Assignment Task

Background

Traditionally organisations have predominantly been interested in making profits. However, today there has been a greater emphasis on other environmental, social and governance factors that all contribute to a company’s sustainability goal. There is growing awareness of environmental and social factors and their impact on business. Customers and investors are looking for businesses that can evidence their corporate sustainability.

The government has been concerned about the declining number of hedgehogs in the UK, with the largest decline being in the Eastern part of the UK. This trend has also been seen worldwide in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Hedgehogs are found to live in a variety of habitats; including woodland, farmland, parks, gardens, forests, grasslands, deserts, hills and mountains. Unfortunately, as populations grow, grassland, woodland, forest and farmland are being cleared and the habitat of hedgehogs has been invaded, causing them to now live in human habitats such as nearby parks and people’s gardens. In recent days several hedgehogs have been killed and injured in their encounter with humans, family pets and garden machinery such as lawnmowers.

In a bid to protect the hedgehog population the government, in conjunction with a charitable British organisation that protects and preserves hedgehogs, leverets, fledglings and amphibians that are vulnerable to being crushed and trampled underfoot, have created a competition to attract solutions that can help reduce the fatalities and injury to hedgehogs.

You and your friend, Joe Simpson, an experienced electronic mechanical engineer, have entered into the competition with a new business idea to design, produce and wholesale low-cost robotic lawn mowers, fitted with highly sensitive sensors, capable of detecting hedgehogs and subsequently turning to a different direction. You and Joe argue that by educating customers to purchase these hedgehog friendly mowers will not only generate profit but will help to preserve life on land which is in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) No 15. Moreover, it is a major step towards bringing collaboration between hedgehog conservationists, ecologists and mower manufacturers. With the UK Government’s focus on sustainability and environmental protection and the projected growth of the robotics lawn mowers industry, the proposal seems viable.

The competition awarding committee, fascinated by your innovative business proposal and research, have decided that you and Joe have won the competitions’ top prize of £250,000.

Using this grant you & Joe start a new company, Robo-Sonic Ltd, which will produce and sell low-cost robotic lawnmowers.

Context

You and Joe will use the competition prize that you won as initial capital to start Robo-Sonic Ltd which will manufacture robotic lawn mowers and sell them to wholesalers using both stores and online channels. As you are from an accounting and finance background, you have been given the role of the Finance Director in the new business while your friend, Joe Simpson, with an electronic mechanical engineering background, will be the Managing Director.

The context for your coursework is planning your business project ready for its launch. You will be using your knowledge of finance and Excel to prepare a range of accounting reports in an Excel spreadsheet that will form the key elements of a business plan. The financial analysis you prepare will be used to negotiate a loan with the bank, which is critical to allow you to finance the business in its early stages.

Your financial reports in Excel should be fully flexible, allowing you to make changes to key input data as your plan progresses, without having to re-design the supporting spreadsheets. This is one of the most important features of spreadsheet design, and illustrative of how these models are used in business.

Once the business plan is completed, you will prepare a report in Word to advise Joe, the Managing Director, on the prospects for the business, and any further action which should be taken in the planning stage before the business is launched.

There are 2 sources for the detailed financial inputs you require:

1. Those given to you in this brief

2. Those specific to you individually which will be given to you in an individual dataset which you will access in the AFM learning room in the file “RoboSonic.xlsm”

Product

Your product is a Robotic Lawnmower called ‘Robo-Sonic’. The lawnmowers are manufactured on an industrial scale for sale to retail stores in different geographical regions in the U.K.

The selling price your company will charge to wholesale customers will be £300 per Lawnmower, reflecting its premium design that contains special sensors. The sensors use cutting-edge microchips that are highly sensitive and can detect the shape of a hedgehog and avoid running over it.

The Managing Director has set a challenge that the business should make a target profit of £350,000 in the first six months and you need to calculate how many items must be sold to achieve this

Initial Capital

• In July 2024 you will deposit the £250,000 prize money into the business bank account as share capital.
• The remaining finance will come from a bank loan (look at the individual data set to identify the loan amount). The decision to approve this amount by the bank will only be made on the acceptability of the financial reports you have prepared.
• The loan interest rate is 10% per annum and will be paid in equal monthly instalments over the life of the loan. The first repayment will be in July 2024.

Marketing

You have a monthly marketing budget to advertise your product but need to determine which geographical region is most likely to have demand for your product to help you in the targeting of your advertising. Customers come from different areas in the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Northern England, the Midlands and London. An advertising research company has provided some data on the likely demand by region which is available in your dataset. You will be asked to illustrate the sales split by geographical region in your written report using a pie chart.