Business Plan Assignment: Consultancy Proposal for John Good Shipping

Question

Task: The present assignment is a consultancy proposal. You are required to prepare a business plan assignment focusing on a ‘live’ business issue of importance to an identified UK organisation and also identify the parameters; key deliverables, timescales and project management details of their work.

Answer

1. Company information
Company name: John Good Shipping
Client name: John Good
Website: https://www.tradefinanceglobal.com/posts/john-good-shipping/
Industries: Shipping and Transport
Company size: 113 (Feb, 2021)

Summary of the company:
John good shipping company, one of the largest shipping company in the UK, was found in 1833. It offers various types of services, including air freight, trucking, customer clearance, cargo inspection, and warehousing. The primary dominant sector of the company's service is logistics. The company operates from fifteen sites in the UK. John good Shipping company also has offices in Turkey and China. Two hundred sixty people are employed under the company.

The company's staff work in DNA shipping, Good travel management, corporate travel service, etcetera (John Good Shipping, 2021).The company includes various long-term growth strategies from the beginning to stay up to date in the import and export industry's competitive market. John Good shipping company is the leading agency in the industry. The organisation works with a huge customers scale(John Good Shipping, 2021). Many blue-chip organisation and individual shippers are the customers of the company. The company's primary goal is to provide 'partnership' and the best services to its customers.

2. Introduction
The business proposal is constructed to develop an accurate business strategy, future aims and objectives to minimise the client's problems. The proposal will have established various approaches and risk assessment factors to overcome the challenging situation that the John Good shipping company faces. The business proposal is vital for the client because it will help John Good, the client, re-evaluate and establish realistic plans and projections to develop their business perspective. The main goal of the proposal is to resolve the revenue generation problem faced by the company.

During Covid-19, the company suffers a huge loss. The shipping market was unstable for the last 12-18 months (John Good Shipping, 2021).The reason behind it is the East-West freight rates trading was low. Previous existing strategies of the business are unable to cover the new challenges faced by the company. The proposal will help the client to secure funding and provide new business directions. The key aspects that are needed to be analysed are the fluctuation of the freight rates, stability for the client’s customers, increase in bunker price, political and trading relationship of various countries.

Due to the hit of Covid-19, one of John Good shipping company has shut down its offices in China. The company faced a massive loss in transforming the office to another UK location. The proposal will also discuss the problems and approach that the client should review.

3. Aims and Objectives
The key aims of the projects are,

• Develop a strategic plan to resolve the fluctuation of the freight rates
• Stabilise the existing customers by analysing the various factors present in the company
• Complimentary services are needed to be included in the project to provide professional services to new and existing customers.
• Review the markets and political aspects of various countries to initiate a trading relationship with them.
  The key objectives of the projects are,
• A complete market analysis is needed. The analysis will be conducted using various models such as PESTEL (Song et al., 2017)and Porter's five forces analysis. It will help the John Good Shipping company detect significant opportunities and threats to achieve the project's aims. Porter's five forces model analysis will help understand the attractiveness and scope of the trading service and customer demand in the market place.
• The John Good Shipping company's existing strategy was useful to achieve growth in the company. However, it will not help the company achieve the aims that the project intended to provide.
• A new marketing strategy, such as the STP model or segmentation (Bigo et al., 2021)targeting and positioning model, will be included. The model will help the client examine the service quality to improve the bunker price, fluctuation of the freight rates, and stabilise the customer.
• Adding new locations, franchising, and customer acquisition investment opportunities can help the company retrieve its revenue.

The aims and objective of the project have a SMART goal (Bjerke & Renger, 2017). It has specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound aspects.

• Specific- The project's goal is to increase revenue and cover the client's loss.
• Measurable- The progression of the project will be tracked through the manager of the project.
• Attainable- the project objectives are attainable and realistic. It can be achieved by proper management and theoretical knowledge.
• Relevant- The relevancy of the objective to achieve all the aims of the project is accurate.
• Time-bound- The project will need ten months to complete.

4. Parameters and Outcomes
The project will help John Good to achieve lost revenue for the past fiscal years. The aims and objective of the project will help the client to stabilise the fluctuating freight trading rate. The new marketing strategy will help the company open businesses in various locations such as Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and India. The project also assists John Good shipping company in the future in case of opening new franchises in various locations across the world. The projects will allow the company to fight with the profit loss and five years of strategic planning to revive the company's previous state.

5. Approach
The basic approach for a consultant is to define the problem to the client. John good shipping company has been facing revenue and profit loss for more than a year. The primary reason for the issue is the hit of global pandemic worldwide. One of the client's company's offices was closed in China. All the Import and export system was interrupted due to Covid-19. Hence, the company is suffering from a great deal of loss. The problem can be resolved by implementing new marketing strategies and models.

The company can focus on opening new franchises locally as well as globally. The customer acquisition rate needs to be increased to intensify the profit rate by minimising the loss (De Vries et al., 2017). A detailed and continuous monitoring process will be included during the project implementation timeframe to understand the plan's growth and goals. The systemic verification process will be conducted to see the project plan's effectiveness to decrease the client's problem. The verification process can be conducted by collecting data from tracking the step by step goal achievement activities.

6. Plan of Action
The whole project will be managed by the project manager and the departmental employees working under the manager. Furthermore, The ten-months-long project is primarily divided into seven primary activities. Those activities are understanding, planning, analysing, designing, implementing, completion and evaluation. During the process, resources that are required are time tracking tools, a project management guide, and human resources.

7. Resources
Skilled managers and employees will conduct the project. They have various skills to manage projects. The ability to plan and forecast business projects, budgeting, and deadline working capacity will help successfully implement the business plan's goal. The managers of the project will manage two distinct sectors of the project. Two separate managers will do risk management and time management and tracking. The project also consists of subject matter expertise such as marketing, designing and support the planning team to work on the project to resolve the problem. Emotional resources will be needed to ensure the work's quality (Kim & Wang, 2018). Motivation and extreme stress need to be handled to maintain the workspace to meet the deadline of the project.

8. Risk Assessment
Operational risk may occur while implementing a business plan. It can happen internally, externally or in both ways(Naude & Chiweshe, 2017). Any unexpected events can cause the business to lose its continuity. The operational risks can have a considerable impact on the client's financial, reputational aspect.

• It can be mitigated by managing equipment failure. It is vital to have alternative options to continue the workflow to minimise business failure.
• The John Good Shipping company needs to have strong bonds with other companies. It is vital to minimise miscommunication, delivery failure and missing legal documents. Communication can decrease the risk of operational risk.

9. Projected Costs
The overall project will cost $35,000. The cost is divided into two aspect resources and time. The cost for resources is $10,000, and for time, the cost will be $ 15,000. The rate of each consultant is $4000. $2000 will be included as the overall profit achievement of the consultancy agency.

10. Conclusion
The business proposal will help the client, John Good, to revive his profit and revenue for the John Good shipping company. The proposal analysed the issue of the client and produced a strategic plan to help the client. The proposal also resources, risk factors and cost to conduct an in-depth study about the company and the recent position.

11. Reference
Bigo, C., Raj, A., & Situmeang, R. R. (2021). Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP), Communication and Price Strategies on Consumer Purchasing Decisions at PT. Alfa Scorpii Medan. Jurnal Mantik, 4(4), 2370–2375.

Bjerke, M. B., & Renger, R. (2017). Being smart about writing SMART objectives. Evaluation and Program Planning, 61, 125–127.

De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. H. (2017). Effects of traditional advertising and social messages on brand-building metrics and customer acquisition. Journal of Marketing, 81(5), 1–15.

John Good Shipping. (2021). John Good Shipping. John Good Shipping. https://www.tradefinanceglobal.com/posts/john-good-shipping/

Kim, S., & Wang, J. (2018). The role of job demands–resources (JDR) between service workers’ emotional labor and burnout: New directions for labor policy at local government. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(12), 2894.

Naude, M. J., & Chiweshe, N. (2017). A proposed operational risk management framework for small and medium enterprises. South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences, 20(1), 1–10.

Song, J., Sun, Y., & Jin, L. (2017). PESTEL analysis of the development of the waste-to-energy incineration industry in China. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 80, 276–289.