Pass In Training

This Case Study has a lot of information, but once again is quite limited as to the strategic opportunities available to the business.

Franchise Network

The most obvious direction is related to the franchising operation. Specifically, allowing a person to have more than one franchise region. You need to consider the benefits and risks if this was allowed. What would happen if the franchisees decided not to renew? How would you service the clients? If a franchisee becomes too large, will they be able to find sufficient cleaners to ensure work is performed to a high standard and therefore protect Scour’s reputation. To the customer, they should not see any difference between owned and franchisees, so a problem with a franchisee is a problem for the franchisee too.

Then there is the risk of over-stretching which the Examiner has brought to your attention in the media articles. So, if an established franchisee wanted to expand further, you need to think of the possible implications if Scour allows it and also if they don’t then how will the franchisee feel?

We believe franchisee network could be set up to be either an R2 or and R3 style of question. Overall we believe there is a strong probability of the network being assessed during the exam.

Other Opportunities

The examiner has listed some other opportunities, but what impact will these have on the existing business?  The opportunities listed are:

• Computer equipment
• Carpet cleaning
• Window cleaning
• Clean up following emergencies e.g. floods

The advantage of some of these will be in tendering for new business.

However, how does Scour obtain the expertise? Computer equipment / carpet cleaning may be the most straight but is specialist equipment required?  Will the existing staff do the new work to the required standard and if they are willing can they be trained? If they won't or can’t, there will be the risk that Scour employs specialist cleaners without sufficient specialist work to prevent idle time, Idle time in all businesses costs money!

An alternative route would be to use a third party who would clean on Scour’s behalf and in Scour uniforms.

A further consideration would be controlling any expansion in the franchise network, especially for customers who have offices across regions. Is a solution making the franchisees buy in the service from Head Office, which would then incur travel costs?

Out of the services listed, perhaps the most interesting for the examiner could be the clean up following floods. This certainly sounds like specialist cleaning as flood waters when they recede can leave unhygienic sludge. Also, it maybe difficult to avoid idle time for this work, making pricing tricky / having to react quickly / could existing cleaners do this work / could it lead to more future work eg a flood customer who isn’t a regular cleaning customer.

An alternative approach for the examiner would be to have the opportunity of expanding into one sector or another and making you compare. We feel the easiest would be computers from an operational side and the hardest the floods. Do you know the business well enough to be able to do such a comparison?

Remember, any opportunity will affect the current SWOT, PESTEL & 5-Forces so keep in mind how these will change.

Supply Chain Opportunities

There is certainly a strong hint we could see Scour introducing a potential new supplier. We know from the AI, Scour is heavily dependent on Thom. The examiner has hinted the minimum purchase order could change.

Not only that, but he has also introduced Violetta, who are keen on entering the commercial cleaning market.

If this happened, would you be able to explain the benefits and risks to both options and calculate cost differences between different options?

Our Mock Exams

The first of our four mock exams is released on 17th June 2020 and some of Scour's opportunities will be examined in order for you to practice. Both Requirement 2 and Requirement 3 cause students the most concern. Will you be able to generate sufficient points from the exam paper to be able to answer a good enough question?

If you like this blog, then please share it with colleagues and friends. We will be releasing our Blogs twice each week up to the exam date. Our next blog will start to explore some of the major themes in Requirement 1.