Foundations of Business Communication

Foundations of
Business
Communication

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Part 1- Business analysis..................................................................................................................3
Industry data...........................................................................................................................3
Key businesses, customers, suppliers, competitors, performance, strengths and weaknesses
and challenges faced...............................................................................................................3
SWOT analysis.......................................................................................................................4
Porter’s Five Forces Model....................................................................................................5
Issues faced by management and owner of the business........................................................6
Evidence of research...............................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................8
Part 2- Reflective Report on Key Skills Development..................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Educational industry has an objective for providing education and it can be gained in
various establishments such as public, non-profit institution and for-profit institutions. This
industry contributes in the development of resources and also helps in generating revenues and
employment to the people. Pearson is taken as the base company. Pearson is an educational
company and multinational publisher of textbooks and other related materials. They provide
learning assessments and their digital services to various education institutions such as schools,
colleges, universities and also for professional and vocational educations. This company was
founded by Samuel Pearson in 1844 and its headquarter is in London, UK. In this report, it
covers the analysis of business and the impact of external environment factors such as
businesses, customers, suppliers, competitors, performance, strength, weaknesses and challenges
faced. It also includes SWOT analysis, porter's five forces model. Furthermore, it also includes
the key issues face by owner or manager of the organisation.
Part 1- Business analysis
Industry data
Pearson is an educational company which is operated from London, UK. They provide
services for educational assessments, school management and higher education (De Angelis,
2018). This company was founded by 1844 by Samuel Pearson and generates revenue of £3000
million. The number of employees working in this organisation is more than 22000. This
organisation was originally built as construction business in 1840s and switches as publisher in
1920s. Pearson merges with Penguin Books with German conglomerate in 2013 and it has the
secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.
Pearson also announced about developing Pearson College in 2011 which is a British degree
provider in UK.
Key businesses, customers, suppliers, competitors, performance, strengths and weaknesses and
challenges faced
Pearson is known to be the educational organisation for providing material and
assessment to different institutions, professional and students. This company is providing
services across the globe. They are catering several markets for selling of their products and
services such as educational sites, using e-commerce sites such as amazon and so on for selling

and educational institutions. Cengage learning, McGraw-Hill, Cambridge University Press and
many more are the competitors of Pearson in the market. The company has a strong distribution
of network which leads in catering a wide potential market which is strength of the organisation
whereas due to high number of existing and new competitors in the market, the company cannot
tackle the challenges and lost their market share in niche categories. One of the biggest challenge
faced by the company is emerging technology in which are trying to develop the end to end
application development, automated testing and delivery. Their main objective is to optimize its
digital application without compromising the creativity and productivity of the developer.
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis is a framework which is use for identifying the current position of the
organisation in the market and also used in creating and developing of the strategic plan (Heeks,
2017). It is an abbreviated word which forms from strength, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats. Strength and weaknesses are the internal factors which can be modified according to the
organisational benefits where as opportunities and threats are external factors which not be
change and are not controllable. In reference to the selected organisation, SWOT analysis is
mentioned below-
Strength: Pearson has numerous strength factors that made them stand out of the crowd
such as strong brand portfolio which enable the organisation for expanding the new product
categories. The organisation has a strong chain of suppliers that helps in catering of market
easily.
Weaknesses: These are the factors in which the organisation need to improve. The
selected organisation needs to work upon innovation where they can work upon the research and
development for producing innovative products.
Opportunities: These are the elements in the environment which can lead to give
competitive advantage to the organisation (Johnston and et. al., 2018). In reference to the
selected organisation, the technologies provide can be used in differentiated pricing strategy in
the market which enables in maintain the customer loyalty.
Threats: These are considered as those elements which can make trouble for the
organisation. The changing buying behaviour of the customer switching to online channels
which affects the supply chain of the organisation.