SNHU Decisions & Rationale for The Solutions Implemented in Business Memorandum

In this discussion topic, debrief your Competitive Rounds 2 and 3. What have you learned from your decisions and rationale for the solutions you implemented in Rounds 2 and 3? What do your reports tell? In particular, focus your responses using the following sections from the Foundation FastTrack: production analysis and market share.

You should carefully review the Foundation FastTrack, as well as your debrief reports, for these rounds.

To complete this assignment, review the Capstone Discussion Rubric PDF document.

peer 1: Hey all,

So I thought I had a pretty good grip on things until this time around. I decided to create a new product, and I must have misunderstood that process and I ended up putting my company in debt! Oh no! So after reviewing things I see that I invested too much into automation and set my price point a little too high for the product. Not to mention, I didn’t make my newer product that much different than my existing one, so I don’t think that my consumers say a reason to purchase it. Total fail. I am going to try and tweak it a bit so it appeals mostly to my low tech segment, and see how that affects my company. Ultimately, I think I am going to be in debt for a bit, and have to sell some stock and take out loans to try and recoup from this epic failure. Looking at the competitors on the production analysis and market share, I think I can shift my focus from my primary product and try to build more around my new product. My primary product, Able, is coming in strong compared to my competitors, so I might keep that the same for the next round and try to get my new product to appeal to a specific customer. I tried to come in too similar to Able, and I need to make more stand out differences between the products. See attachments to reference my reports.

Thank you for reading!

-Megan

peer 2: Hi Everyone,

Round 2 and 3 was more overwhelming than I thought it would be. Starting with the what went wrong overall. This is my 3rd stock out for both products!!!!!!! I studied and calculated according the potential market shares and new year’s market growth percentage for both low and high products. I purchased more capacity to keep up with demand. I just don’t get it. Every thing I read tells me how to do the calculations, but it does explain how to apply it. I will keep trying, but I feel crazy because I get the same results despite making changes to the forecasting process. My focus for round 4 is go back and re-read the team members guide and see if something will click. If I continue at this rate I think I will end up bankrupting the company. The rating has decreased and based on the score I need to add more products to achieve max points, but I don’t feel confident adding products if I keep stocking on the two I have. Market shares for my high product was extremely low in round 3, but market shares increased for the low product.

Although round 2 and 3 was challenging, I was still able to turn a profit for both rounds, althought I am not meeting my full potential to maximize sales. I increased the contribution margin over 36%. The stock price have increased for both rounds. The accumulated depreciation is over 20%, which is too high. My main focus is to set my products up so that I don’t have to reposition for the following round and figure out how to increase sales without over or undestimating production. These two areas are my biggest stressors to the company. I have not been able to maximize my points on the scorecard, but I have reached over 70 out of 89. There were some areas such as product count I couldn’t account for in either rounds without adding at least 4 products. Overall, the company can be sustainable once I figure out how to increase sales.

If anyone can share some input about forecasting, capacity, and automation, I would greatly appreciate it. I am in the process of reading the capacity article from the module resources. I hope this can shed some light on things.

Thank you and I hope you are all making progress.

Rhonda