Personal Log

Delivered:Young EnterpriseLouise Domaille

09017828DE0926

Contents

Introduction

My Specific Individual Roles

Business Planning Process

Knowledge of Business Functions

Commercial and Legal Awareness

Problem Solving

Team Working

Liquidation

Mentor Support

Guest Speakers

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

This log is a frank and honest recording of my journey through being an operations manager for the business Delivered. I kept a weekly diary and recorded my thoughts to identify and examine my contribution and behaviour within the team. I believe these recordings show how I have developed my skills and demonstarted my capeability of working within a business team.

My Specific Individual Roles

Creating contacts from my network of friends to gather user insights.Initiating the idea of roles within our teamThe design, developement and purchasing of Delivered business cards.Idea development and exploration of design methods and creations of the cards.Creating the trade stand visuals and display materials Being a competitive seller at Trade shows and other individual events.

Business Planning Process

In the first three weeks we went through the forming and norming process, deligating roles looking at the strengths and weaknesses within the team and initaing original ideas. We picked the members of the team based on the original skills we already had. Brendan and Ajesh both had business experience and Carly, Camilla and I all came from a fashion background bringing to the group a creative surface. This proved very effective as all our intergrated skills covered different areas and resulted in a great team combination.

We brainstormed together what kind of skills we all had to create a brand and product that would benefit all. We took quite a large amount of time on this decision as we all had different ideas and visions but this didnt seem to come accross as a negative as Bragg said. “Rushing to implementation without challenging the problem you are trying to solve is risky.”Bragg, A & Bragg M. (2005) Developing new business ideas, pearson education LTD.

Our first formal meeting where everybody attended was where we formulated and committed to the idea of being a hand crafted card and invitation company. I put this idea on the table as I felt it was manageable between the 5 of us, affordable to set up and a product that could easily be made by all us members of the company. This is also when the name Delivered was decided upon after brainstorming as a group. This was good as we were making good process at a steady pace.“Assessing your emergin solution against other options increases your chances of success and planning for implementation brings its own opportunities to shape the original idea.”Bragg, A & Bragg M. (2005) Developing new business ideas, pearson education LTD.

We all attended a small micro meeting at the end of October to do with our business plan delegating different roles each individual was going to write about. I was looking into the operational side of the business plan. My research begun at this point, I did some initial research into the operations of the business sourcing where we could purchase the card supplies from at a cheap price and looking into the timings of how long it would take us to make a supply of cards with the amount of people we had. It seemed to be the case that we left it too late for the Christmas market to start making our own handmade cards so decisions had to be made that we would buy our cards from an eBay supplier to speed sales along. It was then my task to get in contact with the eBay supplier to agree on a price and have them posted out to us as soon as possible. This decision proved to be suitable in the short run due to the amount of stock we needed to produce but I can see that purely relying on one independent supplier would not enable a business to remain sustainable due to the lack of security from the one supplier and the high price it was going to cost.

Knowledge of Business Functions

Social media culture and social networking platforms are having a major impact on business communication, practices and processes today. Using social media strategically within a company can potentially increase profitability, sustain reputation and empower customers and employees to be brand ambassadors. Knowing this information a Facebook and Twitter account was created. A low cost way of advertising and getting our brand known to people and being updated on local events promotions and offers. Between the team the social network accounts were closely monitored and updated on a regular basis. The social media websites allowed for customers to write reviews, express opinions on the products and get in contact with us easily about the business.” The only problem with this however is that the social web exposes the good, the bad and the ugly, simultaneously raising up what works and putting down what doesn’t without regard for the interests of any specific party.”Evans. Dave, McKee. Jake. (2010) Social Media Marketing: The next generation of business engagement. Wiley publishing.

With this in mind we still went ahead with the social networking sites as advertising costs for us needed to be kept as an ultimate low due to having extremely low start-up costs and no investors and this seemed to be viable way of getting the business known to wide audience in a quick time.

Looking at the social feedback cycle its clear to see that internet based publishing and social technology has connected people around business or business like activities. This more widespread sharing has exposed information more broadly. Information that previously was available to only a selected class of individuals is now open to all.

Commercial and Legal Awareness

Due to our cards being personally hand crafted by the team we had to consider child safety laws. This was because of the small 3D pieces that were on the cards that could easily come off and be consumed by children. After thorough research on child safety laws we found out that “a statement by the manufacture about the intended use of the product, including a label on the product, if such statement is reasonable.” www.legislation.gov.uk (See appendices 2)So on each card we had labels saying not suitable for children under 3.

Another legal requirement that came to our attention was the environmental policies. We were selling our cards in packaging and the laws strictly say You should keep the packaging you use to a minimum and design your packaging so that it is easy to reuse and recycle. This was a slight issue as our original packaging was non-recyclable and could not be used again so we managed to locate new packaging from Hobby craft for the second semester which also reduced our costs slightly (see appendices 3).

Problem Solving

We had an official meeting as a whole team just after the Christmas season to discuss the problem of buying our cards from a supplier on eBay and if it would be beneficial for our business or not. I resulted in believing as well as the rest of the team that buying our own supplies, designing and creating our own cards would be a much more viable way of managing the business. This is due to time management being under our own demands, the costs would be much lower and our brand image would strictly represent our product being a hand crafted personalised card. After these decisions were made and put into place, the structure of the business began to come together. I did extra specific research into card competitors and building up our unique selling point which was to be a card company who delivered hand crafted celebratory cards with a unique first class distribution service. (see appendices 1)

Mid November I returned back home to host my own jewellery party, an onside business I have been doing for a year now with a company called Stella and Dot. Here I had friends and family attend an event to try on and buy jewellery which was a perfect set up to sell Christmas cards at. This is where I was to realise that the cards were being charged at a high price of £2.50 and needed to be dropped to £2.00 to create multiple sales. At this specific individual event I managed to sell a total of 10 cards creating £20.00 of revenue for the company, but gaining an even more valuable source of how the pricing needed to be dropped.

Team Working

Our team work was really strong at the Young Enterprise event at the metro centre in Newcastle. We created a really appealing stand that stood out well among our competitors. I played a large role in this as I allocated all card stands, display material and promotional objects from local suppliers (See appendices 4).

The team as a whole really had to push sales that day as the event wasn’t tremendously busy and people just didn’t seem to be buying. We collected a number of customer emails and had potential interest for a wedding invitation contract. We had good communication within the team separting at times to find sales further a field. I certainly felt that day we bonded well as a team that day all using our individual skills to gain as many sales as we could. (see appendices 5)

“A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that are most natural to them.”Belbin team role analysis 1981 (see Appendices 6)

Liquidation

I met up with the rest of the team on 26th April to have our liquidation meeting to arrange what we were doing with the profits, stock and confidential customer information. Myself and two of the other team members were put in control of the waste material and making sure it was all recycled in an orderly fashion. We then agreed to split all stock left over which was mainly Valentine’s day cards and a few Mother’s day cards and either try and tweek them and sell as birthday cards or keep for the following year to sell. With the profits we split equally as earnt wages. (See Appendices 7)

“When liquidation begins, the value that remains is best extracted through a methodical disposal of all the failed firm’s assetts.”Branch, B. Ray, H. Russell R. Last Rights: liquidating a comapny. (2007) Oxford University press.

We didnt feel as a team that carrying on the business in the future would be profitable to us as we were all going to be in different parts of the country with some of us having a job all ready to start in September time.

Mentor Support

The fist one to one meeting with our personal mentor Justin Turner where we first put our business idea and brand to him. We recieved good feedback from him, first intentions were good, I felt I did a good job of explaining and getting the business idea over to Justin through means of talking to him and various images. We also had a meeting with our external mentor Holly Ellis, she gave us some great direction as regards to social networking and keeping our facebook and Twitter account up to date and have a constant person checking, updating and replying to reviews. We applied this advice by delegating the social networking role to myself and one other team member. We updated it on a weekly basis with regards to where we were selling that week and displaying new designs that has been created. This resulted in keeping our customers engaged and encouraging interaction(see appendices 8)

His feedback was that he thought taking an already established business idea and expanding it was sensible clever and had potential success. I feel after speaking to him I had more perosnal confidence within the business idea as it had good foundations to start on, this is backed up by what Barrow said.

Most successful business ideas are either slightly different versions of existing ideas, or are based on the entrepeneur’s previous experience know how and/or contacts.”Barrow, C. et al. (2005) Enterprise Development: The challenges of starting, growing and selling businesses. Thomson publishing.

Guest Speakers

After attending an important lecture in semester one on a talk by an executive from the web design company called WubbleYou, inspired me with a few ideas for our business and points that were made by him were applied to the business. WubbleYou is a relatively new company been going for just under two years at the time and specialised in local web design. A strong point that was clearly made throughout his presentation was to allow the skills in your team to flourish independantly to allow for a very feasable business. This was defintely applied as I being a fashion student allowed myself to take control and express my opinion when it came to the creation of the cards, and was able to encourage idea development and exploration of design methods and creations. After this lecture I went onto looking into website legislation, setting up a website and how beneficial this was going to be for our business. Setting up a website would have cost us a small fee and as a group we felt that the benefits we would gain from a website we could achieve through our social media accounts this being free as well. I learnt through the legislation there are a lot of rules that have to abided “The data protection act 1998 regulates how you use and protect personal information held about living people.” (See Appendices 9)http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId

With all of this in mind and the research I had collected we felt building up a website wouldn’t benefit us in a massive scale due to the people we were selling too and how we were selling, we were mainly targeting trade fairs, university peer groups and friends and family. A website would have too much monitoring time and would potentially not make us that much profit in the long run.

Conclusion

In conclusion to this year’s business project with young enterprise I feel I have learnt a lot, knowing how a business is set up, how to work with individuals you don’t know and certain business attitudes that are required throughout. Creating customer contacts is so important when setting up a new business as repeat customers is a must. I feel I applied this very well by setting up a Facebook and Twitter account which lead onto creating social networking relationships with potential customers’ and ones that existed along the way. This may not have potentially got us any more sales but I feel it made people more aware of our brand and more interested in our product and promotions. I also felt I learnt a lot about team work. It’s so important to delegate roles to the correct people with the correct skills that is where I really felt i fell well into the role of creativity and idea development. I applied these skills to come out with attractive appealing products that would sell to a mass market which turned out to be very successful.

Overall I really enjoyed this project and if the opportunity arose again to set up a business in the future it would be a subject I’d be very much interested in doing. I also felt our business was a success and an area in my degree I should be proud of as I overcame many areas of business I thought I would not know or understand, a definite learning curve that is highly appreciated.

Bibliography

BooksBarrow, C. Et al. (2005) Enterprise Development: The Challenges of starting, growing and selling businesses. Thompson PublishingBerringer, B. & Ireland, R. (2006) Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures. Prentice Hall.Barrow, C. (2002) Setting up and managing your own business ideas, Pearson Education Ltd.Drucker, P.F (2001) Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Butterworth-Heinemann.Hall, D. (2000) In the company of heroes: An insider’s guide to entrepreneurs at work, Rogan Page, LondonKirby, D. A. (2005) Entrepreneurships, McGraw HillWickham, P. (2006) Strategic Entrepreneurship, 4th edition, Pearson Education Ltd Branch, B. Ray, H. Russell R. Last Rights: liquidating a comapny. (2007) Oxford University press.

WebsitesBelbin team role analysis 1981 (http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8)Business Link (http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/home)Innovation in Newcastle (http://innoverce.com/)Fresh Business Thinking (http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php)Entrepreneurs Forum (http://www.entrepreneursforum.net/home/index.php)Legislation rules www.legislation.gov.ukData protection act 1998 http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1075742593&type=RESOURCES

Louise Domaille