Improving Cut Short: A Case Study on Hairdressing Chain Enhancement

This assignment presents a comprehensive analysis of the 'Cut Short' hairdressing chain, a budget-friendly salon facing challenges with customer wait times and profitability. The initial steps taken by the company, such as implementing online pre-booking with discounts and surcharges for late arrivals, are outlined. The core of the analysis involves providing key recommendations for sustainable growth, including strategies for attracting new clients through promotions and joint ventures, implementing cost reduction programs focusing on staff rostering, supplier negotiations, and waste reduction, and fostering a positive working environment to enhance brand image. Furthermore, the assignment suggests improvements to business service, emphasizing customer retention through value addition and personalized engagement, as well as introducing innovation and renovation to the salons to attract and retain a diverse customer base. The overall goal is to provide actionable insights that can help 'Cut Short' enhance its profitability and customer satisfaction levels within the competitive market.

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Table of Contents
Answer to Question no. 1: Report to the CEO of Cut Short.........................................................................2
Executive Summary.................................................................................................................................2
Brief Introduction to the business...........................................................................................................2
Discussion and Analysis...........................................................................................................................2
Recommendations...................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion...............................................................................................................................................5
Answer to Question no. 2: Suggestions to improving business service.......................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................................7

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Answer to Question no. 1: Report to the CEO of Cut Short
Recommendation for the improvement of Hair dressing Chain, Cut Short
Executive Summary
The report has been prepared in order to suggest some significant recommendations so as to ensure a
sustainable growth of our hair dressing chain. But before that a brief understanding of our business has
been given so that it may provide the valuable input in getting an in depth understanding provided
through the recommendation
Brief Introduction to the business
Cut Short is considered an upscale full service beauty salon through which a wide range of services are
being offered. The major services are:
1. Skin Care: Body waxing, message and European facials
2. Hair: colors, Shampoo, perms, cuts, weaving etc.
3. Nails: Pedicure, manicures, polish etc.
The business is also involved in the selling of the beauty and hair product purchasing options such as
shampoo, conditioner and hair styling products. However, the hair dressing chain is not able to make
use of the customer growth and losing out on revenue due to significant queue and waiting time ranging
from 15-20 mins every day. The company wants to make the maximum out of the opportunity and
enhance the levels of customer satisfaction such that the service levels are improved and that the
waiting time can be reduced (Alexander, 2016).
Discussion and Analysis
Recently in order to improve our profitability, we have added the following features with our business:
a. The use of the website for pre-booking appointments - a customer can select from the variety of
services (e.g. trim, re-style, blow wave) which will be available on the site. The site will also
enable the different slots during the given date and time of day such that user convenience can
be enabled (Alieid, 2016).
b. Once the pre-booking would be complete, the customer can choose to pay as per the required
services via a payment gateway (credit card, PayPal, etc). The customers scheduled appointment
will be cancelled if they are not paying 24 hours before the timeline.
c. In order to encourage pre-booking through website, online appointments will be entitled to a
10% discount.
d. A surcharge fee will be charged from the customers who are not arriving on time as per their
appointment (Arnott, Lizama, & Song, 2017).
e. The website will also give a hair product purchasing option to the customers. Customers can
order hair products like shampoo and conditioner, etc. online, pay through online means and
then pick up their products at the time of their appointment.

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Recommendations
In addition to the above mentioned measures, following are the three major recommendations or
suggestions so as to support and ensure the current growth of our business. These are provided
hereunder:
1. Getting or attracting more clients to our salon
The current business scenario is suggesting the adoption of a proactive approach so as to
ensure a strong client base. It is because till now we were using the old strategy of using the
thank you letter or the freebie service along with the odd client referral to increase the
customer base, but the same is needed to be redesigned (Vieira, O’Dwyer, & Schneider,
2017).
Here are few of the ways through which we can do it
a. Starting “bring a friend promotion”. This is the best strategy to increase the number of
customers visiting the salon. This can be done by telling the existing customers that
when they plan their next visit at that time they can bring their friend .Here the focus
should be to encourage our existing customers so that they may participate in this
process and increase the number of our database, as initially it won’t be possible to
make profits, but slowly and gradually these new customers shall earn profit for the
group.
b. Referral program: As per this plan the existing customers may be informed that in case
they refer someone to our organization then they shall be rewarded for the same. It
shall act as an incentive for them to work for us (Choy, 2018).
c. Joint venture: our business may think about to enter into an agreement with local gyms,
hairdressers and those others who intend to serve the same target market as we serve.
d. Knowing the local community and doing local advertising. The best way to increase our
business shall be to go to the local community for knowing their requirements and doing
local advertising with the special offer and focus on those products having the retailing
opportunity.
2. Running of a cost reduction program for the salon
a. Reduction in the staff cost through the effective process of rostering: In this case it is to
be kept in mind that each of the team member should be able to deliver his service for
at least 80% of the total time allocated for that service.
b. Better negotiation with the suppliers: In order to serve this purpose there should be
continuous negotiation with all of the suppliers to know if they have any special offer for
their products that can be bought at the lowest price. Like bulk purchase option can be
planned in the given case (Linden & Freeman, 2017).

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c. Reduction of the phone, Bank and credit card charges. These are the costs that we have
to incur when the payments are made to various suppliers, hence they should be asked
how they can contribute in the reduction of these costs.
d. Reduction of the freight costs: In this case a proper approach towards the suppliers is
expected so that they may be able to send the products to purchase at free of freight or
we may even plan our purchase in the way that can be helpful to bring down our cost of
freight.
e. Checking of all invoices thoroughly. This is required because it might s happen that there
may be few very small items or services though provided to the customer, but has not
been included in the invoices raised. In such case it shall cause damage to our entity.
f. Giving a check on excessive stock holding: For this purpose it is suggested to make a
proper distinction between the slow moving and the fast moving items. Then the next
step should be to remove the slow moving items and keep the sufficient stock of only
fast moving items (Goldmann, 2016).
g. Providing training to the therapist to reduce the cost. It is quite common that during the
process of various therapies a lot of materials are wasted. Hence there should be
adequate arrangements in place to provide adequate training to these therapists to
reduce the cost.
h. Elimination of the unnecessary expenses. Often it is being seen that too much
unnecessary expenses are incurred by the salon which are required to be controlled, like
window cleaning etc.This should actually be a continuous process that is required to be
followed by the team on an ongoing basis.
i. Negotiation with the landlord for the short term rent reduction: Often good tenants
become so precious for the landlord that under any circumstances they do not want to
lose them. This can be taken as an advantage by making the landlord committed for the
short term tenant deduction.
j. Giving training program to the specialists and experts working at the salon twice in the
year and then using them to have premium services enabled at the salon at premium
prices. This will work as an investment for earning high revenues (Heminway, 2017).
3. Building up a positive working environment
Often it is found that in newspaper and in media, a lot negative things are published
that deteriorates the that brand image of the Salon, hence in order to handle this issue a
lot of positive efforts are required which are explained hereunder:
a. Complementing the staff at the end of the home: it is a good practice that at his end
of the day they should be given complements for their good working behavior. This
shall boost them up.
b. Giving an image of the salon as such that people shall feel proud of it that our Salon
is having a branded image in the society (Jefferson, 2017).
c. Engaging the staff in such a way that they should be set free to live and work
happily.

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d. Voidance of the door and gloom talk. In this regard the focus should be shifted from
how the tough things are happening.
e. Becoming the person you want others to be. In this case the business requires such
type of leaders who should have the adequate analytical skill. The leaders are those
who can sit with their team to discuss and identify the problems associated with the
journey (Marques, 2018).
Conclusion
All these efforts and measures will surely help the company in upbringing the revenues and thereby
increasing the profitability of the salon chain in the city. This can be done in a phased manner so that the
normal operations are not impacted all at once.

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Answer to Question no. 2: Suggestions to improving business service
The following suggestions are being provided hereunder in order to bring the improvement in the
business of the Cut Short salon chain:
1. Retention of the existing clients.
Though it is a challenging job due to the tough competitive market, but such a strategy is
inevitable for the success of the business. The various tools available in this behalf are as
follows:
A. Avoiding the local discounting war
In the short run people can not understand but in the long run it may have significant
consequences that might be quite negative. Hence an attempt is required so as to shift
the focus to the value addition.
B. Asking suppliers to join the board
The suppliers may be asked if they are ready to supply some freely available product to
the cut short in lieu of their business prospect. This will help in strengthening the
relationship with the suppliers and also in ensuring a win-win situation for both the
parties (Sithole, Chandler, Abeysekera, & Paas, 2017).
C. Focus on value addition. In this regard what is to be kept in mind is that we need to
provide something that the customer considers as valuable, but for generating such
value our business does not have to spend too much money or time. The use of latest
technology can bring in value addition at effective costs (Werner, 2017).
D. Staying in touch with the clients. It is always required that the customers should be
made to understand that we are always there to serve them, for which sometimes some
free information may be provided to them so that they may continue feel the need to
visit the salon quite often. Furthermore, greetings and messages on the birthdays and
anniversaries will help in getting the prolonged relationship with them. This can be done
via getting an online form filled up with particulars when the customer visits the salon
for the first time.
2. Introducing the innovation and renovation to the office and salons
In this modern era, the introduction of modern machines and technology can play quite a crucial
role in this behalf. Like the spas can be made well decorated where the people may feel like
spending their time for few hours along with the arrangement of the other amenities can be
made in order to retain the existing customer along with bringing the new customer (Dumay &
Baard, 2017).
Further the new equipment with the gym facility too may be added to create a new customer
group, as there may be various types of customers seeking various types facilities .Interiors too
may be decorated in a manner to have the frequent visitors of the salon (Mun, 2018).
The products offered by it can also include the Ayurvedic products too, as now a days people
prefer these types of products and avoid much of the cosmetic based products.
Some new fitness based ideas too should be made freely available to its existing customers.

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References
Alexander, F. (2016). The Changing Face of Accountability. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(4), 411-
431.
Alieid, E. E. (2016). The Role of Accounting Information Systems in Making Investment Decisions.
Internal Auditing & Risk Management, 11(2), 233-242.
Arnott, D., Lizama, F., & Song, Y. (2017). Patterns of business intelligence systems use in organizations.
Decision Support Systems, 97, 58-68.
Choy, Y. K. (2018). Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An Indigenous Worldview
Analysis. Ecological Economics, 3(1), 145. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.005
Dumay, J., & Baard, V. (2017). An introduction to interventionist research in accounting. The Routledge
Companion to Qualitative Accounting Research Methods, 1(1), 265.
Goldmann, K. (2016). Financial Liquidity and Profitability Management in Practice of Polish Business.
Financial Environment and Business Development, 4(3), 103-112.
Heminway, J. (2017). Shareholder Wealth Maximization as a Function of Statutes, Decisional Law, and
Organic Documents. SSRN, 1-35.
Jefferson, M. (2017). Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization, R. Ayres. Springer, Switzerland .
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 353-354.
Linden, B., & Freeman, R. (2017). Profit and Other Values: Thick Evaluation in Decision Making. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 27(3), 353-379. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2017.1
Marques, R. P. (2018). Continuous Assurance and the Use of Technology for Business Compliance.
Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 820-830.
Mun, K. a. (2018). A close look at the role of regulatory fit in consumers’ responses to unethical firms.
Sithole, S., Chandler, P., Abeysekera, I., & Paas, F. (2017). Benefits of guided self-management of
attention on learning accounting. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(2), 220. Retrieved from
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2016-21263-001
Vieira, R., O’Dwyer, B., & Schneider, R. (2017). Aligning Strategy and Performance Management Systems.
SAGE Journals, 30(1), 23-48.
Werner, M. (2017). Financial process mining - Accounting data structure dependent control flow
inference. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 25(1), 57-80.

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