately 30,000 AUD.


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Hence the total cost is expected to be around 330,000 AUD. The benefit expected is an increase

of 3.5 million AUD in sales.

Recommended Solution:

Product Development - Innovation in Product and Packaging:

Implementing a quarterly product line launch plan throughout the year, subscribing to

various market research journals to keep abreast of the trends in their industry, implementing a

framework mechanism for capturing customer feedback (Eg: Customer Satisfaction Surveys) and

ensuring the voice of the customers feedback in to the product design and development process.

All of these will ensure there is innovation done constantly in the product and packaging of

Yatsals product lines, to continue maintain the high level of product quality and packaging and

look for areas to innovate them to stay competitive.

Marketing - Expanding the new StickFX product line to 120 products:

To expand the market share as fast as possible for current stores, Yatsal is to use existing

retailer relationships which have been built up over time through purchasing other product

categories, as a platform to introduce the StickFx product line. For new markets segments

across many geographical locations the retailers to initially focus on to achieve rapid market

share are the ones already purchasing from other competitors these categories; Hardware,

Gardening, Auto or Stick on Products. Plan to expand the product lines into new territories

(areas not already covered) WA, NT, TAS, NZ and Pacific Islands, to increase the number of

IDV retailers carrying Yatsal Products to 1500 and stores to 2500, to increase the number stores

from other industries sold into10 new distributors, 100 new hardware and 100 new food stores

and to reduce the time it takes to bring the product to shelf for interstate retailers.


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These strategies and tactics will ensure StickFx achieves the required growth and

market share expansion which will contribute to the overall objective of $20 million dollars in

sales and also expand the product lines.

Sales - Differentiated Pricing Strategy for Yatsals Products:

The differentiated pricing strategies can be implemented by making the wholesale prices

to be better than major competitors, wholesale prices costing structure on a cost plus margin

basis, Include RRPs (Recommended Retail Prices) processes and programs toensure that the

retailers have a point of comparison as the nearest competitive offer in the market place and to

have a competitive price offer for comparable competitor products. As part of sales processes,

ensure that at any one time to have out of stock less than 5% of Essential and Core and 10% of

Range products. This is to assure that the products are always stocked to demand to promote

sales.

Critical Analysis of the Business Case

The subject of critical analysis in this document is the business case prepared for the project to

address the issues impeding the growth of Yatsal. The purpose of the business case is to

understand the business need of the project and assess whether the approach and the investment

in the project is going to yield the necessary benefits. This critical analysis reviews each of the

business case sections and assesses whether it satisfies the requirements of a business case such

as valid benefits to costs in order to proceed with the necessary investments.

Add this reference link http://www.leadershipthoughts.com/writing-an-effective-business-

case/#thebusinesscase

The business case should typically cover the following areas :


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business problem or opportunity,

benefits,

risk,

costs including investment appraisal,

likely technical solutions,

timescale,

impact on operations, and

organizational capability to deliver the project outcomes.

The business case prepared for Yatsal clearly does not cover the impact on operations as well as

organizational capability to deliver the project outcome. In addition, among the areas which have

been covered, there are multiple areas where there is not enough reasoning to substantiate that

the steps recommended will indeed result in necessary benefits.

Business Problem:

In this section, problems have been identified in three different areas namely product

development, marketing and sales. However the methodology that has been used to identify the

problem areas has not been disclosed. This is a fundamental flaw as the issues identified may not

be the priority items which have to be addressed and may not contribute to the expected

growth. While there is a mention that there are no new product developments in Kitchen,

stationary and pets, the new product which has been launched StickFX is in the household

category. In the marketing section, there is no clear elucidation of the problems faced by the

department. There are lot of loosely coupled sentences about how competitors may be (or) are

different than Yatsal. There is no clear explanation of how the issues in marketing department


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are dragging down the growth of Yatsal. In the sales area, few issues around systems and sales

process have been identified. Overall, the identification of problems needs to be more structured

(eg. through interviews, root cause analysis etc) and a clear link needs to be established between

the problems and impact they are having with respect to bottom-line of the company.

Benefits:

In the Benefits section, the high level benefit in terms of sales number i.e., 20% growth has been

provided. However in terms of the benefits in other areas like faster turnaround time, quicker

order fulfillment, there is no proper quantification. There is also no clear definition of how

getting the new products in to shelf faster as well as quicker order fulfilment will contribute to

the overall business growth. The statements are very subjective and unless proper quantitative

numbers are assigned (e.g., order fulfillment within x number of days which is better/equal to a

competitor), it is difficult to assess the benefits of these initiatives.

Risks

One of the key risks of any project is the ability of the organization to adopt the change. There is

no indication of whether the changes suggested have been discussed with all the stakeholders.

Moreover, there is an expectation of 20% commitment from 3 people in each of the departments.

While there is a mention of increase in sales staff, there is no proposed increase for product

development and marketing. While there is no indication of the current utilization of resources in

these two departments, it is safe to assume that with an additional objective of 20% growth year

on year, these departments will be hard pressed to delegate one of their resources to the project

tasks. The second risk which is not mentioned is the risk on existing operations due to the


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changes in the process. Recruitment of additional resources in the sales department may not

immediately provide benefits as these people have to ramp up and blend into the organization

during a time when the whole organization is itself undergoing change. With the twin pressures

of stiff growth objectives and changes in the organization, there has to be an effective HR

mechanism to address the concerns of the organizational personnel. Overall, the risks associated

with multiple changes in the organization amidst ambitious growth targets have not been clearly

highlighted.

Timeline and cost benefit analysis:

While a detailed project plan need not be provided as part of the business case, key milestones

should have been mentioned so that there can be proper evaluation and prioritization of the tasks.

Without the milestones, the timeline of one year to achieve all the changes seems

farfetched. While a cost of 330K AUD to achieve a growth of 3.5 million AUD seems very

attractive, the cost seems to have only considered personnel cost and not any increases in

operational costs due to changes in the process. For example, a quicker turnaround time to fulfill

orders can be probably achieved by having robust CRM system in place. This needs sufficient

investment and is not part of the costs. Moreover, such changes to the system will also have a

definite impact on the timelines. In addition, the complexities around introducing such systems,

usage & training, increases in resources to maintain the systems have not been factored in the

costs and timelines.


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Recommended Solution:

Recommended solution seems to have taken the path of organic increase and diversification

within the same group of products. However there seems to be no mention of any analysis done

regarding how the different product segments which have been targeted for growth are identified,

how they fare with their competitors and how expanding into different geographies are going to

contribute towards the growth. The plan does not seems to have taken the concerns around

decrease in revenues in certain segments (e.g. 5% in the stationery segment). Unless the

management has a plan to produce better products than its competitors and cannibalize their

market share, there is no real reason to believe that expansion into this segment is going to yield

any growth benefits.


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References:

List of Internal References:

a) Internal Systems:

a. Attach Program - for Sales Analysis, customer invoice and payment records, customer and

delivery information, cost prices, inventory levels etc.

b. Sales Matrix Program - for product and category sales info at a Customer, Account Manager

and Product level by periods.

b) Database:CRM database for all customer contacts, visitations, average orders, preferences

etc.

c) Internal Source documents: Company Sales and Induction Manual, Operations Manual,

Marketing brochures and Pricelists from company and competitor

d) Other Sources:Sales personnel, Retailers and competitors.

e) Company Website:www.yatsal.com.au

List of External References:

a) World link for Law 2013, Labour and Employment law data for Australia (Victoria),

Viewed 2 Apr 2014, < http://www.worldlink-law.com/businfo/australia/employment.htm>

b) Australia.gov.au 2013, Employment and Workforce, Viewed 2 Apr 2014,


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< http://australia.gov.au/topics/employment-and-workplace>

c) Community Futures 2011, Market/Business Environment Research, Viewed 5 Apr 2014,

d) International Business Behaviour Academy, The difference and relationship between

PEST and SWOT, Viewed 6 Apr 2014,

e) Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Multicultural

Australia: the way forward, Viewed 6 Apr 2014,

f) Turner, JR 2009, The handbook of project-based management, 3rd Edition,

McGraw-Hill, New York.


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Appendix:

Business Case:

MGT8022 Assg Resubmit

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