You have been operating your business for 6 months. Things are going well overall and you have been very busy with projected growth in sales and customers. However, things are not quite as planned:

1. You aimed to pay off your resources and equipment within the first 12 months and to start to make a profit. However, in looking at the accounts, you find this will be unlikely as:

electricity and other running costs are more expensive than you planned

you need more staff than you planned for and this has added to your running costs

there are some expenses you didn't anticipate.

2. You did your market research but customers don't seem to be buying the products you identified would be the most popular. You realise you need to do an analysis and re-examine the products and services offered to determine whether it is due to the quality of the product, your marketing, or whether you need to change the type of products and services offered.

3. In your plan you identified you will need to hire a pool of 'casuals' who can help to staff the business. However, you are finding that whilst you are able to hire enough staff, they are not meeting your needs as they often cannot work when you need them, and often leave without giving you time to recruit new ones. You have been advertising in an online agency to get casual staff

You are spending a lot of time interviewing and hiring and letting go staff

You cannot get the casual staff to cover all the shifts you require.

You need a new approach to addressing this situation.

4. You have 2 permanent staff who are good at their jobs and have the technical skills required, however they both seem to be unaware of the regulatory and legal requirements of the business. You are concerned they may inadvertently breach a law or regulation. You realise you need to incorporate some staff training into your business plan.

5. Your plan included a goal to be environmentally responsible. However, you are finding that your business is using more resources than planned and producing quite lot of waste. You realise you need to include some specific objectives and actions to address this.

Question....

1. Meet with your partners to discuss and analyse your business performance, based on the issues raised above. Include evaluation of performance against the key result areas including, as relevant to your business:

profit and loss and triple bottom line

community awareness or branding

environmental impact

governance

product quality and sales

the workforce

Write a progress report against each of the above and any changes required.

Write up tables and reports with your business partners for each area you are reporting on. For the purpose of this project, you can share this task and can make up any additional details in consultation with your partners.

2. Review the performance indicators in your business plan and identify any changes necessary.

3. Write a report in which you analyse your business performance against the business plan. The report will be one that you use to communicate with your key stakeholders including your business partners, financiers, customers, staff and any technical advisors. In your report:

Describe how successful your business has been

How the business performed against each of the performance goals and indicators

Any changes or refinements to the plan required

How you will review your processes and work methods regularly as part of continuous improvement

The strengths and weaknesses of the Business Plan

Write the report in a formal structure. Be sure to organise the report with clear headings for each section.

The report must be your own work.

Attach documents or reports you used during the evaluation process.

4. Develop a training program to provide the skills and knowledge to deal with the issue of regulatory and legislative compliance for your staff. Include:

A list of topics that need to be included

Who will participate in the training?

How the training will take place?

Who will deliver the training?

Associated costs