Australian International Academy Business Report: Growth and Decline

This report analyzes the business life cycle, examining the stages of growth, maturity, decline, and liquidation through the lens of four Australian companies. The report begins with an introduction to the business life cycle, followed by an analysis of four articles from Australian media outlets. The first article focuses on Atlassian's growth stage, detailing its unique sales model and expansion strategies. The second article explores Woolworths' maturity stage, highlighting its sustained growth and responses to challenges. The third article discusses the decline of the National Broadband Network (NBN), examining the factors contributing to its failure. Finally, the fourth article analyzes the liquidation of Ernest Hillier, a chocolate company, and the challenges it faced. Each section outlines the business stage, journey, and responses to challenges, providing a comprehensive overview of each company's performance and challenges. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and a list of references.

NATURE OF BUSINESS
BUSINESS GROWTH AND
DECLINE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Article 1.......................................................................................................................................3
Article 2.......................................................................................................................................4
Article 3.......................................................................................................................................5
Article 4.......................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
There are different stages in the business life cycle and every business covers all the stages in its
lifetime (Perkins and Khoo-Lattimore, 2019). In this report, four different articles pertaining to
four different life stages of the business will be identified. Consequently an analysis will be done
on the performance of the company based on the articles that will be selected from Australia’s
media platforms.
MAIN BODY
Article 1
“How Atlassian built a $20 billion company with a unique sales model”
The Atlassian is a revolutionary software company that has created a base of more than 125000
customers without any specific sales model (How Atlassian built a $20 billion company with a
unique sales model, 2019). The company, instead of investing its money on sales and marketing
activities, focused on developing a great product and a great distribution network.
Stage of Business: The Company within its first 18 years of operating has already touched the
$20 billion market and continues to grow further i.e. the company can be said to be in the growth
stage. Company has regularly worked on acquiring new products daily and this has helped them
in improving the overall performance. Despite being on what is assumed to be the peak of SaaS
industry, the Atlassian plans to continuously grow further and they can do this by using their
newly acquired product Trello and Stride that will help company in developing meaningful
collaborations and integrations (Wang and et.al., 2016). Therefore, the further growth
opportunities are immense for Atlassian and they plan on becoming an even larger industry.
Journey: In the year 2002, Atlassian was launched by Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-
Brookes where being a technology based entrepreneur in Australia was very hard. The first two
tools that they developed i.e. Jira and Confluence were made in accordance with the tracking
needs and the collaborative power as well. The success of these products was immense and from
there the journey of continuous growth began (How Atlassian built a $20 billion company with a
unique sales model, 2019). The company regularly entered into collaborations and acquisition of
various products that have helped them in attracting a wider market segment. Therefore, despite
having no sales teams, the products fo the company marketed themselves thus making Atlassian
a success.
3

Response to Challenges: The major challenge that the company faced was lack of adequate
funds to even develop a sales team which is a must in SaaS companies. Therefore they developed
a freemium distribution model which was something extremely new for the company. They
rooted for developer products and this helped them in conquering the market early on when it
was just starting. Another major challenge was creating a unique image for the company within
the funds that were available and the Atlassian forged a path separate for themselves where they
developed a unique vision and remain stuck to it.
Article 2
“Sales growth has returned to Woolworths”
In this article published by business insider, the performance of Woolworths has been
ascertained where the company’s growth till now has been observed and plans for future are also
illustrated.
Stage of Business: The article highlights that Woolworths is at the maturity stage where the
company has already achieved its full growth potential through maximum sales that it could
generate. The company has regular been registering highest growth and revenue rates amongst
all the companies belonging to retail sector (Sales growth has returned to Woolworths, 2018).
Despite the increased competition from international stores, Woolworths has been able to
maintain their position at the peak and the major agenda has been by putting the demands of
customers first before the profit o the company and this has helped them in maintaining the
growth of the company.
Journey: Beginning its journey in 1931, Woolworth has firmly established itself as a retail giant
in the Australian economy and has further expanded themselves in various other international
markets. They began as a chain of stores and slowly established themselves in the retail industry
where they excelled immediately. The sustainability aspect of the company is also commendable
where they have started the good business journey since 2007 and has been working constantly
towards increasing the sustainability in the practices that they adopt (Sales growth has returned
to Woolworths, 2018). Additionally, the culture that they have developed for supporting women
has made the company win awards on several international and national levels thus increasing
the reputation and goodwill of the company that has made the company maintain its top position.
Response to Challenges: Over the time of its growth and reaching the stage of the maturity,
Woolworths has faced quite a lot of challenges. The company has always practiced habit of
4

maintaining cultural diversity in the company where they have avoided any culture based
controversies. Whenever the company has faced such challenges they have tried to take the
corrective actions as soon as possible thus maintaining the cultural ethics (Habib, Bhuiyan and
Hasan, 2018). They also faced major allegations regarding the plagiarism of the designs form
other products which were later proved to be false by the company. This depicts that the manner
in which company has dealt with all the challenges is the reason company has become
successful.
Article 3
“Australia’s Troubled National Broadband Network Delivers a Fraction of What Was
Promised”
The concept of National Broadband Network i.e. NBN was launched with extensive planning
and elaborate objectives for the betterment of broadband networks throughout the Australia. The
article highlights that why despite multiple efforts and investments by the government; the
company is steadily on decline.
Stage of Business: NBN was launched in 2009 with the motive of developing a fibre optic
network that could enable the connectivity to all the homes, offices and educational building sin
Australia with the speed of 100 megabits. However, the company severely failed to deliver its
promise and could not even meet up the speed of 50 Mb/s thus putting the company in the
regularly declining position (Australia’s Troubled National Broadband Network Delivers a
Fraction of What Was Promised, 2019). The company reached the current stage of decline due to
the lack of proper timeline and non- deliverance of the objectives that have been developed
which made NBN a failure and the company is steadily declining towards winding up or
liquidation.
Journey: The NBN was initially launched by the Labor government who had estimated the plan
of installing the FTTP cable at up to AU $43 billion. However, when the coalition government
took over, the FTTP cables were changed to FTTN and the costs were reduced only to AU $29.5
billion. This was a major drawback in the plan because the cost ultimately ballooned up to AU
$51 billion which is almost twice and till now, the work done has not been satisfactory
(Australia’s Troubled National Broadband Network Delivers a Fraction of What Was Promised,
2019). The cost of extra material required has increased immensely and despite that the pace of
project and quality of work that was being performed was not up to the mark.
5

Response to Challenges: The major challenge for the project were the elections that occurred in
the year 2013 where the change in the party disrupted the entire plan that was developed and the
company could not develop a comprehensive plan matching the theoretical and practical aspects
of the NBN project (Habib and Hasan, 2017). The manner in which this challenge was dealt with
despite the increased fund allocation was inappropriate and this led to the failure of the entire
scheme with which this company was launched.
Article 4
“Chocolate company collapses sign of mid-tier marketers' struggles”
Ernest Hillier is one of the most prominent chocolate manufacturing companies in Australia.
This article will discuss various factors associated with the liquidation of the most loved
chocolate brand the reasons behind it will also be illustrated in the following article.
Stage of Business: The Company was winded up in the year 2015 due to the constantly
declining sales of the company and the consequent losses that they were suffering (Chocolate
company collapses sign of mid-tier marketers' struggles, 2015). The company, after struggling in
the Australian economy for a long time and facing constant pressures was finally decided to be
liquidated by the management thus leading to the closure of one of the most preferred and old
chocolate manufacturing company of Australia.
Journey: The Company was founded by Ernest Hillier himself in the year 1914 and is one of the
oldest chocolate manufacturing company of the Australia. The company was acquired by Capital
in the year 2013 and celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2014 but it led to voluntary
insolvency in the year 2015 (Chocolate company collapses sign of mid-tier marketers' struggles,
2015). The major reasons behind theses were believed to be the increasing costs of raw material
particularly cocoa beans and the increased competition from international confectionary led to
heavy decline in the sales of the company thus leading to its closure.
Response to Challenges: The major challenge for the company was to keep itself abreast and in
pace with the changes occurring in the dynamic environment (Moore and et.al., 2017). The lack
of adapting the company and its products with the changing taste of the consumers led to the
consumers shifting to other more affordable and tastier brands. The company could not develop
adequate strategies to met up the challenge that rose in the form of competition and thus
succumbed to closure.
6

CONCLUSION
The analysis done above helps in concluding that the all the four companies were in
different stages and their success or failure depended on the strategies that they adopted while
facing different challenges that arise during the business.
7

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Habib, A. and Hasan, M.M., 2017. Firm life cycle, corporate risk‐taking and investor
sentiment. Accounting & Finance. 57(2). pp.465-497.
Habib, A., Bhuiyan, M.B.U. and Hasan, M.M., 2018. Firm life cycle and advisory
directors. Australian Journal of Management. 43(4). pp.575-592.
Moore, A.D., and et.al., 2017. Life cycle assessment of domestic hot water systems in
Australia. Renewable Energy, 103, pp.187-196.
Perkins, R. and Khoo-Lattimore, C., 2019. Friend or foe: Challenges to collaboration success at
different lifecycle stages for regional small tourism firms in Australia. Tourism and
Hospitality Research, p.1467358419836719.
Wang, X., and et.al., 2016, May. Key challenges in software startups across life cycle stages.
In International Conference on Agile Software Development (pp. 169-182). Springer,
Cham.
Online
Australia’s Troubled National Broadband Network Delivers a Fraction of What Was Promised.
2019. [ONLINE] Available through :<
https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/australias-troubled-national-broadband-
network-delivers-a-fraction-of-what-was-promised>
Chocolate company collapses sign of mid-tier marketers' struggles. 2015. [ONLINE] Available
through :< https://www.smh.com.au/business/chocolate-company-collapses-sign-of-
midtier-marketers-struggles-20150122-12vutw.html>
How Atlassian built a $20 billion company with a unique sales model. 2019. [ONLINE]
Available through :< https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/scale-how-atlassian-built-
a-20-billion-dollar-company-with-no-sales-team/>
Sales growth has returned to Woolworths. 2018. [ONLINE] Available through :<
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/woolworths-results-profit-full-year-2018-8>
8

9