Fresh Growers Expansion Plan (IT and business analysis)

Assignment Taken

Presentation of expansion plan considering different departments specifically IT and preparing MIS report for efficient working.

Case Understanding

Case understanding: A Pune based company initiated by Mr. Chitranjan Desai aimed to provide fresh farm products directly to consumers eliminating the middle men like the local vendors. He came up with the concept of Farm to Table and started by procurement from nearby farmers and then delivering it to the customers. He chose Pune as his base city and started the business a year ago. The main challenges faced by the company included the rigidity of farmers to use their conventional way of growing crops like harvesting early, using chemicals and pesticides to ripen the crops, and denying the demand based partial harvesting because they wanted to save cost and effort. Then according to him earlier the time taken after harvesting and then providing them to customers would take around 3 hours but it turned out to be 6 hours and that too sometimes difficult to abide by. Then they faced marketing as a big challenge as there were already local vendors and app based services that were providing the same goods and assured their quality. They build social media website so as to expand their reach and printed and distributed pamphlets’ through newspapers. Also he conducted few campaigns to create awareness. His idea behind establishment was to provide fresh grown and unadulterated produces. The initial capital invested by him was around 10 lakh and he started with around 50 active subscribers then gradually grows to 200 then it was 500 in the lockdown period and currently there are 400 active subscribers covering most areas of Pune city. Now he wishes to expand his business in 3 metro cities and hence consulting us looking for an expansion plan that can be pursued in the next 2 years.

BCS Solution Summary

BCS Solution Summary The IT and business analysis department will help in effectively organising data and analyse it and then look for ways of expansion in the business. The company is looking for to expand in at least 3 metro cities, what is required to analyse is which city is more technologically and awarded city keeping in mind that our objective is to provide fresh farm produces and unadulterated goods directly to consumers. It will analyse the fluctuations in demand and social media feeds, proximity to market criteria. For example: People would be more interested in online purchasing when there is no market in the nearby area. Hence these points should be considered before moving ahead. It will then help the senior management officials to arise to conclusions for business expansion. It's important to have an attractive logo that represents the company and clearly stated its vision. Also there would be forecasting of data which will help analyse the situation more clearly with IT tools and coordination between departments.

Solution

BCS Solution Summary

The IT and business analysis department will help in effectively organizing data and analyse it and then look for ways of expansion in the business. The company is looking for to expand in at least 3 metro cities, what is required to analyse is which city is more technologically and awarded city keeping in mind that our objective is to provide fresh farm produces and unadulterated goods directly to consumers. It will analyse the fluctuations in demand and social media feeds, proximity to market criteria. For example: People would be more interested in online purchasing when there is no market in the nearby area. Hence these points should be considered before moving ahead. It will then help the senior management officials to arise to conclusions for business expansion.

It's important to have an attractive logo that represents the company and clearly stated its vision. Also there would be forecasting of data which will help analyse the situation more clearly with IT tools and coordination between departments.

BCS Solution:

 

The main objective of the company is to provide fresh farm produce and unadulterated goods directly to the consumers. The farm to table concept is indeed a good initiative, what we need for the expansion plan is the right direction to solve the challenges and analyse and form conclusions based on previous year performance.

When we look from the perspective of a consulting firm we analyse the sales and expenses of the recent period. The current active subscribers the company holds in the market are 400 households. The average buying per household is around 200INR and the per household cost to company which is paid to farmers is 170 INR. Comparing the above two figures we can calculate the Amount of profit generated by the company which is (200-170) =30INR

Monthly profit after paying to farmers

=30*30*400(households)

= 3, 60,000

Monthly expenditure (given) = 3, 51,000

Monthly profit after deducting monthly expenditure is

= 3, 60,000-3, 51,000

= 9000INR

 

Hence according to the above analysis the company barely is earning a profit after deducting its costs. As an IT and business analyst the company in order to plan for expansion and successful operation of business is required to pursue certain steps:

 

1. Reducing the costs and managing expenses.

As we know that COVID period is going on and there is no as such need for visiting office. The tasks can be assigned daily and completed online except for the fact of transpiration which is essential.

Hence to save up costs the company can avoid renting space and instead work from home that would save the office rent expense.

Similarly to cut off cost the company could avoid using pamphlets and other promotional material and instead focus on the traditional way of advertising which is the 'word of the mouth'.

The form should focus more on customer retention and customer base expansion rather than increasing the scales of operation.

2. For the company to be called as a brand, what is required is a logo that depicts the vision of the company. For its business to expand and diversify the name is not enough one needs to work on the logo which represents the company and which will in long term will turn into a brand.

3. Expansion in target audience.

What is required for a company to achieve success is its strong customer base. Currently the company targets only the household now it should expand its customer base to restaurants operating on small and medium scale.

Assuming the total number of restaurants located in Pune are 300 and we tried for a collaboration with 200 restaurants and 50% sounded good with it which means we acquire a customer base expansion of 100 which makes the total count of active subscribers to 500.

This would not only increase the amount of revenue generated but would also help the company expand its reach in the public.

 

New generated revenue would be =

30*30*500= 4, 50,000  which raised the amount of profit by 25%.

 

Unity of direction:

 

The IT department is focused along with other departments to aim at the objective of providing unadulterated goods and fresh produces. The IT department is planning for a mobile based application system that would provide convenience to customers and would include some special features like:

Chat Bot system where customers can share their viewpoints and chat with us to clear their queries.

Also we would be introducing a column of green tips because the aim isn't just to provide unadulterated goods but also to aware the customer which all fruits and vegetables are beneficial for their body and system to function properly. It would have some green tips that would guide consumers how to purchase, what to purchase and what is the right quantity of having a good.

 

According to the IT department it is advisable for the company to go ahead with application and cut down the website expenses.

 

3. The company could use softwares like Power BI, Tableau, Octave .

These are some of the software that would help analyse the data better and would instantly highlight your errors and accordingly guide you.

Octave has some extra benefits:

• Free software
• Also it doesn't require a proper technical personal to operate. It can easily be operated by non-technical persons.
• Provides insights and answers from data in state to enhance business.

 

4. The IT department also suggests some tools like Amazon Web services (AWS) , Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform that would help you monitor and help you in root cause analysis.

 

 

Unity of Command :

The IT department is also planning to work in collaboration with finance and other departments to meet the demand fluctuations and to work well with externalities.

5. App development:

According to IT department the company should emphasize on app development. It is advantageous because:

• It's a long term benefit initially it would add a certain cost but that would be an investment for future.
• It would help him expand his customer base and in turn would help him expand his business in metro cities.
• By expanding his business in metro cities where resides an educated, informed buyer would always opt for organic fresh products and the revenue generated would be more as compared to the revenue generated in base city because metro cities are far developed and the customers have high disposable income which will in turn add to more revenues.

We make an assumption that he has a savings of around Rs. 10 lakhs during the period of his business.

According to a statistical report the grocery prices in Hyderabad are 2.16% higher than Grocery price in Pune. Similarly GP in Bangalore is 4.82%higher than in Pune and GP in Mumbai are 8.21% higher than in Pune.

Studying this data it can be said that operating in these cities would help the business to expand as well as expand its customer base in a city which is comparatively more developed, the purchasing power is high and more health conscious population and the business of fresh and unadulterated goods would definitely prosper here.

Given below is the MIS reporting format explained in which data is presented in visualization/ charts form to understand and analyse it in a better way.

Conclusion

Conclusion: The IT department along with other departments has worked in Synchronisation and coordination to suggest and implement the various optimized and innovative solutions like Social media platform, mobile application, expanding target audience, using of software’s like Tableau, Octave etc. to ensure smooth running of Fresh Growers. This software is comparatively less costly and even free for a certain period of time could be used non-technical also. To conclude in all Fresh Growers is required to expand by increasing its target audience i.e. the customer base and work on app development, should focus more on collaborations and expanding the digital presence rather than physically spending on office rent they should continue to expand their customer base. After a certain period when the revenues are high on curve they should go ahead with physical settlement in cities.

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