Premier Solutions Case Study

Eric Porter “Premier Solutions Case Study” B283 Case Analysis Introduction: Jake and Matt run a business called Premier Solutions which they would one day like to turn into a franchise. They are currently working on the business model which would give them the layout that would be the blue print for the franchise. But the problem at hand is that Greg is part of another company which wants to combine forces as an IT outsource for Premier Solutions. Problem Analysis: -Major problems and challenges facing employees and organization: Balancing the books can be quite an ordeal. After taking an accounting class I can totally understand why because those ones were complicated and they weren’t even for a real business. It is impossible to know the true financial state of your business without having a complete balance sheet. I remember the teacher telling the class how his dad ran his business back in the day. He didn’t care about specifics, money that came in was revenue and money that left was an expense. If he came up with a deficit one month than he just had more expenses. Knowing where your money is going can exponentially increase your efficiency. As this big deal with Memorial IT is going down I think it was extremely wise to wait to completely straighten out the books before attempting to expand. Now it is common for start up businesses to take risks from time to time, but every angle should be examined to know what the flip sides of each risk. For example, Greg was asking for a lump sum for his services all up front. The first risk is the fact that Greg is short on patients when it comes to teaching others how to do what he does. If he was to work for them for a full two years, with the business growing and gaining more and more clients, when his two years or work are up he could leave Premier Solutions with tons of work and not enough workers to handle it. Or realizing the tight situation they could be in, he could easily find himself able to place high demands for further work. Another problem with paying upfront is that suddenly there would be a big draw on the liquid funds. Businesses love having money readily available for rainy days. By paying the lump sum it takes a hard hit to the account which also closes doors that may open in the future and potentially be even more of an opportunity. -What do “I” think the business is doing right and what do “I” think they need to change: A great move for the business was using the available resources, college students, to search for the “right stuff”. They went to the University Career Fair for two main reasons. The first being to get more exposure for the company, advertising to students who could potentially play a part in growing the franchise. They were also able to find two new, experienced printer technicians which would relieve a big burden from them allowing the technicians to do the dirty work while they could finish up the business model and minor financing details. The final smooth move I noticed was handling the change in Memorial management. They could have put everything on hold to see what would change, but instead they just kept rolling, improving on the things they knew they had control over and not getting distracted by the things they can’t. Conclusion: I think that it would be wiser to focus on finishing their managed print services business. I myself am a pretty single minded guy. I do my best to take care of one thing at a time, and not move on till what I’m working on is done. As far as bringing Greg on, I think that it would be easier over all to bring Greg on, but under a different deal where he still provides the work, but not for a lump sum up front. Some things are just not worth the risk, and giving some one money before their services are preformed is not a good one.