Foundations points of Business Management

Planning, organising, leading, and controlling are four essential roles or duties that can be used to examine the activities of successful firms. These primary functions are the foundation of effective management.

Foundations of Business Management
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................3
Part A...............................................................................................................................................4
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Reasons............................................................................................................................................4
Business options..............................................................................................................................6
Benefits............................................................................................................................................7
Dis-benefits......................................................................................................................................8
Project timescale..............................................................................................................................8
Costs................................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Part B.............................................................................................................................................10
Personal Reflection........................................................................................................................10
Introduction....................................................................................................................................11
Reflection.......................................................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Reference.......................................................................................................................................14
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Executive Summary
Luton Town Residence is a housing association that offers two services namely support housing
and general-purpose housing. Separate teams manage both sectors. The Personal coach mainly
controls the support housing, General-purpose housing is looked over by the financial team,
facility maintenance team, and customer service team they operate through Office356, Office
Amp and cloud computing services and remained connected through e-mails. However, the
employees have a complaint that due to a huge number of incoming e-mails they find it hard to
trace the important messages as well as due to the Covid19 pandemic the work culture has to
include remote working methods that have made the business operations more difficult. Thus,
they desire an alternative means of communication. Likewise, after analysing different
alternatives including Discord, Microsoft Tram and Floe dock, they have been compared with a
weighted scorecard and Microsoft Team has been found as the best attentive due to its easy
implementation, cheaper cost, easy to use structure and other suitable features. Furthermore, the
report helps to identify certain hiring skills including communicating, problem-solving, ITC, and
time management skills.
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Part A
Introduction
Luton Town Residence (LTR) is a housing association that operates in Luton. It has two separate
departments namely supported housing and general-purpose housing. Both the departments are
managed by specialized teams such as the customer service team, facility maintenance team, and
finance team and so on wherein, a central department controls all such teams. The
communication and collaboration between each team primarily occur through e-mails. However,
due to the impact of Covid19, the employees had to work from home and the situation has
resulted in disturbing working operations wherein, the employees complained regarding the huge
burden of emails as well as demanded an alternative medium of communication and
collaboration. Likewise, the purpose of the report is to discuss certain other alternatives of
workplace communication including Microsoft team, Discord and Flow dock and with the help
of a weighted scorecard model, all the alternatives shall be compared to recommend over the
best-suited medium for remote working culture. The report shall also discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of the best-suited alternative along with the time scale of its implementation and
related cost to give a detailed overview of the recommended communication and collaboration
alternative.
Reasons
The reason behind doing the report is to solve the business problem that is faced by the LTR
management related to internal communication and collaboration. Luton Town Residence is a
housing association that offers housing facilities to the people. They have split their services into
Supported housing and general-purpose housing. Both the sector has its separate management
teams. The general-purpose housing is driven by finance, facility maintenance and customer
service teams whereas, the supported housing department is mainly controlled by a personal
coach.
The finance team used excels sheet, MS word and saga one accounting having restricted entry
for unauthorized people. The facility maintenance team used OfficeAmp a cloud-based system
with restricted authorization and the customer service team uses excel and word for business
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operations. The supporting department has a personal couch to arrange and give support service
and has secured word document in company laptops to keep confidential information.
It has been noted that all the major communications between the teams occur through emails
wherein, several employees have been reported to face difficulty with managing a large number
of emails. As several e-mails are sent daily, the employees often miss out the important
information and it becomes difficult to check operational methods (Fahn, 2020). The customer
service team complains mostly regarding the communication method as they directly interact
with the residents and due to the poor communication method the residential people had to wait
long to enjoy the services. Moreover, the financial team complaint that they had to wait longer to
do get replies to the e-mails and that disturbed the business operations.
All the employees have laptops or PCs and have access to SharePoint drive to get the necessary
information. The customer service team felt that it takes a longer time to update documents as
well as to search information in a huge amount of excel and word files and that the zoon calls
were fatigue and failed to collaborate issues.
Furthermore, the impact of Covid19 has made the daily functioning of the housing complex. All
the members were said to work from home and only the desired staffs including security
personnel to work on-site when necessary. Thus, the customer service team, finance,
administration staff, senior management team worked from home and facility management and
personal coaches of the supported department had to visit the site when needed. Likewise, the
majority of the employees revealed their discomfort to work remotely. A General staff reported
that they have to check their emails all the time and several other staffs revealed that already the
emails were overloaded and remote working resulted in more email piling. The Customer service
team reported that they required a more effective medium of internal communication and
collaboration rather than using emails
Thus, the senior manager had to decide on an alternate procedure of internal communication and
collaboration of LTR to overcome such frustrations of the employees wherein, the new system
shall be easy to use, not much expensive could be used via phones for onsite working employees
and have easy integration with Office365 and OfficeAmp facilities.
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Business options
Due to the evolving problems that were faced by the employees of LTR, the management
decided to implement an alternative communication and collaboration technique that shall be
better than e-mails.
One of the options has been decided is the Discord that is a VoIP, where users can easily
communicate with video calls, text message and voice calls and files could be shared through
private chats called servers (Aslan et al., 2020). Discord runs through Android, iOS, Windows,
macOS, iPadOS, web browsers and Linux and has more than 250 million uses. It gives the
features of instant messaging as well as is a digital distribution platform that has been
specifically designed for developing communities. Users can develop servers free of cost and
manage their public visibility (Cross et al., 2020). Channels are used for instant messages that
are rapid and files could be shared. It runs on iPhone, Mac, Windows and others. It can be
installed free of cost. However, there are certain disadvantages including privacy, the private
conversations are not encrypted with E2EE, and the users require training for documentation in
Discord (Efriani, 2020).
The next alternative that could be used is Flow dock that is a collaboration tool for team works,
includes an inbox for team chat, and can be integrated over 50 tools as well as services. Every
member could be tagged and join in (Robinson, 2020). Mobile is also suitable for apps.
However, they do not have the option of video chat. Flow dock and Discord can be run on
windows, SaaS, Mac, iPhone, Android and audience includes teams of all size that supports 24/7
business, however, and Flow Dock requires $9.00 per month per user for use (Schwartz, 2021).
The third alternative shall be the Microsoft team that has gained the largest interest of the users
during the Covid19 pandemic due to its application. It has the best security and gives the features
of group chat, file sharing, calling, meeting and other necessary features and the Microsoft team
is best suited for office365 having the least difficulty level to learn operating the service (Singh
et al., 2021).
Requirement
Score
Criteria Weight Discord Flow dock Microsoft team
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Supports
business
objectives
5 3 4 5
Have the least
threat to privacy
4 3 2 5
Least difficult to
use
4 2 5 5
Most beneficial
to the
stakeholders
2 4 3 4
Least related
implementation
cost
3 4 3 5
Weighted Score 100% 65 63 78
Table: Showing the Weighted scorecard model
Thus, from the weighted score, it becomes clear that the Microsoft team is the best-suited
alternative medium of communication and collaboration for the employees of LTR.
Benefits
There are several benefits of the Microsoft team that is recommended for the management to
implement Microsoft team as an alternative option-
 Collaboration tools in Microsoft365 often make the user disoriented wherein, One of the
best benefits of the Microsoft team is that it increases the productivity by strengthening
the collaborations including chats, online meetings, file sharing through a single app
interface. It is completely secured. Besides, the apps used by Microsoft there are 3rd party
apps that integrate into the team resulting in a situation where the user will never have to
leave the team to get their work done (Ilag, 2020). Thus, is best suited for the project
objective.
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 It also helps to increase focus on work along with better time prioritization. Microsoft
team compartmentalizes and channels the data into context (Saddhono, 2021). Thus,
rather than going through a detailed inbox and to check a single message, the employees
could only focus on the required channel.
 Microsoft Team gives automatic translation conversation that helps cross-cultural and
multilingual team (Rahim et al., 2020). It is a completely cloud-based solution that can
access any data from anywhere and on any device and takes the advantages of AI and big
data technology. It is easy to learn and to implement in the devices that make it more
suitable for teamwork.
Dis-benefits
 The structure of the files often confuses the user. Everything that is uploaded in the
Microsoft team gets into a channel folder and when someone tries to organize the files
the conversation links might break (Eftiani, 2020).
Project timescale
Event Required time
Installing the app in the devices 30 minutes
Determining the needed channels and training 1 day
Reviewing the workflow 1 day
Thus, installing and using the Microsoft team shall require 2 days and from the third day, the
benefits could be witnessed.
Costs
Events Project Cost
Installing Desktop version of Microsoft team Nil
Training $ 100
maintenance cost $ 500
Total $ 600
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The ongoing operation cost is $1000 whereas; the application of the Microsoft team shall reduce
the operation cost.
Conclusion
Thus, in a nutshell, it shall be concluded that the issues and challenges faced by the employees of
LTR was related to the method of their internal communication and collaboration. The
communicating method of e-mails resulted in a messed up operational flow and was not suited
with the current scenario wherein, after analysis, it becomes clear that using the Microsoft team
to collaborate with the members shall remain financially beneficial and also remain the best fir
with the present operating systems. The easy operating procedure, easy implementation
procedure, low cost and strict privacy make it the best communication and collaboration means.
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Part B
Personal Reflection
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Introduction
In this portion of personal reflection, I shall discuss the learning experience that I have gained
while framing the above report. While analysing alternative communication and collaboration
means for the employees of LTR, I became aware of certain hiring skills and their importance in
professional life. Likewise, I shall describe my experience with the help of GIBB's Reflective
Model.
Figure: Showing the Gibb’s Reflective Model
Reflection
Description- Luton Town Resident is a housing association and it is managed by specific teams.
They use different servers such as Office365, cloud computing to perform their business
operations and remains connected through e-mails. However, due to the huge amount of
incoming e-mails, the employees are messed up and miss out the important messages. Moreover,
in the current scenario due to the Covid19 pandemic, all the employees had to work remotely and
it became more difficult for them to remain connected and to communicate with the members.
Thus, they required an alternative means of communication that shall be cheap, easy to
implement and use as well as suitable for the system. Likewise, after analysing three apps
namely Discord, Microsoft Team and Flow dock, the Microsoft team has been found as the best
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alternative due to its suitable features. Furthermore, I understood certain hiring skills that are
crucial for my professional career.
Feelings- I felt very excited after receiving such an interesting project to work on. Still now in
86% of the organizations, email is used as a means of communication wherein, I have searched
that around 40% of the employees desire for a better means of communication. I was eager to
search for an alternative to such a real-time problem (Saddhono, 2021). In the initial phase, I was
not sure about the best alternatives and became a bit frustrated however, with the help of my
peers and extensive research, I came to the conclusion and felt very satisfied and happy.
Evaluation- The good experience was that I learned certain professional skills. I understood that
rather than e-mails, the Microsoft team is a better communication media. I also gained and
learned certain hiring skills. Likewise, I gained communication skills including both verbal and
nonverbal. With the help of the report writing, I learned how to communicate non-verbally
wherein, the class discussion and presentation helped to gain verbal communication skills. It
shall help me to express myself clearly in future. I also gained immense knowledge regarding
ICT skills as I had to research and read regarding Microsoft office programs and several other
related apps. It gave me huge knowledge related to the implementation method of ITC in a
business organization. Moreover, while performing the project I adapted the skills of time
management as I had to complete the report on time and it shall help me to improve my
professional skills. Last but not the least; I gained problem-solving skills. I understood how to
solve problems as while working on the project I faced certain difficulties regarding finding the
best alternative way of communication and collaboration of the LTR employees. After gradual
research, I ended with the best-suited result and it helped me to understand how to solve
problems.
Analysis- I analysed that all the gained knowledge has improved me in every sense. I have got a
clear view regarding the required hiring skills as well as the skill that are required to be an
efficient employee that includes communication skill, time management, problem-solving skills
and so on.
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Conclusion- Thus, it concluded that the report has helped me to acquire certain required hiring
skills that include communication skill, problem-solving skill, ICT skills and time management
skills.
Action Plan- Thus, applying the acquired skills in my future professional life shall help me to
excel in my specific field. Moreover, I shall further sharpen the gained skills to improve my
efficiency.
Conclusion
Thus, in a nutshell, it could be concluded that while searching an alternative communication and
collaboration media for the employees of Luton Town Residence as they faced certain difficulty
to communicate via emails, I found the best recommendation of using the Microsoft team. This
shall help them to work easily from remote areas as well as help to improve their business
operations. Moreover, while drafting the report I gained knowledge regarding certain hiring
skills including communication, time management, ICT, problem-solving and others that have
enriched me further.
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