Consulting Plan For Small Business Growth: Case Study Of Australian Flavourhood Tours

Project Requirements

In the resent era, the growth of a business is significant for surviving in a highly competitive market and remain attractive for the key stakeholder (Achtenhagen, Naldi and Melin, 2010; Olawale and Garwe, 2010). In this regard, the consulting team facilitates the business by providing guidance for implementing effective changes in the business strategies and ensure the growth of business in an effective manner (Czerniawska and Toppin, 2010; Bruhn, Karlan and Schoar, 2013). In this regard, the present report is based on the case study of Australian Flavourhood tours company which faces issues in the field of finance, marketing and human resources. For this purpose, proposed project has been prepared to deal with those issues and ensure the consistent growth of the business in the international marketplace. Also, the potential of consulting has also been analysed with the help of skill audit. Moreover, reflection has been provided for the future learning.     

According to the given case, the Flavourhood tours is an Australian tour company organizes the short-term tour on the local street of Australia and provide the great experience of local food to the travelers and public. The owner of the company manages all the operation of the business such as finance and marketing. It creates barriers for the owner to manage the business effectively which further influence the growth of the business. Apart from this, the resource constraints magnify the entrepreneur’s problem because the low availability of financial resources prohibits the business for expansion. Owing to this, it is important to create effective business strategies which will help the owner to ensure the growth of business despite resource constraints. Owing to this, management of the business requires to frame the effective strategies and select the appropriate human resources team in the cost-effective manner through which business would get the popularity.

As per the given scenario of Flavourhood   needs information related to techniques for handling small business effectively by organizing all the operation in a systematic manner. However, the major areas which should be focused are finance, marketing and human resources constraints. These key areas hamper the growth rate of the business since currently owner himself is handling the overall operation.  At this juncture, the information about key competitors will also be helpful for the owner to increase the competitiveness of the business.  In this context, Goffin et al. (2012) asserted that market research is crucial to understand the current trends in the market through which the firm can create effective business strategies and ensure the growth of the business. Therefore, important information is collected through both primary and secondary data collection method which are mentioned below.

Primary Data

For collecting primary data five entrepreneurs of the related industry will be selected to understand their strategies to manage the business. Also, it would help in understanding their funding and marketing strategies. In this regard, Von Schrader, Malzer and Bruyère (2014) stated that the experience of the employer has a great impact on the effectiveness of business strategies because the past experiences help the employer to avoid issues which creates the barriers in business growth.  Thus, the information from experienced entrepreneur will help the business owner to investigate the reason behind the unsuccessful management and promote the capabilities to build effective strategies. The following questions will be mentioned in the questionnaire.

• Does the social media a helpful promoting business in cost effusive manner?
• Does multitasking helpful to effectively manage all the aspect of the business?
• Do you face situation related to resources constraints and how did you resolve it?
• Which factor was greatly affected the financial aspect of your business?
• How did you hire skilled employees in a cost-effective manner?  

To understand the broad aspect of the client’s problem the secondary data will helpful (Guyot et al. 2012).  In this context, the information related to the industry will be gathered from the different sources and news articles. Similarly, information related to key competitors will be collected from the published news articles. This information would assist business in understand the current trends used by marketers and customers specific requirement.  For instance, the social media marketing strategy is the lucrative sources to provide the detailed information about the products and services to customers. Also, it is cost effective and help in targeting large mass of people and at the same time skilled personnel can also be found (Bainter and Curran, 2015).  This is because in the given scenario the firm does not have enough financial resources. In this context, Castronovo and Huang (2012) asserted that the by using an online platform, companies enhance the communication with the customers and attract them towards the firm for buying product or services. Therefore, the secondary data will be helpful for the owner of Flavourhood to promote the business by implementing cost-effective marketing strategies.              

The proposed plan for the activity which will be need to enhance the growth of business with time and cost for project are mentioned below-  

Table 1:Time and Cost table

Activity	Time (Days)	Cost (AUS$)
Framing of aim and objectives	5	5
Market research	10	30
Development of strategies	15	5
Implementation of strategies	30	100
Skilled employee recruitment	20	20
Rearrange current procedure	15	6

On the basis of given scenario, the consulting team should have capabilities to manage the financial, marketing and human resources of the organization.  In this regard, the for managing all the aspect, the member of consulting team to have capabilities to manage the budget of business in low financial resources (Baker and Henson, 2010). In this context, following table represents the skills audit for current skills and expected future skills.

Table 2: Skills audit

Current skills of consulting team	Future skills requirement
Moderate communication skill	High communication skills will be necessary.
Moderate Motivational skills	Team member should have high motivational skills
High problem solving	Effective problem-solving skills will require
Low team work skills	High team work is required to enhance the outcome of consulting team’ task.
Satisfactory time management skills	High time management skills will require because delay in project increase the cost of project which not affordable.
Moderate Technical skills	High technical skills will require because the marketing and other business operation will be based on technology.

Conclusion

On the basis of the above report, it can be concluded that for enhancing the growth of small business, the consideration on the all the aspect of the business is imperative to build effective strategies for those aspects which affect the business to a great extent. Similarly, the reflection on information gathering is also important because it helps to keep the development strategies on the track. Apart from this, the selection of a consulting team is greatly affecting the strategic growth of business because their skills have a great impact on the development of business strategies.

References

Achtenhagen, L., Naldi, L. and Melin, L., 2010. “Business growth”—Do practitioners and scholars really talk about the same thing?. Entrepreneurship theory and practice, 34(2), pp.289-316.

Bainter, S.A. and Curran, P.J., 2015. Advantages of integrative data analysis for developmental research. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(1), pp.1-10.

Baker, G. and Henson, D., 2010. Promoting employability skills development in a research-intensive university. Education+ Training, 52(1), pp.62-75.

Bruhn, M., Karlan, D. and Schoar, A., 2013. The impact of consulting services on small and medium enterprises: Evidence from a randomized trial in mexico. The World Bank.

Castronovo, C. and Huang, L., 2012. Social media in an alternative marketing communication model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), pp.117-134.

Czerniawska, F. and Toppin, G., 2010. The economist: Business consulting: A guide to how it works and how to make it work. Profile Books.

Goffin, K., Varnes, C.J., van der Hoven, C. and Koners, U., 2012. Beyond the voice of the customer: Ethnographic market research. Research-Technology Management, 55(4), pp.45-53.

Guyot, P., Ades, A.E., Ouwens, M.J. and Welton, N.J., 2012. Enhanced secondary analysis of survival data: reconstructing the data from published Kaplan-Meier survival curves. BMC medical research methodology, 12(1), p.9.

Olawale, F. and Garwe, D., 2010. Obstacles to the growth of new SMEs in South Africa: A principal component analysis approach. African journal of Business management, 4(5), pp.729-738.

Von Schrader, S., Malzer, V. and Bruyère, S., 2014. Perspectives on disability disclosure: The importance of employer practices and workplace climate. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 26(4), pp.237-255.