Evaluating Fast Track Couriers' Expansion Plan

This assignment requires a critical evaluation of Fast Track Couriers' business expansion plan. The plan outlines the company's goal to expand delivery routes to NSW within three years, including specific objectives for development and sales growth. Students must analyze the plan's steps, risk mitigation strategies, budget requirements, and impact forecasts. Additionally, the assignment focuses on evaluating the key performance objectives and measurement systems proposed by the plan, considering factors like acceptable variances, timelines, benchmarking, and stakeholder requirements.

ASSESSMENT 2
Business Plan review
Fast Track Couriers operates from New South Wales and delivers packets across metropolitan
Sydney which is handled by a small but highly experienced team and deliveries are taken care of
by drivers. The organization has a strategic goal of growing business and profits from it in coming
three years by expanding the routes of delivery by including NSW. The plan identifies specific
business objectives of the expansion and these include development of capabilities to make
deliveries to NSW region in next 12 months and increase the company sales by 40% in coming
three years.
The business expansion plan identifies the steps that the company would take to achieve these
objectives and that include installation of truck devices and purchase of new fleets of 10 new
trucks with installed devices that would allow only one driver to take care of loading, unloading,
and transportation thereby reducing per truck driver needs as well as allow company to remain
updated with the transit information. The business plan clearly states the steps as well as a plan
for mitigation of any risks. It also identifies the budget requirement of the project and forecasts
the impact of change on the company in next one year. However, the objective of 3 years
foresight has not been achieved. However, the plan lacks certain success criteria required for a
good expansion business expansion plan such as the plan fails to cover some important
elements of the expansion planning such as timelines consideration, resource requirements, and
success criteria of expansion, resource requirements, and ways driver’s resistance to new
technologies would be addressed.
Key performance Objectives
The key objectives to measure performance of the business expansion plan include:
 Assure that the expansion can achieve all the desired objectives and meet the business
needs of the project sufficiently
 Identify the timeline requirements of the expansion project
 Ensure that the company stands ahead in the competition with proper benchmarks
exceeded
 Ensure that needs of all major stakeholders are taken care of in the expansion
Performance Measurement systems
Following methods would be used for measuring the performance of the expansion plan:
Acceptable Variances and dealing with failure: The project of expansion should have clear
budget and schedule for truck purchase and device installation that should not be exceeded
beyond a limit. The expansion should not take more than 5% of the total calculated expenses.

The final delivery of the trucks should not get delayed beyond 5 days of the planned timeline. N
case of failure to do so, immediate mitigation measures must be taken as per the risk
management plan (Lavasa, 2017).
Timeframe: The Company should be able to complete installation and purchase of new trucks
with installed devices within 2 months. In the first month, the company would be purchase 20
tracking devices to be installed in the existing trucks as well as the new trucks. The 10 devices
would be sent to the supplier of the 10 new trucks for the installation such that the new trucks
received come with the installed devices. This new truck purchase and device installation in
them would take the next one month.
Benchmarking: Benchmarking can be used for the tracking device installation in the truck. This
device must be able to satisfy all the key industry benchmark requirements of transportation
such as updates on transit status, driver mobile access for updating and monitoring, and tracking
of goods in transit (Ammons, 2000).
Key stakeholders of the expansion and there key requirements are stated below:
Stakeholders Stakeholder requirements
Company Owner The plan should justify its costs and have clearly identified budget requirement
that is unlikely to exceed in a real scenario
Transport
Suppliers
Transporters must be provided with all the needed information about the source
and destination as well as types of goods
Customers Customer should get a regular update on the status of their goods transferred.
They should be given a provision to keep track of their goods couriered (Staff,
2007)
Drivers Drivers must have a way to update the status of the transit online as well as must
have a help with the automated tracking devices to update the exact location of
the trucks in transit in the system. However drivers do not like to be monitored
closely
Staff Staff must have all the information about customers, goods, accounts, etc. so that
they can handle the backend operations well
Vendors Vendors should have a clear communication on the specification requirements of
the trucks and the tracking devices. They should also be given sufficient payment
and on time by the company taking their products and services (MAJ, 2015).
Bibliography
Ammons, D. N. (2000). BENCHMARKING AS A PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOL: EXPERIENCES
AMONG MUNICIPALITIES IN NORTH CAROLINA. J. OF PUBLIC BUDGETING, ACCOUNTING &
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, 106-124.
Lavasa, A. (2017). Manual for Procurement of Goods. Government of India Ministry of Finance.
MAJ, J. (2015). DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT’S STAKEHOLDERS AND STAKEHOLDERS MANAGEMENT.
INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE (pp. 780-790). BUCHAREST, ROMANIA : Opole
University of Technology.

Staff, W. (2007). Stakeholder Engagement: A Good Practice Handbook for Companies Doing Business
in Emerging Markets. INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CORPORATION.