Compare the South East region with the North West region

Introduction

Regional development and growth is largely reflected in the growth of business activities in the area. However, the entire process is normally blocked by a number of factors and dynamics thereby hampering the growth and development process. Lack of enough funds, lack of appropriate information, and lack of affordable business advice and even lack of tools meant for addressing legal compliance are majorly cited as the critical barriers. The report looks at the business support and the impeding dynamics noted in the South East and the North West region. Alongside the observations, the report will strike a comparison of challenges noted between the two areas, establish and analyze the findings before making recommendations for the business support. In such sort of scenarios, seeking expert guidance like business dissertation help, becomes very critical for navigating all these challenges and fostering sustainable business growth.

Parameters and Codes

There are some parameters and codes necessary for the analysis, which reflect the key aspects of pattern of barriers and business support, which is comparable across the two regions. First, the South East region is Region 3 while North West region is denoted as Region 6. Question Q1.1A was selected to reflect or find out the nature of organizations that are found in the two regions while Q1.4 was quite specific on the period of time the business has operated in the region. Q2.1B insists on the development and growth of the business over the last 3 years with a significant background check of the business environment in the region. Q2.1E puts a question on the essence of recruiting and development of staff and how the process would affect the business, while Q2.1H gives attention to the aspect of sales and marketing. Q2.1J was selected to check on the IT system and availability of the company website while Q2.1K gives attention to the startups and how they grow in the South East and North West region. Q2.1E can be correlated to Q2.2E, which raises the question of whether recruitment and development of staff is a challenge or not.

Q2.2G denotes whether introduction of new processes, products and services is a challenge or not, while Q3.2 points at the kind of support the organization or business has received. Q3.3 also focuses on the nature of support while Q3.4 points at the kind of support received in terms of business membership, trade associations and trade bodies. Q3.9 looks at whether the organization has ever looked for information and the reasons for the same information as far as the IT systems and the company websites are put into consideration. Q3.10F focuses on whether the information is in anyway linked to regulations, tax as well as compliance issues.

Findings and Analysis

A first check on the nature of organizations operated in South East region indicated that they were all commercial businesses that were seeking profit. This is after a 100% score from the 222 respondents in the region. The same case appears with the North West region that has all the organizations taking the commercial nature after 100% response from 149 respondents in the region. This means that both ends appreciate the for-profit business activities, which are good for the regional growth and development. Notably, this gives an equal platform for comparison on both ends. Next concern is for how long the businesses have been running for the purposes of speculating the impact of the business activities in the region. In the South East region, 25 out 222 businesses, this is also 11.3%, are less than 1 year old, only 4 businesses or 1.8% have run for 1 year but less than 2 years, 13 or 5.9% have run for 2 years but less than 3 years, 8 or 3.6% have run for 3 years but less than 4 years, 13 or 5.9% have run for 4 years but less than 5 years, 10 or 4.5% have run for 5 years but less than 6 years, 33 or 14.9% have survived between 6-10 years, 35 or 15.8% survived between 11-20 years, 72 or 32.4% have operated for more than 20 years and only 2 cannot figure out for how long they have operated. A true picture of the statistics can be reflected in the graph below.

Notably, an average of 6.5 means that most of the businesses must have operated between 6-10 years. However, most of the businesses in the region have operated for more than 20 years, which is the longest period of time based on the statistics. On the other hand, 19 businesses or 12.8% in the North West region have operated for less than 1 year, 7 or 4.7% have survived for 1 year but less than 2 years, 8 or 5.4% have operated for 2 years but less than 3 years, 11 businesses or 7.4% have operated for 3 years but less than 4 years, 13 or 8.7% have operated for 4 years but less than 5 years, only 4 businesses survived for 5 years but less than 6 years, 17 or 11.4% operated for 6-10 years, 18 or 12.1% survived for 11-20 years and 52 businesses or 34.9% ran for more than 20 years. A graphical representation of the statistics for the businesses in the North West region is as shown below.

The correlation for the duration of businesses in the two regions is shown below

A positive correlation of 0.9611 could be established for the two regions, which indicates that businesses in the regions are almost of the same age and purpose at the same time. This also implies that most of the businesses had a clear impact on the society given the duration businesses have been operating in South East and North West regions. The observation leads to the next comparative parameter for the two regions in terms of the perception towards development and growth of businesses. Such a perception is important in understanding whether the region has the potential to embrace the dynamics or not. The comparison is as generated in Graph 3 below.

Businesses in South East and North West region dominantly feel that development and growth is very signficant and fairly signficant to the business enironment. However, the South East region enjoys an extensive business environment with probably numerous business activities compared to the North West region. There are also substantial figures that feel development and growth is not signficant in both regions, which may attract such cases of lack of appropriate support, stringent regulations, inappropriate business environment and lack of skills and busines knowledge among the young etrepreneurs.

The findings also show that there is a strong positive correlation of 0.9770 between SE and NW in terms of the perception towards development and growth of business. This implies that businesses on either ends have almost same practices, visions, goals and enjoy relatively same business climate with differences likely to emerge from the market segments.

Apart from the essence of development and growth, the findings noted a trend in terms of the attention given to recruitment and development of the staff, sales and marketing, development of the IT systems and the essence of soliciting information. A first quick check on recruitment and developing staff fosters the aspect of knowledge, skills and abilities. This means that selection of employees is a critical process that defines the position of the business and its future. The perception of this issue in SE and NW regions is as shown below.

Graph 4 shows a proportional comparison of the businesses in SE and NW in terms of the perception towards the essence of recruitment and developing staff. Based on the graph, more businesses both in SE and NW do not feel the significance of recruitment and developing staff. This puts to question the size of businesses operated in both regions with chances indicating that most of them must be small and medium sized enterprises. This means that only a few numbers of staff is needed and even some of them can comfortably be operated by the owners. Smaller businesses tend to dominate NW compared to SE due to the high tendency of ignoring the essence of recruitment. At the same time, a significant number of businesses both in SE and NW embrace recruitment as one of the significant elements in the development and growth of the business activities.

Based on the findings in Graph 5, it is evident that businesses in SE and NW feel proportionally signficant to consider sales and marketing as a significant factor in running and developing a business. The graphs keep dropping, which means that lesser and lesser businesses disregard sales and marketing as a significant component amid the business activities. However, the graphs still indicate that businesses in SE pay more attention to sales and marketing compared to the ones in NW. This is an indication that SE is likely to have more resources that can be channeled to the marketing function compared to the ones in the NW region. This means that NW region needs the marketing attetion for it to brand most of the business activities.

Again, the IT systems can be treated as a resourceful function of the businesses because the platform serves as a source of information and a platform for automation of most services. Not every business can afford the IT system or can create a website However, the latest dynamics in the mobile and internet technologies points at the essence of e-commerce as most of the clients or customers can afford a smartphone and can access internet at the same time. For businesses to automate most of the functions, the systems remain significant.

In SE, most of the businesses equally feel that IT systems and company websites are signficant and not signficant at the same time. This is not the situation in NW where businesses highly ignore the IT systems and the essence of the company websites, which is also a landmark of e-commerce amid the business environment. The trend in NW point at the barrier pattern where small busines, due to lack of resources, may not afford good marketing structures and IT systems for their companies. However, this does not indicate that none of the businesses in the region has not embraced the IT platform. The comparison of the two regions shows trhe SE industry as at an advanced stage compared to the NW industry which seems to be struggling when it comes to embracing technology in the business enironment. From the observations made in terms of seeking support, it is worrying that businesses in SE and NW rarely looked for support from trade associations and even business memeberships. Only a bunch of businesses would pay attention to trade associations and business membership.

Recommendations

The findings and analysis have focused on four critical areas that would define the business environment both in the South East region and the North West region. The four areas include recruitment and developing of staff, sales and marketing, IT systems and company websites and lastly, the essence of seeking business support. Based on the observations made, businesses both in SE and NW rarely pay attention to recruitment and development of staff. They however give attention to sales and marketing as a significant component or function of business growth and development. Most of the businesses in both regions rarely pay attention to the IT systems and company websites (Gródek-Szostak et al. 2017). Critical observations would however indicate that SE shows significant investment in sales and marketing as well as the IT systems and company websites compared to the NW region. It could still be noted that the NW region is heavily dominated by medium and small sized businesses, which cannot afford the IT infrastructure as well as put up a robust marketing function.

Based on these observations, the following recommendations are felt significant. First, on the issue of staffing, businesses in SE and NW need to pay attention to the idea of talent acquisition especially for businesses that have more than 20 employees. This means that the screening process needs to be revised while focusing on the talent gaps that have been identified before. However, the process would imply that businesses should pull more resources towards the business before establishing a robust screening process, which defines the kind of talents that need to be acquired from the job market as they define the future of the business environment in SE and NW. On the side of sales and marketing function, the businesses need to consult the integrated marketing communication (IMC), which has a range of tools that would bolster the marketing function. SE region has already shown significant investments in IMC, which need to be understood and implemented from the technological angle (Bhaskar 2016).

The same awareness need to be extended to NW, which has dominant small enterprises. Perhaps, NW should focus on the cheaper alternatives provided by IMC for them to reach a wider market. On the side of the IT systems and company websites businesses both in SE and NW should consult the new alternatives for hosting website using FTP, and even website development using WordPress and other readily available tools. The internet technology is absolutely free, which means that businesses can approach even social media platforms in the course of engaging the market. The e-commerce function is currently cheap due to the growth of the cloud computing environment (Rudenko et al. 2016). AWS cloud is one of the cloud enablers that are helping businesses to run the IT functions with the help of a third party. Lastly, businesses in SE and NW need to join associations and business memberships, including unions, for them to learn the business dynamics and share challenges faced within the business environment.

Conclusion

The report has engaged a comparative study of the business environment in SE and NW. Based on the findings; it is clear enough that SE has a robust business environment compared to NW. While there are gaps in the growth and development of businesses in both regions, the report has surfaced a number of recommendations. Some of the recommendations include consultation of IMC, boosting the screening process and going for cheaper technological platforms.

References

Gródek-Szostak, Z., Szeląg-Sikora, A., Sikora, J. and Korenko, M., 2017. Prerequisites for the cooperation between enterprises and business support institutions for technological development. Business And Non-Profit Organizations Facing Increased Competition And Growing Customers’demands.

Bhaskar, H.L., 2016. A critical analysis of information technology and business process reengineering. International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 19(1), pp.98-115.

Rudenko, L.G., Zaitseva, N.A., Mekush, G.E., Dmitrieva, N.V. and Vasilieva, L.S., 2016. Improving private sector and government partnership system to support small businesses in the service sector. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 11(5), pp.1261-1270.

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