Assignment Task

Purpose

This unit focuses on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and how they can broaden their knowledge of business growth. SMEs need to know where they sit in the marketplace and which approaches to take in order to grow business and develop relevant industries and sectors accordingly.

This aim of the unit is to give students an awareness of how SMEs develop and grow. They will understand the options for SMEs in terms of exiting successful or unsuccessful businesses and will be able to appreciate the importance of making informed choices when choosing routes to growth. They will also understand the potential risks vs rewards involved with growth.

Students will learn about and apply techniques for identifying opportunities for growth and appraise options for achieving growth. Students will also learn about the sources of investment finance and consider how an SME attracts investors and the appropriate approaches to gain stakeholder interest.

Scenario

You have recently been appointed as a Business Manager of one of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong Catering industry at your choice. Your Business Director has been looking at ways of creating opportunities for growth and expansion after COVID-19. He has decided that it is a good practice to evaluate all the suggested methods before making a decision in the Board of Management. Therefore, you are asked to introduce business growth opportunities with an objective of diversification. You are asked to prepare a report on the tasks below to suggest and evaluate different ways of growth and sources of funding in order to aim at encouraging and supporting the potential entrepreneur. You have therefore been tasked to prepare the report of the following:

Task

1. Written Report

1. Analyse the key considerations SMEs should consider when evaluating growth opportunities.

2. Assess the various methods through which organisations access funding and when to use different types of funding.

You have therefore been tasked to present an evaluation of the following:

• Analyse key considerations for evaluating growth opportunities in an organisational context.
• Evaluate the opportunities for growth, applying an appropriate management tool.
• Assess the potential sources of funding available to businesses and discuss benefits and drawbacks of each source.

2. Slide Presentation

1. Develop a business plan to communicate a growth strategy in a business to the relevant stakeholders.

2. Assess the various ways a small business owner can exit the business and the implications of each option.

Continuing from the above in your role as the Business Manager, you have been asked to have a slide presentation of a business plan to the Board of Management about the growth strategy of business expansion. The business plan should include areas of strength, identified opportunities, values and ethics and financial information.

In addition, you are also expected to contain exit strategies may be very appealing to the Board of Directors as it gives them the assurance of being able to move into new ventures should there be any earlier signs of failure. You are also expected to highlight the impact of the each of the exit strategies on the business if implemented

In this report, you need to include tasks as below:

• Design a business plan for organisational growth that includes financial information and strategic objectives for a business.
• Assess exit or succession options for a small business explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each option.