Disruptive technologies are directly impacting the traditional markets (Leggat et al., 2022). As such, more companies are resorting to a collaborative business ecosystem to remain competitive and provide a differentiated customer experience in line with modern customer expectations. In addition, these companies are constantly monitoring and evaluating their business environments in order to adapt to the evolving or changing trends. -Avoid the use of references without dates -e.g. Shaibu, n.d. Required: Prepare a consultancy report for the Board of Directors of a real-life company of your choice. Your report should analyse the business ecosystem of your chosen firm. The purpose of your report is to critically appraise the success or possible failure of your chosen company in relation to how the company adopted and operated (within) its collaborative business ecosystem. Your report should also critically examine any or all of the PESTLE factors that might have influenced the company’s competitive position in the market. In effect, you are to ultimately analyse the competitive position of your chosen company vis-à-vis any comparative competitor within the industry in which the company operates. You should constructively suggest feasible strategies that the company could adopt in order to remain competitive, regain competitiveness, retain its market position or otherwise. Your report should, ideally, include the following: •A brief summary of the current and historical position of your chosen firm/compamy. •An explanation of the nature of the ecosystem of organisations, what its critical elements are and how business ecosystems impact organisations. •An analysis of the business ecosystem of your chosen company; how your chosen company operates and how it has used its ecosystem to increase its market position. Your analysis and discussions should include when (the timeline) and how (the approach) the company used to increase its market position. •A condensed analysis of the impacts of the PESTLE factors on the operations and going-concern prospects of the company. You may decide to focus on a key selection of the PESTLE factors. •A recommendation on how your chosen company could further enhance its own business ecosystem to remain competitive in the wake of increasing market competition. Guidance: Your answer should be in the form of a fully referenced academic report and should be approximately 2,000 words (+ / – 10%), and include references and a bibliography using the Harvard system. Penalties for late submission and for plagiarism apply •You are expected to research the topics and not just to summarise the slides provided or the essential and recommended texts. You should use at least twenty (20) different sources of information and try to use eBooks, books and/or published articles rather that the internet. •You should use a report format i.e. you need a front cover, table of contents, page numbers, introduction, sections (as prescribed in the coursework below) and a conclusion. This will be followed by a list of references. You can also add appendices as necessary. The below painted in black are further instructions on how to go about it. Vodafone is just an example. I intend to use Mcdonalds Introduction to the report setting out the purpose of the paper (the current and prior performance of Vodafone telecom vis-à-vis its ecosystem and industry), approach to be used, tools or methods of analysis (the paper used an analysis of the business ecosystem of Vodafone . . . specifically mention three components of the ecosystem you’re examining . . . and a PEST analysis in which the Environmental, Socio-Cultural and Political factors were critically appraised) to be adopted and how to address the requirements (at least indicate the expected outputs or outcome of your study) Summary of the Current and Historical Position of the Company Must be referenced using the Harvard Referencing style. (3) Vodafone, 2022. Available at [https://investors.vodafone.com/reports-information/results-reports-presentations. Accessed on 09/03/2022] Cite the financial statement Vodafone, 2022. Vodafone Group plc Target max 250words 10 Discussion of Business Ecosystems and how Business Ecosystems Impact Firms Must be referenced using the Harvard Referencing style. (5) -Consider from a generic point of view as a start -Consider the archetypes and how these impact firms -Ensure you synthesize your arguments to align with the Vodafone case study -Impacts should be both quantitative and qualitative Target
