Improving Bazaar Ceramics Studio
Added on 2020-04-21
10 Pages3372 Words252 Views
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Bazaar Ceramics Quality Assurance Report1. Executive SummaryThis report explores the case of Bazaar Ceramics Studio which is a South Australia basedorganization that sells arts, crafts, domestic wares, corporate collection, and sculpturepieces through its gallery located in Stepney, Adelaide. Most of its processes including ordermanagement, sales management, and marketing are manual. However, due to this thecompany is facing increasing competition from ecommerce based organization from theindustry and margins are shrinking. The organization is facing certain conflicts related tocost, marketing, and management that are discussed in the report and possible solutions arerecommended in the quality plan. The report covers strategic objectives of the organization,quality standards, quality policy, quality assurance processes and recommendations forimprovement.2. IntroductionBazaar Ceramics Studio is a 20 year old organization from Hahndorf, South Australia thatsells art and craft products. It first began producing locally designed fine art pieces anddomestic wares such as dinner sets and ovenware as a cooperative. The cooperativemembers were involved in designing, throwing glazing and firing activities for their ownproducts. A gallery director was appointed to take care of gallery and its marketing. Over theyears, the organization grew and expanded nationally with inclusion of corporate collectionand sculptural pieces. These pieces are obtained from international hotels, private homes,and board rooms in US and Germany and sold on commission basis with 40% ascommission. It now operates from Stepney, Adelaide and has more staff including aproduction manager, 6 production potters, and 2 full time ceramic designers. 3. Strategic Direction and Strategic PlanBazaar Ceramics is focused on the international ceramic arts market while doing marketingas it gives more opportunities to do business. The main revenues in the business come fromthe sales made through gallery. However, cost of running gallery is very high which hasresulted into reduction in the returns on investments on gallery maintenance and marketing.Most sales are made to interstate and international clients. However, these major clients findthe purchasing process complicated and thus, management is thinking of developingecommerce website to make the processes streamlined. The company would continue tomaintain high standards of technical and artistic needs. The organization has a long termvision of growing its art market globally and builds a strong brand reputation. For this, the
company is going to use internet based marketing such that it’s advertising cost is reducedand the company is able to get more feedback from customers. The organization has a plan to make use of market opportunities using the organizationstrengths. It would also aim to build strategies to deal with threats and overcome theirweaknesses. The strategic plan of the company is presented below:Vision: Vision is to create a strong business reputation in the international art market Mission: Expand the business in national and international market and increase sales figureto exceed competitionObjectives: Objectives of the company would be behavioural, community level, and processrelated[ CITATION Mas12 \l 16393 ]. Behavioural objectives of the company include:Make the company staff more supportive and understanding of customer needsCommunity objectives of the company include:Reduce order processing time Reduce operating cost of the companyExpand business into national market and international market Process objectives of the company include:Spend more on marketing of products that are most popular with customersAutomate business process to improve productivityAction Plan:Train staff into getting more feedback from customers and use them for theorganizational benefitsDevelop ecommerce solution that allows customers to place orders online withconvenienceHire IT manager to provide support to the employees managing IT systems in thecompanyMove into a smaller showroom and put more products for sale on website to reducecost of operationsAutomate the order management process of the company to reduce time needed forprocessing ordersDevelop an ecommerce website to reduce order processing costs and time as wellas increase the reach of the business globallyImplement analytics on the website to do sales analysis for understanding popularitemsAutomate some of the organizational processes including order management andsales tracking to reduce order processing time and analyse trends[ CITATION Joh083 \l 16393 ]Develop an ecommerce system that has following features and facilities:oOnline ordering oMarket products onlineoSell products online
oCollect customer feedback4. Critical Issues and Strategic ObjectivesThe company is facing strategic issues that need to be resolved for which strategicobjectives are formed.Critical IssueStrategic ObjectivesCosts of gallery management and marketing are increased with increase in cost of goods sold and fixed costs of gallery management. Identify and explore more options to sellother than through galleryMany processes used in the company are manual including order form entries, selling, ordering which consumes more time and also lead to mistakes and redundancies in data managementAutomate some of the processes used in thecompanyProducts that are produced by remoteworkers are double handled betweenproducers and sellers which both timeconsuming and cost incurringDevelop a system that allows direct shipping of products from workers to clientsThere are cost pressures that are affectingthe profits from operations. Some of the costelements that have increased includeemployee costs, advertising costs, exchangerates, and fixed costs of showroommanagement. This has resulted in decreasein mark-up and returns on investments. Reduce the fixed costs of the businessManual order processing makes processingtime consuming. Moreover, there are morechallenges like inability of internationalcustomers to order by phoneAutomate the process of orderingBazaar Ceramics has no person employedfor providing IT supportHire new staff for IT systems managementThe company is unable to display allavailable products in the gallery because ofits small sizeSell products through new channels other than the galleryThe information on sales is not effectivelystored and analysed. More unsaleableproducts are produced because of lack ofknowledge of popularity of products.Improve the customer feedback mechanism As the products are unique, productsdisplayed in advertisements get sold fast andthe advertisements become outdatedFind and utilize alternate modes ofadvertisingWith increase in ecommerce adoption, thecompetition is increasing. Competitors havemore margins with websites as their salesand marketing costs are less. This givesbargaining power to consumers and theywant 25% discounts on allproducts[ CITATION Sla06 \l 16393 ]. Make the business more competitive bydeveloping ecommerce platform[ CITATIONUSF17 \l 16393 ]
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