Sim's Hardware Partnership Program Plan - Formative Assessment

This report details a comprehensive partnership program plan developed for Sim's Hardware, a major hardware retailer in Australia, aiming to facilitate advanced technological research through joint ventures. The plan addresses key aspects such as legal requirements, specifically the lack of separate governing laws for joint ventures in Australia, and outlines the importance of the Corporations Act 2001, and other relevant acts. It explores different types of partnerships, with a focus on incorporated and unincorporated joint ventures, and details resource requirements including financial, material, and human resources. The report emphasizes the need for a robust reporting system, including monthly operations reports and digital dashboards, as well as a well-defined partnership agreement covering the roles and responsibilities of each participant. Furthermore, the plan includes a marketing strategy to enhance brand recognition, focusing on digital platforms and a catchy name and tagline. It also highlights the importance of positive collaborative relationships, conflict resolution mechanisms, efficient work allocation, and staff encouragement to ensure the success of the joint venture.

Partnership Program Plan
Formative assessment: Task 2
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Partnership Program Plan
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Partnership program plan...........................................................................................................3
Policies and Procedures..........................................................................................................3
Legal requirements.................................................................................................................3
Type of partnership.................................................................................................................5
Resource requirements............................................................................................................6
Reporting system....................................................................................................................6
Partnership agreement................................................................................................................8
Marketing strategy.....................................................................................................................9
Strategy for positive collaborative relationships......................................................................10
Process for positive culture...................................................................................................10
Conflict resolution................................................................................................................10
Organization and allocation of work activities.....................................................................11
Encouraging staff..................................................................................................................11
Empowerment of staff to develop their working ways.........................................................11
Indicator and feedback process for work environment.........................................................12
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
Works Cited.............................................................................................................................13
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Partnership Program Plan
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Partnership Program Plan
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Sim’s hardware is planning to collaborate for research of new hardware which is highly
advanced technologically. The organization has widespread reach in the Australian market
and looking for innovations. A joint venture is found to be the best possible solution and legal
requirements and status of a joint venture have been discussed. The joint venture does not
have a separate governing law in Australia. Communication and reporting requirements are
an essential element for the success of a joint venture and should be undertaken in a planned
manner. The joint venture agreement should include all the clauses that lay down the base of
the joint venture and does not leave room for a conflict to arise in the future. Joint venture
marketing campaign is required to give brand recognition to the joint venture.
INTRODUCTION
Sim’s hardware is hardware retail organization having widespread reach in the Australian
hardware market. The organization has the largest portfolio of hardware items in the
Australian market. With the human resource of 10,000 employees across Australia Sim’s
Hardware is constantly adopting innovative solutions to improve the quality of their products.
In order to facilitate advanced research for revolutionary products, the organization is looking
for collaborations. The management is developing a partnership program where organizations
can collaborate and share resources for advanced research.
PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM PLAN
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Partnership Program Plan
The partnership program plan ensures that maximum resources can be shared during the joint
venture period and each member gets justifiable returns from the investment made by them.
The partnership program needs to address various technical aspects such as legal status,
agreement period, profit sharing, resource to be brought in, management of the joint venture,
and roles and responsibility of each concern in the venture. (Rouse, 2018)
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
Following are the policies and procedures of Sim’s that must be followed by management
and employees of the organization-
 The integrity of assets should be maintained by the employees of the organization.
 The assets should be acquired by the proper vendor evaluation process.
 The computer peripherals should be purchased along with the main system so that
they are compatible with the main system.
 The purchase of peripherals should be authorized by the departmental heads.
 The source of purchase of hardware and their quality parameters should be consistent.
(Page, 2011)
LEGAL REQUIREMENTS
The organization requires a joint venture structure to facilitating research for introducing
innovative technologies in its hardware. This will enable the organization to form a
partnership for a limited period of time and for a limited purpose of conducting research.
There is no law in Australia the governs functioning of a joint venture (legalvision, 2018).
Laws related to companies, contract law, agency relationship, taxation and other regulatory
enactments are applicable on the joint ventures. It is generally regarded as a commercial
agreement between two entities having economical interest in working with each other.
Following are the acts in Australia to which the JV’s are bound to abide with-
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Partnership Program Plan
 Corporations Act 2001.
 Australian Securities and Investments Commissions Act 2001.
 Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975.
 Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
 Listing rules of the Australian Securities Exchange
To form the Joint venture simple contractual requirements are required to be followed. If the
organization wants to form an incorporated joint venture, registration with Australian
Securities and Investment Commission is required to be obtained.
Following are the provisions that should be compulsorily form part of the joint venture
agreement-
 The interest of each participant in the JV should be clearly outlined.
 The contracts entered by a participant should not be binding on other participants
unless entered by consent of all members.
 The projects undertaken by each member of the joint venture should have no
interference of any other participant of the joint venture.
 It should be clearly mentioned that the intention is to create a collaboration and not a
partnership.
 Amount of funding and resources brought in by each participant should be clearly
mentioned in the agreement.
(Handley, et al., 2017) (Shishido, 2015)
TYPE OF PARTNERSHIP
Flexibility, revenue sharing, and taxation requirements are the key behind the selection of a
joint venture’s structure.
Following are the options available for choosing the type of Joint venture required-
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Partnership Program Plan
 Incorporated joint venture
An incorporated joint venture is required to be formed usually where the participants
are corporate entities. Each party is given the status of shareholder and they have
rights and duties laid out as per the joint venture agreement.
 Unincorporated joint venture
Under unincorporated joint venture, each party has fixed proportion of the share in the
assets of the joint venture and the joint venture contract mentions the proportion of
expense to be borne and share of income of each party. Thus, under the
unincorporated joint venture, the parties are bound to act as per the requirements of
the agreement. (Frehills, 2019)
The incorporated joint venture is more legally recognized due to the registration
requirements, but the unincorporated joint venture has more flexibility regarding terms of the
joint venture.
RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS
The main purpose of this partnership plan is to establish a partnership firm or a joint venture
that will ensure that maximum resources are pooled together. The key resources required for
the project are men, money and material.
Before deciding the resource requirement, the organization needs to seek clarity upon
following areas-
 The assets required for the research.
 Length of research period.
 Legal costs of forming a joint venture.
 Operating costs to be incurred during the research period.
 When the research work materializes and development work starts, the capital and
revenue expenditure required to be incurred.
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Partnership Program Plan
 Product launch cost.
 Production cost.
 Packing and distribution cost.
 Legal costs to be incurred on the product. This cost is apart from the legal compliance
cost of forming a joint venture.
REPORTING SYSTEM
The joint venture will be formed and the reporting about the progress for which the joint
venture came into existence should be reported to all the participant entities. The entities
responsible for their respective areas should periodically report to other participant entities.
(Killing, 2013)
Following are the formal reporting options available to the Joint venture-
 Monthly operations report developed together by the participants.
 Weekly one pager report to give frequent overview of the development.
 Preparing and presenting joint venture’s financial statements periodically or at
suitable intervals prescribed by the relevant statutes.
 A one pager in digitized form available on the dashboard to give an overview of the
performance. (Bamford, 2018) `
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Partnership Program Plan
PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT
Joint Venture Agreement
The Joint Venture Agreement made and entered into this xx/xx/xxxx
Between: Sim’s Hardware and XYZ
Background:
a. The members are willing to enter into a relationship of mutual benefit and enter into a
collaboration for setting up a joint venture entity.
b. This agreement lays the terms and conditions for setting up the joint venture.
The agreement agrees following conditions-
 The joint venture is being formed to enable Sim’s Hardware to conduct research on
development of more technologically advanced hardware.
 The participants agree to bring in specified amount of funds and assets that will
enable the JV to achieve its purpose.
 The outcome of the Joint venture will be a saleable technologically advanced
hardware for which the research is undertaken.
 The consultation during various stages of the product shall be undertaken by
conducting meeting with management members of all the participants.
 It will be ensured that each member of the joint venture is aware of the objective
behind the formation of joint venture.
 Formal communications will take place via mails and face to face or virtual meetings.
 Suitable communication methods will be adopted as per the requirement of the
situation.
 All the participants will be kept updated with the financial performance of the joint
venture.
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Partnership Program Plan
MARKETING STRATEGY
Once the hardware product gets developed the Sim’s hardware has to make efforts to
successfully launch the product into the market so that they earn expected revenue and share
it along with their fellow participants. As the product will be result of a joint venture in which
two big corporate brand names will be involved the management has opportunity to sell the
products to customers of both the organization. In order to ensure that the joint venture
becomes popular and when the product gets launched there is already hype about the joint
venture, the marketing of the joint venture is needed to be done right. (Julian, 2010)
Joint venture marketing means to showcase the strength of a collaborations and increasing
combined brand recognition. The marketing strategy of both the participants gets combined
to increase their market share. The increase in advertising audience will enable to combine
not just resources but also share each other’s customer base for the product that will be
developed as a result of joint venture. (Anderson, n.d.)
Nowadays most of the organizations uses various digital platforms for displaying
advertisements. The participants should create a joint venture page on various social media
platforms and do marketing of the joint venture at that page (Kylegray, 2019).
The joint venture should be given suitable name and a punchline that relates to its purpose.
This name and tagline should be used in every source of advertisement. The name and tag
line should be catchy so that people start recognizing the joint venture as a brand. (Reid,
2019)
STRATEGY FOR POSITIVE COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIPS
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Partnership Program Plan
A joint venture may face problem of cultural clash at it is coming together of people from
different cultures, financial status and countries. People may face difficult in working with
each other due to communication barrier that starts developing a negative atmosphere.
PROCESS FOR POSITIVE CULTURE
 While formation of joint venture the management should forecast the possible cultural
clashes among people of two different organizations and should find measures to
avoid them. Rigorous mapping should be conducted to identify exact cultural scenario
in the joint venture. The roles of the members should be fixed, and team should be
designed in way that each member feels valued.
 There should not be any discrimination between employees of Sim’s hardware and of
other participants.
 An ongoing cultural health check should be done to ensure that there is a positive
working atmosphere. (Deitz, et al., 2010)
CONFLICT RESOLUTION
A conflict in a joint venture other than a constructive conflict is a very sensitive issue and
should be resolved with utmost care.
 The objectives if the partners should be aligned right from the initial phase to ensure
that they are clear about the purpose of the entity.
 Standard procedure should be set to resolve the conflicts among team members of the
joint venture.
 Gain of all the participants should be valued and the solution of a conflict should lead
to a win-win situation.
 Ways should be explored to minimise occurrence of such conflict in future.
(Ramsbothman & Woodhouse, 2011)
ORGANIZATION AND ALLOCATION OF WORK ACTIVITIES
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Partnership Program Plan
To ensure that the purpose of the joint venture is achieved on time and within the specified
budget the work activities should be managed efficiently. The project should be broken down
into smaller activities and project management tool should be used to allocate tasks and
monitor project’s progress. Realistic timelines should be set, and allocation of activities
should be made diligently. (Wegge, 2010)
ENCOURAGING STAFF
Employing competency plays a key role behind success of any strategy. Employee coaching
is a necessary force for improving competence level of manpower without hiring new ones.
The employees should be given required training before allocating a job and improvement in
performance should be praised by suitable incentives and recognition. (Wright, n.d.)
Individual plans should be developed, and performance metrics should be evaluated for each
employee. The structure of organization and the processes should not be stringent. (Olenski,
2015) (Ravazadeh & Ravazadeh, 2013)
EMPOWERMENT OF STAFF TO DEVELOP THEIR WORKING WAYS
Innovations can be expected where the employees get enough room to develop their own
methods of working. The goals of the employees should be aligned with the objective of the
joint venture. They should be allowed to set their own goals using SMART approach.
However, the goals between different employees should remain consistent. (Thiefels, 2017)
INDICATOR AND FEEDBACK PROCESS FOR WORK ENVIRONMENT
In order to maintain a healthy atmosphere in the Joint venture the management should
identify indicators of a problem and regularly take feedback from the employees regarding
their views on workings and changes needed to be incorporated. (Lindberg, 2012)
CONCLUSION
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