Diploma Of Management And Leadership Assessment Answer

Assessment Task 1

My team has been assigned to identify the e-commerce opportunities for Apparel Brands in order to make a proposal for the board of directors of the company. The budget has been considered of $30,000 for setting up the e-commerce venture.

Reviewing the Simulated Workplace Information for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd

Apparel Brands Pty Ltd, a famous distributor and manufacturer of the generic footwear and clothing in Australia, which takes orders both from the supplier’s retailers and the retailers. According to Huang and Benyoucef (2013), simulated workplace transforms the traditional way of working within the organisation for ultimate betterment of it. As Apparel Brands Pty Ltd has planning to come up with exciting and innovative range of online clothing brands within five years, therefore, simulated workplace initiatives can be governed by a fixed protocol in order to assure the standard quality and consistency with the manufacturing of online products in efficient manner.  However, the management of Apparel Brands Pty Ltd utilises the time schedule in order to developing the brand image in potential manner, which will ensure a definite success of this particular company. Even the simulated workplace’s utilisation of proper portfolio system can help this specific company to grow in the fashion retail industry. Simulated workplace also suggests the celebration at the end of accomplishments of the fixed goals and objectives.

Forming a team

As Apparel Brands Pty Ltd intends to develop, own products and brand in order to sell the online products directly to the consumers, therefore, it is very important for the higher authority of this particular company to create some potential groups, which will strictly observes different segments of the entire business operations. There should be different team including the manufacturing department, advertising and marketing department, and quality checking department and sales and finance department (Benlian et al. 2012). As the management intends to decrease the distribution costs and enhance the basic level of the profit margins, therefore, the management should incorporate completely new strategies rather than the existing ones in order to leverage the opportunities of e-commerce.

Discussing Team Objectives and Improving Performance Plans

In order to secure the e-commerce opportunities, the team has fixed some essential team objectives.

• To make timely and reliable service deliveries in order to retain the satisfied customers
• To maintain a proper sync with the supplier of the products
• To develop the digital marketing process in efficient manner
• To enhance the PR and customer service for maintaining customer loyalty 

Preparing to Work with the Team

(a) Chiu et al. (2014) have mentioned that several effective strategies are required in order to help Apparel Brands Pty Ltd for fulfilling the e-commerce opportunities. With the proper communication strategy, there will be proper maintenance of team planning. The members should share a perfect level of commitment for achieving the common objectives. Technical knowledge and skill should be suitable enough to deal issues regarding the development of e-commerce.

(b) The equality policy ensure that every team member possess similar opportunities to share own ideas. Even the responsibility policy of this particular team also helps the team member to perceive own responsibility in potential manner. Solaymani et al. (2012) have mentioned that the employment policy involves relevant information regarding purpose, application and the sanctions of the allocated tasks within the time. All of these policies eventually advice the team members for supporting each other in order to bring out the best performances of every team members (Salehi et al. 2012). There are also arrangements of the review process of the existing policies within the team in order to easily link with the potential strategies. The mentioned policies are enough flexible and it can be adapted for certain changes. Zhang et al. (2012) have referred that the policies maintains a perfect relationship in between the interested team members and the higher authority of the organisation.

(c) The team goals involve creating the e-commerce site for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd in short period and helping the company to increase sales revenue. The team engage the best software developer and technical person for developing the e-commerce site and select social media as an effective medium of marketing and advertising the online fashion products.

(d) The leader of the team should allow every individual to share own views regarding the opening of e-commerce website for Apparel Brands Pty Ltd as it will help in consensus. There should be employment of cooperation and collaboration strategy in order to gain the consensus among the team.

(e) As opined by Bhatti (2015), group behaviour plays an essential role while taking effective decisions within the group. As group behaviour can impact the decisions, therefore, the leader should strictly observe of maintaining of positive behaviour within the team. Every team member is appreciated for his or her effective ideas and it helps to work in coherent manner within the group. The team member can thoroughly understand the present trends in the e-commerce industry before providing ideas and work potentially within the group (Colla and Lapoule).

(f)

Assessment 1 –Third-party report for candidate:
Did the candidate propose and agree on strategies for ensuring participation of team members?		Y
Describe how: The candidates have gone through the effective strategies.
Did the candidate help develop policy and procedures to ensure team members take responsibility for own work?		Y
Describe how: The candidate helps the leader to research about the existing policies and procedures for ensuring team members to take responsibility for own work.
Did the candidate work with group to determine common understanding of organizational requirements and team goals?		Y
Describe how: The candidate listens to the leader for understanding the team goals.
Did the candidate work with group to determine and agree on specific duties to support team members with assigned responsibilities?		Y
List the candidate’s support duties: The candidate supports the team member for assigned responsibilities.
Did the candidate demonstrate knowledge of group behavior and how to gain consensus and work within groups to enhance team effectiveness?		Y
Describe how the candidate demonstrated this knowledge in their interactions with the team: The candidate interacts with the team member with potential communication skill for sharing own knowledge.
Team member/observer’s name:	Signature and date:
Candidate’s name:	Signature and date:

(g) However, the team leader take effective notes from the review report for arranging a team meeting for further discussion for developing e-commerce website.

Establishing Ground Rules for Teamwork

(a)  Every team members have agreed with the proposed strategies in order to ensure the constant participation of every team members. In the team meeting, there will be detailed discussions on the adopted strategies for developing e-commerce site. There is statutory strategy for flexible working arrangements, which helps to maintain a positive environment within the group. The training strategy helps the inefficient team member to gain knowledge on the importance of developing e-commerce website as it possess the potentiality to increase the sales revenue of the company in immense manner (Carmona et al. 2012).

(b) The leader of the team has taken few policies such as every team member should have detailed knowledge of the strategies and the detailed process of the development of the website. The team building policy helps to regulate, inform and define the operation within the team. Equal opportunity policy helps every team member to share own knowledge and ideas. Code of conduct policy suggests maintaining organisational specific rules (Li and Xie 2012). 

References

Benlian, A., Titah, R. and Hess, T., 2012. Differential effects of provider recommendations and consumer reviews in e-commerce transactions: An experimental study. Journal of Management Information Systems, 29(1), pp.237-272.

Bhatti, T., 2015. Exploring factors influencing the adoption of mobile commerce. The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 2007.

Carmona, C.J., Ramírez-Gallego, S., Torres, F., Bernal, E., del Jesús, M.J. and García, S., 2012. Web usage mining to improve the design of an e-commerce website: OrOliveSur. com. Expert Systems with Applications,39(12), pp.11243-11249.

Chiu, C.M., Wang, E.T., Fang, Y.H. and Huang, H.Y., 2014. Understanding customers' repeat purchase intentions in B2C e?commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and perceived risk. Information Systems Journal, 24(1), pp.85-114.

Colla, E. and Lapoule, P., 2012. E-commerce: exploring the critical success factors. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 40(11), pp.842-864.

Huang, Z. and Benyoucef, M., 2013. From e-commerce to social commerce: A close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), pp.246-259.

Li, P. and Xie, W., 2012. A strategic framework for determining e-commerce adoption. Journal of Technology Management in China, 7(1), pp.22-35.

Salehi, F., Abdollahbeigi, B., Langroudi, A.C. and Salehi, F., 2012. The impact of website information convenience on e-commerce success of companies. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 57, pp.381-387.

Solaymani, S., Sohaili, K. and Yazdinejad, E.A., 2012. Adoption and use of e-commerce in SMEs. Electronic Commerce Research, 12(3), pp.249-263.

Zhang, Y., Deng, X., Wei, D. and Deng, Y., 2012. Assessment of E-Commerce security using AHP and evidential reasoning. Expert Systems with Applications, 39(3), pp.3611-3623.