Group Project

Features of the e-learning

● How are you fulfilling the Gagne model? How are you capturing their attention etc.

In-class simulation
1. Determine kind of business: cannot be ngo or gov
2. biz problem: revenue, plateuing profits, dropping profits, market share: competitors eating your
market share or you are becoming obsolete → corresponds with type of biz
3. Each person should play a diff role (CEO, CFO, CHRO, COO, CCO)
4. CEO will explain the biz and the biz problem
5. Each C-suite (except CEO) to come up with a reason for the business problem
6. Write down on a piece of paper the type of biz and the biz problem → what is the exact issue that
you face

Business: Company X in E-commerce

● Company X is similar to shopee :D (International E-Commerce Company)
● Company X intermediates between the seller and buyer of goods. Our revenue streams
comes from 3 different categories
○ Charging a transaction-based fees from sellers
○ Advertising Services - For any advertising that the sellers would like to adopt to
promote their listings. For instance, bidding for certain keywords on SEO so their
product listing would appear in buyer search result
○ Other Value-Added Services - Eg. Marketing, Product and Customer
Management Tools. Charges as a subscription based to customers
● In terms of cost structure:
○ Bank Transaction Fees
○ Service Fees paid to 3rd party logistics service providers,
○ Warehousing Cost for goods
○ Server and Hosting Costs - Costs for both physical and digital infrastructure to
maintain its online presence
○ Staff Salary & Compensation

Business Problem: Decreased Profitability

 ● During the pandemic, company X saw a rapid increase in profits as customers were
unable to leave their houses so they started to switch to online shopping. (Essentially,
increased revenue as there was an increased number of customers due to decreased
competition)
● As the covid situation is switching from a pandemic to endemic, company X started to
see a fall in profitability as people could leave their houses and the physical shops
started to gain traction again. (decreased revenue)
● Additionally, costs incurred started to increase as well from different functions within the
firm (further explained by the C-suite members) (increased cost)

Positions:
● CEO: Jian Wen & Beatrice
● CFO: Boon Ee
● Role: Overall responsibility for the strategic planning, implementation, managing
and running of all the finance activities of a company.
● Inflation: Rising cost from suppliers of raw materials, causing manufacturing
prices to increase and translating to increased costs onto customers.
● Cash flow problem where there is not enough money coming in to pay the
expenses.
● Digital Transformation: Technology replacing traditional accounting functions.
Struggle with manpower issues. High technology costs of innovation.

● CHRO: Judith
○ Role: The Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) is responsible for developing
and executing human resource strategy in support of the overall business plan
and strategic direction of the organization
■ Focus on talent management
○ One of the key challenges human resource management faces in these current
times is being able to retain the employees, through various methods - the most
successful being the rewards plan companies offer to their employees.
○ With the decrease in profitability, there will be a direct impact on the total rewards
given to employees, such as their bonuses. As such, how do we prevent
employees from being poached and convinced to move to other competitors who
are performing better than us?
○ One of the other methods of retaining employees would be to provide good
training and opportunities for self-development. Would these programmes have
to take a back-seat in times of the decrease in profitability? Should a certain
retention method take precedence over the other?
● COO: fran
○ Role: The goal of a COO is to ensure that a company is run in the most efficient
way possible, thereby maximizing profits and customer satisfaction. COOs make
strategic company decisions by reviewing and assessing the company's quality
and efficiency.
 ○ Enhancing operational effectiveness and efficiency while maintaining cost
savings especially when profitability is dropping
○ Maintaining high levels of service with regards to delivery, last minute shipment
demands/changes, changes in the supply chain etc.
○ Maintaining/enhancing operational efficiency and streamlining processes while
on a tight budget may lead to redundancy and backfire
● CCO: Calista
○ CCO makes crucial decisions regarding marketing, sales, product development,
and customer service to drive business growth and market share
○ As mentioned just now, other value-added services has been the most affected
form of revenue stream.
○ CCO is struggling with achieving a balance between developing a
comprehensive commercial strategy (to increase consumer demand) and $$
required to execute these strategies as it will affect profitability of company
○ “Brain Drain” → CCO noticed a slow-down in product development as well, it has been
difficult to be creative and innovative and venture into something that competitors may
not have explored before
○ TLDR: basically, CCO is struggling to execute strategies & invest into r&d when
company X has profitability issues.

Consultant Qns:
● Setting the context for the problem:
○ Which solutions have been attempted in the past, with what results?
■ This way, you know which new solutions you can introduce or how you
can improve upon the solutions they've already considered.
○ What untried steps toward a solution does the client have in mind?
○ Which related aspects of the client’s business are not going well?
○ If the problem is “solved,” how will the solution be applied?
○ What can be done to ensure that the solution wins wide acceptance?
○ What is the most important revenue stream for the company?
○ Which problem is the most pressing problem that needs to be addressed
urgently?
● What is the primary reason you're looking for a consultant?
○ You can also ask your client to explain their main reason for hiring a consultant.
Asking this question can help you pinpoint exactly what the client wants to get
out of your relationship. This can help you set goals and expectations for your
work with the client.
● Can you tell me about the profile of your target customer?
○ You can also ask your client to explain their target customer, including their
demographics and any problems they're facing. This information is important to
help you develop a strategy that works for your client and make customer-centric
decisions.
● Who will be making the final decisions on this project and who will be in charge of
implementation?
 ○ You want to ensure you’re dealing with the person in charge that will be writing
you the check.
● What is unique about your business compared to your competitors?
○ Why should customers/clients choose your company over the competition?
○ Help your client by getting them to clarify what exactly is their value proposition,
their competitive advantage, the reason the market should choose them over
anyone else.

CONSULTANT SIDE
Business
- JAPANESE fine dining business
- Specailise in authentic jap cuisine

Business Problem (Talent Problem)

- Landing top talents (what are some major problems taht lead to this?)
- Competitors poaching them

CFO:
- Suffering stagnant growth in recent months, revenue stagnant
- Not doing the best. Trying to expand but growth not promising
- Internal financial issues: Cannot give pay raise, salary increments. Pay is based on
market rate
- Decreasing Revenue:

CHRO:
- Our company realise that we dont really have smth to attract talents
- More attractive benefits out there (what are the limitations in offering better CB) → if you are
trying to expand with no money why are u still doing it instead of forgoing it for better personnel
then building upon it afterwards?
- Ask Current Programmes and Attractive features of the company that the
company uses to poach
- Employer branding issue
- Good chef in the company are leaving the company
- Poached by other company
- Lack of good HR Retention Strategy
- Benefits offered by the company
- Loyalty programme - if you stay for 5 years, you get a long-service award
- Provided discounts in all business chains
- Find it difficult to push boundaries of their incentives to stand apart from
competitors
- No pay raise offered to chefs and employees
 - No training programmes offered to employees
- Believe that pay and salary is a reason for them to leave
- Reason for no pay raise is due to some internal issues and due to
stagnant growth/revenue (hard to give them good increments)
- Need to do engagement survey
First and foremost, what does the lack of top talent pose to the company?? But if its just a
matter of top chefs then we can just train employees? Are they losing money??? Or employer
branding from this?
I think since they are restaurant, they need top talent to help them gain more business and
hence revenue

BEAT ASK THEM ABOTU THEIR COMPETITORS

- AJISEN RAMEN LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
- Im so confused, how can ajisen be their biggest competitor?? Because they are

COO: how does the lack of top talent affect how theCOO performs their duties? And daily
operations? Do you want to ask them about the kind of job roles they have??? Because
that would relate to the business operations
- Roles that they have/need talent for:
- Skilled Chefs - Seeing a particular decline in a number of skilled chefs, and
staying w the company for a long period of time
- Urgent Need: To get skilled chefs that can continue the authenticity of the Jap
Cuisine
- Need to execute business strategy
- But unable to create a talent ecosystem with technologies and current employees
- Some tasks highly repetitive - admin stuff can be automated
- If we cannot be a pay leader, can at least be a career aspiration leader
- Issue in attracting top talent + not even budget to give a good pay + invest in creating a
positive working environment for them

CCO:
- From Business Development standpoint, directing focus from a low-potential to high-
potential
- Brand perception of Employees
- Refurbishment of brand image
- Attracting talents from the candidates pool and competitors
Mechanical Observation
● Counting physical movement
● Example how many steps person must take to complete

Human observation:
● Observing their attitude → things you cannot count/intangible stuff?
Data Collection Methods to Use:
CFO:
● Stagnant Revenue → Lack of capital to facilitate the expansion of company and unable to
increase the benefits, hence losing skilled chefs and unable to retain customers → stagnant
business revenue
Data Collection:
● Ask directly for their Financial Statements and interview the Financial heads as to what
they think the biggest problems relating to the loss/stagnation of revenue is attributable
to

CHRO:
Retention problem → Not enough compensation and benefits
● Since we only have HR related problems we can do:
○ Data Collection:
■ Interview
● Interview the top chefs to hear their opinions
■ Survey
● As an alternative to interview, conduct an anonymous surveys for
the employees to feedback / opinions with regards to the
company’s compensation & retention strategies
○ Key Points to validate:
■ Rewards structure → to see if they are truly market competitive
■ Rewards structure offered by competitors
■ Whether the company reward structure is really the reason for employee
turnover

COO:
● Unable to create a talent ecosystem
○ Data Collection:
■ quantitative : Mechanical Observations
○ Key points to validate
■ Automating the service process

CCO:
Unable to attract clients
- Consider rebranding as a way to boost their commercial strategy targeting their clientele