Farm-Produce Business:
Venture Startup Starting Phase
Having set up the production and started operating, the business can either remain frozen as a Small Business, or choose to grow bigger. Such growth can be by replication or general internal growth. While the former keeps the operations as still a Small Business with branches, the growth choice of the latter form of internal expansion invariably gets the business evolving into the Venture Startup Stage of the normal venture development path. This stage consists of three phases: Starting Phase, Execution Phase and Penetration Phase; and the inception of startup stage is right within the Starting Phase.
The main strivings of the Starting Phase is mostly the planning out of the strategic growth of the driving vision and overall corporation design that aligns and enables the growth plan as developed. So, at this stage the most significant task is the putting together of the Business Development Department, which object is the performing of the primary activities as so far noted followed by the actual effectuation of the planning and corporation design. Much care is usually taken in deciding on the scope and positions of the Business Development Department and determined through here in defining the tasks and challenges that must be meticulously performed towards the stable and gradual growth of the business.
The Business Development Department usually consists of the Middle Management only, because it addresses mostly the design and implementation of the tactics of the conceptual would-be growth strategic plans derivative of the growth strategic goal as crafted by the CEO or aggregator-entrepreneur. While the actual tasks performed are venture specific, certain tasks are generic and so common to all ventures. Some such common tasks are the integration of the Business Process developed on the business activities routinizations and the evaluation of the strategic scenarios constructs that proffers viability and growth to enduring existence.
The actioning of the growth objectives is usually initiated with simple re-entrenchment of the Small Business staffs beginning with elevating the heretofore Office/Operations Manager into the position of Vice President, with the charge of undertaking the Business Development activities and together with some staffs of the otherwise Administration group set to directly engaging on the same becomes part of the newly formed Business Development Department. This act by the aggregator-entrepreneur of the Farm-Produce Business is then by the VP-Business Development by sourcing, deciding on and leasing a larger space for the operations of the business, and planning the moving of the company into this new facility so that the anticipated more people required to form the dynamic Business Development Department do have places to do the work as each gets hired for the corporate operations; after all, the staffs hired to provides operations supports to the Middle Management being hired for the tactics development indeed swells the rank and file of the department.
The start of the move is marked by the charge of the System Administration to replicate the IT network system in the new facility, and with a system of wiring that allows the rapid adjustment to support the information exchange and management needs of the staffs due to be employed. Further, the replication process should have the hosted managed server relocated into the company and integrate into the newly implemented internal IT network.
Then on moving of the whole operations over to the new facility; first to do, upon the completion of the IT system is the moving of the Business Development Department. Subsequently, the VP-Business Development hires the Personnel Administrator who would immediately take on the challenge of hiring the staffs for redundancies of the transition phase operations so that general stability and incremental growth are maintained, and supported as other members of the Development Department are hired. Meanwhile, the rest of the staff of the company are moved to the new building/facility and set in sections of the facility allocated to the operations that each has been performing.
Acting through the Personnel Administrator, hiring of the middle managers then starts off. Each of these hires is invariably made a member of the Business Development Department and reports directly to the Vice President. Usually an explicit department of the Assist VPs, each with an Administrative Assistant, is created. In ventures where internal growth is valued, however, then the five staffs of the Transition Phase are promoted, one at a time, to the positions of Assistant Vice Presidents of the operations that was in the purview of the person. Moreover, in these cases of internal growth, the Business Development Department does not actually get created within a physical space but rather exists in abstraction so that the newly appointed Assist VPs continue to perform their operations for the stability of active operations. Indeed, the Business Development Department has myriad tasks to perform in short order, all aimed at growing the existing operations, in the immediate future, and these tasks being,
Sales Planning
Production Operations Capacity Expansion
Redesign of the Enterprise System
So the hiring of the Assist VPs follows the same order of the activities.
So, first and foremost, the Assist VP of Sales is hired, and tasked with developing a plan for forming the Sales Department. Of course, such task entails defining the operational Business activities that should characterize the department, the staff level and count necessary to support the efficient routine conduct of the business activities, the space requirements and the activities-set specific office and ancillary productivity tools required by each of the staffs. In particular, in readiness for the Execution Phase of the Startup Stage the Assist VP of Sales must conceptually develop and then evolve actionable plan for making manifest the Sales Cycle to be adopted, based on the methods used by the founder to fund the Transition Phase. The plan should then be presented for approval and then acted upon gradually in alignment with the capacity of the production operations.
Next, and before the Sales Planning is completed, the Assist VP of Production is hired, and tasked with developing a viable plan for expanding the Production Operations with particular emphasis on the delivery mechanisms as paramount and that the expansion embrace arrangements for the effective and reliable transportation of the products to al prospective buyers, as composed from the Sales Planning, be the buyers be any or combination of grocery stores, restaurants, caterers and hotels. The expansion of the production operations is also likely to include a revamping of the arrangements with the farm delivery operations, as is necessary, so that products of degraded quality may be returned back to the farms for use as resources-feed to the Biotic Anaerobic Digesters or Green Energy Technology Process.
With the planning for expansion agreed and the potential for rapid growth comes the need for better management of the funds to ensure solvency at all times, for steady operations. Accordingly, the VP Business Development turns focus on implementing more structured and robust Accounting System is set up to empower growth. Preferably an experience Accountant is hired to takeover the system practiced during the transition Phase and tasked with systematizing the activities as well as infusing the methods with more standardized Accounting Principles as accepted at national levels. Again, as was with the Assist VP of Sales the task of building the Accounting Department entails defining the operational business activities scoping the accounting needs, the staff level and count necessary to support the efficient routine conduct of the business activities, the space requirements and the activities-set specific office and ancillary productivity tools required by each of the staffs.
Finally, the VP Business Development turns attention to actual Startup Stage demands, which is the implementation of the factors that should enable the realization of the Growth Strategic Goal, the target of the visionary growth as defined through the founding vision. Of course, such growth goal always achieved only as a consequence of attaining Enduring Existence, and as such also the underlying subsumption of the VP Business Development as the case of Venture Development management is taken on, in accordance with the Founding Vision.
Based on the Founding Vision and as may have been sketched out in the Business Plan if one has been documented, the various necessary departments are abstracted and listed on defining the constituents units forming the Farm-Produce Business organization. The employees count for staffing these departments are also projected to further determine both the additional space and productivity assets as needed to support the operations. These department and the potential interactions are organized into an Organizational Chart. Now given the prospective size of the venture, the Organizational Chart and the character in view of the anticipated Corporate Culture, the revamping of the Enterprise Design is taken by the VP Business Development. Understandably a completely new, as thoroughly revised, Reporting Formalism evolves. The various staffs currently employed are then re-entrenched yet again according to the upgraded Organizational Chart.
Guided by the Organizational Chart, the intra-department projected activities, and the staffs count of each department, a consistent set of business activities is defined and crafted for each department and for every staff of each department on which the job descriptions are ultimately documented. Using these business activities, the integrated operations of each department is developed from implementing operating Business Process system for the routinization of said department.
The vision for the company as due to obtain in the future and reflected in the Enterprise Design, also elicits a certain operating cost and revenue potential based on the productions capacity represented in the design. This information and data extractable from it enables determination of the operating conditions for profitability, first through and analysis of the Break-Even Point of the production capacity. Then, of course, subsuming the commercial viability of such Break-Even Point the Assist VP Productions further develops, based on the accepted growth projection, plan for the expansion of the production to support the Execution Phase.
Human Resources Development plan is often developed to bring the staffs vision, hopes and dreams into alignment with long term employment with the company. The reality is that the quality of the staff which affects achieving these goals to some extent depends on the context of locale of the company, where the locale may be defined by community, regional and national flavors of culture, skills and educational standards. These must be uplifted with various imbuement in accommodation of the common observation that every company is unique onto itself by virtue of its Founding Vision, Driving Force and Growth Strategic Framework; so the staffs that would be hired will have to be enticed with Employee Benefits and be given training both within the job and without the job with the objective that other employee issues are addressed subject to the role of the employees in the mission statement.
At this point of the Business Development planning is completed, and now the focus must shift to implementation, the Growth Strategic Implementation Planning, which is not trivial by any imagination. In this regard each Assist VP is asked to bring forth an implementation plan for the formation of the respective department. Upon the plans being all submitted to the VP Business Development, all the plans are then integrated into a unified whole, effectively creating the Growth Strategic Implementation Plan.
For the purposes of the financial cleaning up of the Growth Strategic Plan and the Growth Strategic Implementation Plan, a Chief Financial Officer is advisedly hired, and tasked to establishing the Financial Viability of the business as heretofore captured in the Plans. The matters of financing needs and financing planning ought be properly addressed ahead of the onset of the Implementation. Indeed, the completion of the development of the Growth Strategic Implementation Plan asserts a testimonial of the preparedness of the business to undertake the Execution Phase. Even so the Commercial Viability of the business as elicited with the analysis of the Break Even Point and Market Size evaluation, does not sufficiently arrest the capacity to attain Enduring Existence, for that assessment, the analysis of Financial Viability is essential. For one thing the analysis establishes the growth financing needs as well as the capacity to attain critical mass soon enough before the Break Even Point. So then an evaluation of the financial viability of the company given that Break Even Point is imperative. Admittedly, however, this analysis of Financial Viability is iterative and often invites in additional modification of the integrated Growth Strategic Plan, and schedules of the various Assist VPs.
The Commercial Viability of the Farm-Produce Business such as may be determined to be affirmative based on the Break Even Point requires in-depth appreciation of the harvesting outcome of the Green Subsistence Farming and reliability on the quality of the produce from which the product-offered as per design can be maintained, most likely by methods of Linear Programming. Therefore, keeping apprised on the presentation on Green Subsistence Farming also published on this same platform as this publication would be quite insightful.