You have always enjoyed gardening and having decided to make it your career you have recently graduated from horticultural college. In the current tough economic climate you are finding it difficult to get a job utilising your horticultural skills so you have decided to set up your own business offering landscaping and gardening services to individual homeowners and small businesses. You have acquired the necessary gardening equipment by using your own savings but you now need to purchase a vehicle, fund an advertising campaign and set-up/create a website. In order to secure further funding from the bank, your business advisor has asked you to provide them with a detailed account of how you are going to manage the business activities to ensure its success.

In particular your advisor is keen to see how you will manage the following operational aspects of the business:

- Aligning business processes with business goals and objectives
- Developing and implementing operational plans
- Ensuring the quality of the business performance
- Managing health and safety at work

You have been invited to present your 'business operating plan' to your business advisor on 20th July 2015.

Assignment Task:

For this assignment you are required to produce the presentation (i.e. clear & concise presentation slides with detailed accompanying notes) using MS PowerPoint (or similar package) covering the following:

Task 1 - Understand the importance of business processes in delivering outcomes based upon business goals and objectives

- Show the organisation structure of the new business, and evaluate how the different business processes and functions will interact. (Diagrams would be useful here)

- Explain and justify how and why 'business process transformation' could help the business to align its business processes going forward.

- Evaluate the output of the business process and the 'quality gateway'

(Suggested 600 word count for the slides & accompanying notes)

Task 2 - Be able to develop plans for own area of responsibility and implement operational plans

- Design a plan which help to promote goals and objectives of your own activities.

- Write SMART objectives for the above plan.

- Describe in detail how you as the business manager would implement planning tools / techniques (e.g. Gantt chart etc) to the above plan to ensure the plan can achieve objectives in the most efficient way, on time, to budget and meeting organizational standards of quality.

- Describe how you will monitor and control progress of the activities in the above plan to ensure the activities meet the plan.

Task 3 - Be able to monitor appropriate systems to ensure quality of improve organizational performance

- Design and report on an appropriate quality systems for the new business.

- Demonstrate how you will implement a 'quality culture' throughout the organisation.

- Recommend improvements which align with the organisation's objectives and goals and which result in improvements. Report on the wider implications of proposed changes within the organisation

Task 4 - Managing health and safety at work

Select one operational activity in the business and carry out the following:

- Carry out a Risk Assessment of the activity. (A risk assessment table may be useful here)

- Demonstrate by describing in detail that health and safety regulations and legislation are going to be adhered to in practice.

- Carry out a systematic review of organisational health and safety policies and procedures in order to ensure they are effective and compliant. Recommend any improvements to be made.

- Describe how you will carry out practical application of the above health and safety policies and procedures in the workplace.