Business Plan For Fast Track Couriers Company | Boost Profits & Lower Costs

Discussion on Fast Track Couriers Company

Question:

Discuss About The Employees To Lower Costs And Boost Profits?

Business planning is one of the essential tools of management that aids the managers to chalk out the plans for new business (Adams 2015). With a well designed plan for business a firm can set its vision, mission and strategy for growth. This is also essential for attracting new financial source that can invest in the business (Ward 2016). This report is a business plan for the Fast Track Couriers, which is willing to go for a change in coming days. This report is meant to develop a business plan to support the company’s strategic and operational goals. In order to perform this, it will provide detailed information regarding the firm’s operation and then it will discuss the productivity and performance targets of the key stakeholders. To conclude, the report will provide comment on the various aspects showcased in the business plan considering the discussion on areas like performance of the business plan, level of understanding and others factors.

This report is based on the Fast Track Couriers Company, which is a courier firm. The company is operating in New South Wales since last 15 years. Fast Track Couriers is medium sized business that makes its most of the customer from small to medium sized business. Running long business is essential for having good reputation (Ward 2016). Owing to its long range of service and long background of courier delivery since last one and half decade it has good reputation. Besides this, the market place of operating of the firm is vast that provides it ability to offer their customer value for money service. Service reliability is one of the important factors for substantial growth (Charter and Tischner 2017). Over the year the firm has faced huge growth in its business owing to their service reliability. In this regard it is important to mention that the firm is known for its reputation. Age long quality service and vast area of operation has aided the firm to achieve this acknowledgement. Company prefers direct sales mode of operation, which is being done through internet listings, email marketing, telephonic contacts and other modes of direct business. According to the given information, owners of the business are risk averters. They have detailed information regarding the ongoing success, which according to them is germinated through close personal ties among the employees, experienced team and high reliability index (Dachner, Ellingson and Tews 2017). The firm provides its service throughout the Sydney metropolitan area, however due to limit in geographical location the firm has constrained its business only in this region. accounting to the sales manager of the firm, due to lack of scope to provide service to the regional office of the customers, Fast Track Couriers lose most of its customers (Keyte and Locher 2015). However, it has been observed that the firm has retention level of 87% of their existing customers owing to their quality service and wide range of connectivity. In this scenario, the firm is willing to roll out a new business plan which will aid it to achieving its organisational goal through fulfilling the personal goal of its present employees.

Retention Rate, Direct Sales, and Marketing Strategies

Fast Track Couriers is one of the medium sized courier companies, which is being operating in New South Wales since last 15 years. Primary business operation of the firm is delivering medium to large size packages across various metropolitan Sydney. Direct sales process is beneficial for enhancing business (Chang 2016). As the medium of marketing the firm uses direct sales process, which is gained through telephonic calls, internet listing and email marketing.  Owing to their vast range of market and value for money services, the firm is acknowledged as one of the reliable courier service provider in the country. According to the statistics provided, the firm has admirable rate of retention for existing customers. An admirable level of retention rate, which is as high as 87% highlights that the firm provides quality service to their customers. Expanding business is one of the ways to enhance revenue (Hyder 2016). Though the firm has limited scope to expand its operation due to geographical boundaries, presently it is willing to expand its business to regional areas in New South Wales. With an average 5% rate of increase in profit, the firm has sustainable amount of capital to withstand in future. With an aim to surpass the local boundary and achieve customers from various areas outside its present market the firm is willing to go for expansion in its business.

Fast Track Couriers operates in metropolitan Sydney, since last 15 years. As the medium of marketing activity, the firm uses direct business policy. It uses email marketing, telephonic calls and internet listing as its mode of marketing activity. The firm provide GPS fitted trucks and PDA to the drivers that aid it to locate the actual place of delivery. Besides this, its high value for money service has aided the firm to promote itself through direct marketing (kotler 2015). However, it has been observed by the managers that the firm is losing its customer base in recent days due to lack of scope to provide service in the regional office of the client located outside the Sydney metropolis. Thus, recently the firm is willing to enhance its scale of operation and as the marketing activity it highlights the same to their customers to attract new prospect customers.

Through consultation with the key stakeholders it has been found that the firm is aimed to enhance its business to the NSW areas. Besides this, the firm is targeted to enhance its revenue by 40% within the next three years. The firm communicate with its workers through emails and PDA, GPS is there to assist the drivers regarding pick and drop location. Employees are closely attached with each other making it hard for implementing new plans. Employees enjoy being part of a firm if working environment is good (Dawson, Veliziotis and Hopkins 2017). According to the drivers, working environment is good for them, and they enjoy being a part of company. Coming to the employee population, it can be seen that head of the employee population is covered through the individual contracts and their salary varies from $32,000 to $75,000 annually. Under the logistics team there are drivers who are covered through award system. Salary of the drivers is fixed at $45,000 annually. The firm is willing to bring in expansion plan, which will require additional 10 trucks and newer technologies like GPS, PDA and automatic lifting tool for the packages. On the other hand, it is being argued that firm need to shelf its lower performing employees in order to reduce the operation cost and retain good performance (Ton 2014). Magnitude of unionisation is high among the drivers, thus the firm is willing to shelf those employees who are considerably risky for retaining (Laroche and Salesina 2017). This will provide stimuli to achieve organisational goal and boost to enhance the business beyond the present market.

Business Expansion Plan

According to the given information, Fast Track Couriers is family owned business, where three family members are performing as the management team. Management is responsible for controlling the business and approving future business decision (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017). Managing director of the firm operates under the management team, who oversee all the managing head of the business.

According to the figure 1, it can be seen that Fast Track Couriers has five office support managers namely logistics manager, administration officer, human resource office, finance manager and sales manager are the operational pillar of the firm that oversee the financial, logistics and other organisational tasks (Miocevic and Morgan 2018). Under the logistics manager there are 20 truck drivers and under the finance manager there is accounts clerk who oversee the financial performance and billing of the employees.

Fast Track Couriers is aimed to grow its business and enhance its profit over the next three years. The firm is willing to grow its business through expanding its delivery routes from Sydney metropolis to regional NSW. In this scenario, the firm need to commence its new business within the next 12 months. It will help the firm to increase its sales by 40% over the next three years according to the estimation. In addition to this the according to the proposed plan, the firm is targeted to reduce its driver employment. At present, the firm allocates to drivers for every truck in order to ensure loading and unloading and proper transportation. It is proposed that firm can use new technologies to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the employees (Hijazi et al. 2016). Thus the proposed plan suggests that the trucks will be accommodated with latest GPS technologies and PDA will be provided to the drivers for easy transportation. Business proposal argues that with aim to increase the business, the firm need to accumulate additional 10 new trucks at a cost of $600,000. In addition to this, old trucks will be having automatic lift gate at a cost of $10,000 per truck. In order to expand the business, additional loan need to be taken by the firm. Drivers are negative to change, thus the firm need to introduce better pay structure and incentive framework. In order to trace the better performing drivers, it is proposed that firm can use KPI model of employee performance assessment (Parmenter 2015). Diversification in the management framework is required by the firm in order to reduce the inefficiencies in the management.

Fast Track Couriers is one of the well established courier delivery service providers that has been providing service since last one and half decade. However, the firm is now willing to enhance its service to various regions of NSW owing to the saturated market in Sydney metropolis. As the targeted customer, the firm considers small to medium sized firms in the metropolis of Sydney and 80% of the earning of the firms comes from these sources. Current annual sales figure of the firm is as high as $17 million and the net profit is $1.9 million making it a financially strong organisation. One of the major factors that reduce the net profit is loan repayment (DeYoung et al. 2015). Scenario is same for the Fast Track Couriers because the firm have to repay more than $200,000 annually as their outstanding loan in case of expansion. Besides this, administrative costs crowd out a large chunk of revenue earnings of the firm (Juhn et al. 2018). According to the forecasting, with rise in business as the administrative cost the chosen firm has to shelf more than $100,000 annually leading to fall in revenue. With the expansion of business, firms are ought to face higher cost of operation, management cost and various other costs required for running the business (Forsgren 2017). Aligned with the theoretical perspective of expansion, the proposed expansion plan of the firm, is about to increase the financial cost of the firm. According to the estimation, the firm is expected to incur higher cost of operation and if the firm opt for new loan, then it will enhance the repayment figure too. In addition to this, operation costs of the firm will increase to $2.2 million due to rise in number of trucks, which will cause additional fuel cost and servicing charge.  On the other hand, if the firm goes for expansion, then there will no shift in labour cost and the annual sales figure is about to touch $22 million within next one year. It is a common phenomenon that with rise in business, firms are able to provide better service to large amount of population (Drucker 2014). Considering this, according to the estimations, annual net profit of the firm is about to hit all new high. Forecasting of the net profit figure argues that, within next one year, the firm will have annual net profit figure of $3.2 million annually.

Employee Populace and Working Environment

Risk analysis is one of the essential parts of every business plan. It provides the management ability to trace opportunity and threat of the business plan and assess the future implication of implementing the proposed business plan.

Conclusion:

Through analysis it has been found that Fast Track Courier is one of the medium sized courier delivery service providers, which has been operating since last 15 years in Sydney metropolis. The firm is now willing to enhance its business to the NSW with introducing new business plan. Through the analysis it has been found that the business is performing well in its present place of operation, however, with an aim to surpass the local boundary, the firm is willing to bring in organisational change. For instance, it has been found that the firm will eliminate the poor performing employees and employ those employees who have license and prior experience. Next to this, the report has found that the firm will introduce new training and certification mechanism to bring in efficiency among the workers. Though there will substantial amount of resistance to the change, the firm is now determined to bring in change. strategy:

The business plan has been developed by following the financial forecasting. In addition to this the business plan has used marketing strategy as well as financial management techniques to chalk out the proposal for expansion. Besides this, the report has performed strength and risk analysis to trace the market opportunities.

The business is mainly operated by the family members. In the management team family members are present and they are the key stakeholders. Besides this managing director is also the stakeholder of the firm. In addition to this, business pillars like logistics manager, Administration officer, Human resources office, finance manager and sales manager are also the stakeholders of the firm.

Employees of the firm are closely linked with each other. As the medium of information sharing, the firm uses email and drivers are allocated with PDA for proper information sharing. Printed monthly news later is issued to the drivers and office based staffs can access the manuals.

According to the proposed plan the firm need to introduce integrated communication system that will allow all the employees to communicate seamlessly. Though the drivers are resistant to change, managing team is easily convincible.  The firm need to use KPI model to trace the good performing workers and eliminate those are performing poorly. As the means of implementing the proposed business model, the firm can use directive principles.

According to the new business plan there will be shift in operation on behalf of the drivers. They will be provided training for using the new tools and manuals will also be handed over to the employees. Details regarding changed operation detailed guidelines will be issued by the firm.

The textbook business plan depicts a single action or a single decision along with its alternatives. However, the provided case depicts the entire organisation, since the plan covers all the product lines. The textbook business plan estimates the results of cash flow and primary non-financial effects, which follow from the action. On the other hand, the business plan has provided estimations of the major categories of the income statement like revenue and profits (Bullough et al. 2015).         

Business Plan to Boost Profits and Lower Costs

After evaluating the provided business plan, it could be evaluated that it is realistic and it could be implemented with perfection. In addition, this business plan is specific, since the results could be tracked against the plan. This is because it has provided a detailed outline of the deadlines, tasks, estimations, dates, budgets and metrics, which enable in measurement. The plan clearly lays out the responsibilities for implementation. All the persons responsible for tasks and functions have been identified to ensure smooth functioning of the overall operations (Dale 2015). All the assumptions are made regarding the future projections of income, expense and cash flows by taking into account the prevailing conditions and rates of inflation. The plan developed is communicated to all the stakeholders and they are encouraged to provide ideas for improving the business processes further. As a result, it helps in building commitment to all the persons to be involved in the business operations of the organisation (Goetsch and Davis 2014).

Based on the provided case, it has been found out that the organisation has identified three groups of competition in the area of training and development services. These include in-house training personnel or department, public training providers and private registered training firms. Such categorisation of training is extremely significant, as it would help the organisation to train their staffs in an adequate manner for overcoming their deficiencies in terms of skills. Along with this, a brief analysis of the competitors is provided while identifying their weaknesses and accordingly, measures have been formulated to enjoy competitive supremacy in the market. This denotes that adequate market research has been carried out for launching its products in the market along with drawing the attention of the customers.  However, the quality of competitive information could be improved, if the market shares of the competitors are provided. This would have helped in formulating its strategies in an effective manner along with setting its mission and vision.  

In accordance with the provided business plan, it could be found out that the objectives of the organisation have been laid out clearly, which take into account the detailed forecasts for the existing plan year and for the upcoming two years. The focus areas of Quality Training have been presented that include marketing and networking, quality, relationships, consultation, follow-up and growth to ensure the keys to success of the organisation. The details of the business licence and registration are provided along with the competitor analysis to identify its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Proper market analysis is made to ascertain the tastes and preferences of the audiences. Finally, the pricing strategy is made depending on the identified preferences and recommendations have been formulated to mitigate the threats and opportunities (McKenzie 2017). Thus, it could be stated that the information provided is highly adequate.

The performance measures identified from the case provided are highly realistic and specific. This is because the organisation has identified the potential clients from a variety of industries. The major measures of performance identified from the case study include marketing and networking, quality, relationships, consultation, follow-up and growth. It is possible to identify the potential clients and their satisfaction could be ensured with the help of superior training materials, follow-up and training delivery (Simón-Moya and Revuelto-Taboada 2016). The analysis of training needs would be made, which is specific and this would help in developing loyal repeat customers. After that, the student performance would be monitored during and after training for ensuring suitable transfer of skills and knowledge. Finally, the growth would be ensured to evaluate the client needs and pertinent training solutions through extension of the scope of registration. Thus, the document is pitched at an effective level for the readers.

Conclusion

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