Small Business Enterprise SMe Assignment
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Added on 2019-10-09
Small Business Enterprise SMe Assignment
Added on 2019-10-09
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ACT MOTORCYCLE DEALERS: HELPING MIKE SELL MORE BIKES–IMPORTANT PREAMBLE –This project comprises 60% of the assessment for this course and is to be completed asan individual assessment and treated as a Take Home Exam. No group work is to beconducted or submitted. Note that wherever possible you should try to support assertions and judgements youmake, or opinions you express, with references to appropriate literature (not only fromyour textbook and/or lecture presentations or other material provided during the conductof the course, but from quality journals and textbooks).BackgroundACT Motorcycle Dealers (AMD) is a well-established but very traditional small tomedium business enterprise (SME). They have been selling (and servicing)motorcycles, quadbikes and riding equipment for over 30 years in the Canberra andQueanbeyan district. Their Business Information Systems (BIS) are fairly simple andcould possibly do with an overhaul to help Mike sell more bikes!!!!!The ScenarioYou are a consultant for ANUCONs, an IT consulting organisation that has beenappointed by Mike Stoner to provide advice and guidance on the potential revamp of ITsystems at AMD. Mike started business by selling mainly Kawasaki motorcycles, andlater picked up the local Honda motorcycles franchise. In 2007, Lack-of-ActionMotorcycles sold their Canberra dealership (including the Yamaha and Suzukifranchises) to Mike, and he now consequently has all the Japanese motorcyclemanufacturers’ products under his company banner.
In 2011, he also acquired the agency rights for Ducati, Husaberg, BRP Can-AmSpyders and KTM motorcycles in Canberra. Operating in a regional area, AMD sells lotsof dirt bikes, farm quad bikes and even some golf carts. There has also been a recentbusiness expansion into the sale of Honda, Sea-Doo and Kawasaki jet-skis. Mike alsosells finance and insurance packages for all his vehicles, and has close relationshipswith financial institutions like QBE and Swann Insurance groups.AMD is also a stockist and sales agent for a number of apparel and accessoriescompanies including DriRider, Alpinestars, DragginJeans, Dainese, Shoei, AGV, andFox. Interestingly to date, AMD has elected not to sell apparel and accessories’ usingthe online channel, but this is now becoming an attractive option given some of thecompetition for sales.One of the growth areas for Mike and his team has been the service centre and spareparts business. The AMD service centre does a range of work including spare partsorders and sales, full service and rebuilds, dynamometer tuning, race bike preparation,road worthy inspections, and warranty work. Having several companies (including fourgiant Japanese and two high profile European motorcycle manufacturers) supplying youall different types of products can be difficult, and possibly there is some scope forbusiness systems integration.Annual Revenue for the business is approximately $25 million, with a staff expenses billof around $3 million. AMD has over 15,000 customers in the region. Any new IT systeminitiatives must have the potential to increase revenue to the value of at least $250,000per year.Areas to look at in the project1. IT Strategy and Planning. While Mike started small, his business is now very bigand continues to grow. Some strategy, planning and governance for the future might beconsidered useful. The idea might be to see what business areas have value that is yetto be unlocked using technology;2. Data Governance. With such a large and growing business, Mike and his team arenow handling a large volume of materials and materials data (eg, spare parts, pricing,labour rates, sales). This means that the supply chain and associated data needs to bemanaged in some coordinated way (eg, spares management software) and systemsneed to talk to each other (eg, AMD systems need to communicate and exchange datawith Honda’s systems; Inventory Bullwhip maybe a problem). Also, it might be useful toprovide some ideas about how lightweight BI systems could be used to undertake somecustomer and supplier analysis. Some ideas and solutions to assist Mike with theseparts of his business might be helpful;3. E-Commerce and the Internet of Things. In order to expand his business Mike hasbeen considering getting into the online motorcycle accessories market for some time.Examples of what he is up against are offered at the websites below. He is alsointerested in how the use of smart sensors might be deployed as part of his businessenvironment (e.g. wear sensors on brakes and suspension parts, out of stock shelfsensors for oils and fluids) as he has come across some articles that suggest the futureInternet of Things will be important. Some analysis and recommendations as to howMike might set up his online business for the future would be considered a useful firststep in the right direction;
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