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Week 4: Understanding the Industry and Its Environment
Skill #4: Collect knowledge and information about current events, technology, the business environment, the client’s business, your company and consider this when making decisions.
Looking back to week one and the recommendations you made in the week one assessment in conjunction with this week’s material consider EC’s position in the industry, their current customers and those in the future and identify trends, ideas, and technology that you feel Dwight should consider in growing the company. For this skill, Dwight wants to see how well you can judge the external trends for the business by measuring your understanding of a SWOT analysis. Below is the SWOT chart that Dwight has developed.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Strong Internet growth
Sound financial status
Use of state-of-the-art technology to produce competitive products
Made in America Qualified
Employment of Wounded American Veterans
Medical Insurance is very high because of the wounded employees
revenue based on individual buyers rather than larger industry customers
Sourcing material is becoming harder
More leadership is needed
No KM department
Understaffed IT department
Opportunities
Threats
AI in Production and Customer Service
New Engineering of Wheel Chairs is leading to new in-home products (EC can diversify)
Expanding EC workforce by dropping the Wounded American Vet Hire policy
Regulations making lithium batteries safer will make new product line possible
AI in Production and Customer Service
Many large companies are buying smaller companies and becoming one stop shops for medical accessories
Law suits for engineering and design flaws are increasing dramatically
Losing larger heath center customers
Sourcing material is becoming harder
Skill #5: Know the basics of knowledge management.
Inga Swanson was one of the first employees Dwight and Ike hired. She runs the customer relations department and now the online returns and rewards programs as well. Recently she has gone to Dwight and Ike with the idea that her commitments to the webstore are getting so demanding that she needs help in several areas. She wants to hire people to take over the customer relations department and online returns so she can focus on the webstore and move into a marketing role. She thinks that Dwight and Ike should consider this move for two important reasons; better decision making and should anything happen to her the whole online and customer relations departments would shut down. Ike agreed immediately and Dwight was right behind him. The problem Dwight realized almost immediately was how would the transition work with all that knowledge in Inga’s head? and all the tools she uses to measure her marketing goals etc. How can we make good decisions without them?
Dwight wants you to look at the idea of collecting and storing the knowledge Inga and the others have in the business. Using the course material and prior business class experience complete a brief 2-3 page memo outlining the steps a manager might take to make the transition go smoothly. In the outline include:
Explain how to capture, collect, and store knowledge for the company.
Explain how these actions will affect performance in the company.
Describe how you go about collecting knowledge from Inga.
Explain how the knowledge will affect the hiring decisions for the new departments or should it be teams?
Explain how it could affect Inga’s new role.
Directions: By SATURDAY, complete the following:Follow the instructions above to complete a draft of your memo.
You must use course material to support your responses and APA in-text citations with a reference list.
THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, complete the following:Respond to your classmates three or more days throughout the week. Remember you are trying to develop the best answers to the questions as possible. Your classmates are doing the same so read the posts carefully looking for the best ideas being presented. The goal is that by the end of the week the class will come to some consensus as to the best answers giving you the chance to submit the best ideas in the final post.
You must use course material to support your responses but you do not need to use APA in the brainstorming discussion with the exception of Saturday’s initial first impression post.
Participation must be reflected in the final post so grades will be affected by the content portion of the post if participation is not shown. Therefore, it is important to get in the class often and with the idea of improving your initial post with the discussion so that the final grade will be the best you can deliver.
BY TUESDAY, complete the following:Attach your final post with your final memo in the classroom by Tuesday at 11:59 PM ET.
The final post must reflect the brainstorming activities and should be different than the Saturday initial post.
The final post must include a variety of sources from the class material as well as the use of scenario or case study facts where appropriate.
It must USE APA in-text citations and reference list.
Additional Requirements and How to Prepare the Weekly Attachment SubmissionFollow the instructions carefully if the assignment asks for a memo, email, plan, report, etc. be sure to follow the format templates provided.Submissions should be in proper business writing form.
APA formatting with in-text citations and a reference list is required.
Review the grading rubric for the assignment.
Carefully read all of the instructions to make sure all elements of the assignment have been covered.
Third-person writing is required. Third-person means that there are no words such as “I, me, my, we, or us” (first-person writing), nor is there use of “you or your” (second-person writing). If uncertain how to write in the third person, view this link.
Contractions are not used in business writing, so the expectation is that students do not use contractions in assignments.
Paraphrase and do not use direct quotes. This means you do not use more than four consecutive words from a source document; put a passage from a source document into your own words and attribute the passage to the source document. Provide the page or paragraph number. Note that a reference within a reference list cannot exist without an associated in-text citation and vice versa.
Do not use books as source material.
Use a variety as well as multiple course readings and research to support ideas, reasoning, and conclusions.
Submit the final project into the appropriate assignment submission folder. Once submitted, the project is eligible for grading and students will not be permitted to make changes or make another submission.
NOTE: All submitted work is to be your original work. You may not use any work from another student, the Internet or an online clearinghouse. You are expected to understand the Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Policy and know that it is your responsibility to learn about instructor and general academic expectations with regard to proper citation of sources as specified in the APA Publication Manual, 7th Ed. (Students are held accountable for in-text citations and an associated reference list only).
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