LO 1
P1 Research Aim and Objectives
Research Aim:To identify the impact of social media on growth and innovation of small-scale industries- A case on Continental Consulting Limited.
Research objectives:
- To explore the importance and significance of social media
- To identify the effectiveness of social media that support business growth and innovation.
- To evaluate impact of social media in various activities of small-scale businesses
- To recommend strategies that can help small-scale business for better use
Background of the study:
Social media has influenced small-scale industries to large extent. Websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have captured the entire market. It is very important for Continental Consulting Limited to understand the strategies of social media so that they can survive in the market. Employees of these types of companies should be properly trained and know all applications regarding these sites (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015). These sites are grabbing attractions of customers from different regions.
This study shows the impact and effectiveness of sites, which help these businesses to increase their branding and provide a platform for cheap marketing. They increase sales and provide opportunities to engage customers at various levels including high leaders and managers of the company. Higher authorities are also engaged with customers and build strong relationship with them (Mackey and Gass, 2015). It provides opportunity to create relationships with other businesses and networking helps in increasing sales and promotion.
Emphasizing more on customer relationships automatically increases sales. Thus, social media, internet is very beneficial for entrepreneurs and helps in communicating with others. Continental Consulting Limited uses social media for recruitment purpose, marketing and building customer relationships. It can be considered as a gateway for profit and loss in the industry.
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P2 Project Management Plan
Project management Plan consists of constraints like cost, quality, time, resources, scope and risk. Cost cutting increases sales. Equivalency is required between scope and budget and increase in budget may loosen up scope of the product or project. This planis a triangle tois used to examine projects. All constraints play a major role to complete a project.
Time: It refers to availability of time to plan activities and estimate resources. It is majorly used to gather information and document a project schedule. There should not be any dependency between tasks because it may increase the length. Every project has a deadline and it should be completed within that time frame (Glesne, 2015).Time constraint includes planning schedule, management of project, defining activities, sequential planning of project, estimated availability of resources, duration of resources, developing schedule and finally keeping control on schedule. Activities involve management planning, environmental factors, assets of organization, decomposition and activity list that has to be completed on time.
Cost: It is one of the important factors while managing a project. It depends on variables like work packages, resources that generate cost constraints. When companies hire contract or temporary employees, then economic cost must be considered, which involves productivity or worker’s skill. Cost budgeting and controlling of cost matter that generates factors like variance, which is controlled and influenced by cost management tool (Vaioleti, 2016). Tools include estimation of analogues, analysing cost rates of resources, parametric estimation and cost of quality analysis.
Scope: Project is only established by its end results when all its requirements are specified. Important feature of scope is quality of the final product. Scope is determined by the time taken to complete the entire project. Some project totally fails because they are not properly understood or defined. Project's cost is also increased if its scope is increased. Quality also influences its scope and time.
Risk: Risk is an important factor involved with each and every project. After completion, it has the risk of failure. Therefore, some strategies can be applied to face the consequences. Risk can be either avoided or accepted. Plans can be further changed to face problems. Immediate steps should be taken to reduce the influence of risk. Leaders should foresee risk and define responses to issues.
Risk can be outsourced or transferred to third party who is capable of managing outcomes. This increases budget that reduces scope because transferring must be done financially. Thus, proper risk management should be there so that projects should not be derailed. Leaders must be aware of consequences in order to control or mitigate the impact. Accepting risk definitely increases cost, which in turn reduces its effectiveness.
Communication: There should be clear communication between head and group members. All goals of projects should be cleared to them and any miscommunication would lead to failure of the project.
Quality: Quality ensures work processes which is performed and documented. It also affects scope and cost of the project. Products should meet all standards and requirements and quality management of any project includes plan for assuring problems, project deliverables that should be reviewed after completion (Panneerselvam, 2014). This helps in accepting quality level and proper management of project processes. Tools and techniques are used effectively.
Resources: Availability of resources should be for smooth running of the project. Any inadequacy in the project may lead to increase in budget and lengthen up time. It is a type of constraint for the completion of project. Complete Group works with many types of resources like free materials, unused equipments, and unspent time to save cost. Thus, proper allocation and management should be there. For this, tasks must be properly understood and defined among the group members. Project management can be benefited with software developments where all information is easily modified when required (Bauer, 2014.). Thus, there should not be any type of unpredictability in projects.
P3 Work Breakdown and Gantt chart
Task Name |
Duration |
Start |
Finish |
Predecessors |
finding the investigation topic |
1 day |
Wed 7/4/18 |
Wed 7/4/18 |
|
framing research problem |
3 days |
Thu 7/5/18 |
Mon 7/9/18 |
1 |
setting times and activities |
3 days |
Tue 7/10/18 |
Thu 7/12/18 |
2 |
secondary research |
4 days |
Fri 7/13/18 |
Wed 7/18/18 |
3,2 |
choosing appropriate method to conduct research |
4 days |
Thu 7/19/18 |
Tue 7/24/18 |
4 |
identifying cost with each activity |
2 days |
Wed 7/25/18 |
Thu 7/26/18 |
5,4 |
preparing questionnaire |
3 days |
Fri 7/27/18 |
Tue 7/31/18 |
6 |
analyzing the collected data |
5 days |
Wed 8/1/18 |
Tue 8/7/18 |
7,4 |
evaluating the results |
3 days |
Wed 8/8/18 |
Fri 8/10/18 |
8,6 |
making judgement and recommendation |
5 days |
Mon 8/13/18 |
Fri 8/17/18 |
9 |
reflection |
2 days |
Mon 8/20/18 |
Tue 8/21/18 |
10,9 |
Modification as per feedback |
2 days |
Wed 8/22/18 |
Thu 8/23/18 |
11 |
day of submission |
1 day |
Fri 8/24/18 |
Fri 8/24/18 |
12,11 |
P3: Work breakdown structure and Gantt chart
LO 2
P4 Research Methodology:
Research Philosophy
Research philosophy always deals with nature, development and the source of knowledge. According to the topic it is form of delivering information for a process which is firstly collected, examined properly and then finally used for research work. For the completion of dissertation knowledge creation is used to gather primary and secondary data. It includes pragmatism, positivism, realism and interpretivism. Choice is influenced by practical applications of research approach, design and strategies (Humphries, 2017). Researchers mainly use interpretivism for their project work. They have to collect small-samples for their work and deep knowledge is human interest. Only social constructions like consciousness, language and shared views are assumed to access them into reality. Researchers like to praise differences between people and act as a social actor. On the other hand, positivism is restricted to factual knowledge obtained through observation skill information collected are usually quantifiable which results in statistical analysis. It has an ontological and atomistic view of the people. No provisions of human like interests are determined in this study. Thus, researchers prefer interpretivism which is qualitative for further study.
Research Design
There are various views based on the design of research. Some think that it is qualitative and quantitative. While, others think that it is based on the process of data collection and analysis. But usually it is a general plan in which specific questions are prepared to answer. It can be categorised into two forms i.e. exploratory and conclusive. In exploratory researchers find absolute to active solutions. But the problem is not specifically defined. They can change their direction while conducting their work. Main aim is to explore the problems and vary the level of depth. On the other hand, conclusive research is divided into casual and descriptive level. Researchers aim at descriptive method because all types of characteristics and functions are properly described and more analytical techniques, large sample sizes are used (Dang and Pheng, 2015). It also includes cross-sectional, longitudinal and retrospective study. But casual study is used to for analysis of cause and effect relationships. In conclusive method research process is structured and represented in formal way. Results derived from conclusive method are used in decision making process.
Research Approach
Research approach describes the main point of hypothesis that can be studied between inductive and deductive approaches. Emergence of generalizations and new theories are involved in inductive method. On the other hand, believability of assumptions is required in deductive method. In inductive method generalization begins from specific and ends to general. There is preparation of hypothesis which is followed by a procedure of tests, pattern and dissertation of theory. Themes and patterns are being explored and a conceptual framework is generated. Some premises are used to analyse untested conclusions (Kim and Kum, 2016). Theory is build and generated. Questions are based on aims and objectives of the project which has to be attained during research work. So researchers generally go for inductive approach. On the other hand, in deductive method propositions are evaluated to an existing theory or pattern. It starts from general to specific. Here the conclusions are authentic if premises are true. There are chances of falsification of theory so verification is required. Dissertations might be confirmed or rejected at the last stage. EU assess the effect of labour migration by generating a hypothesis. It is then tested during research process.
Data Analysis
It should be cleared up by researchers that how analysis of should be done. It is done in through primary and secondary methods. In primary method data is collected through surveys, questionnaire and interviews (Yang, 2017). In secondary method is generated through reports, company's information, feedback from retailer and distributor, business magazines, libraries etc. data can be further categorised into qualitative and quantitative forms. Qualitative data is concerned with obtaining insights and understanding main reasons and motivations behind the research project. Researchers prefer qualitative way because data collected is fresh and rich and it doesn't need any kind of verification. Mainly they prepare questionnaire or conduct interviews for the observation. On the other hand quantitative data is just the collection of numerical data and analysis is done on the basis of relationships between variable which properly measured by statistical techniques (Wach, 2014). Qualitative research is done through reflexivity and curiosity. They have proper accounts and data prepared is in textual form. Sample size is not so large. All important contexts are highlighted. Finally, researchers make a view point on the research work.
Sampling
Sampling is done to select a segment of population that will be involved in the research study. Population is too large so sample size of selected range of people is taken to work directly and gain pure samples. There are many benefits of sampling like it saves costs of research work which reduces time frame thus, helps in completion work. Any kind of research is possible with sampling and size can be managed. It results in accuracy as data collected is primary and rich in quality (Schmidt, 2016). The process if information is accelerated and result derived are effective. It follows a particular process which involves defining a particular target of population. In this project sample size of 20 is taken. Specified segment is targetted which is served as primary source for research. Then list of people are selected who can participate in the research work. This is known as sampling frame. Then, determination of sampling size is there and finally a particular method is decided which is practised. There are mainly two methods known as probability and non-probability method. In probability chances of participation are there while in non-probability group members are selected on non-random manner (Research Methodologies.2018).
LO 3
P5 Data Analysis
Questionnaire Name: Age: Gender: 1. Does your company use social media website
2. Are employees well trained about social media sites
3. What are the main benefits of social media?
4. How many employees agree with the implementation of these sites?
5. On what websites Continental Consulting Limited is available? 6. Is there any kind of social media campaigns launched by Continental Consulting Limited?
7. How social media is used by the company?
8. Are customers properly updated on social media sites?
|
Theme 1: Company uses social media website
Does your company use social media website |
Respondents |
Yes |
12 |
No |
7 |
May Be |
1 |
Interpretation