WORK INTEGRATED LEARNING: INDUSTRY BASED CASE STUDY

Business analysis for growth and business sustainability

The case study below forms the basis of the majority of study for this course.

Case study – IT company

The IT industry is very fast paced and under a lot of competition from many sources including tech giants like Apple
and Microsoft and tens of thousands of smaller app developers. The ABC IT company commenced operating in
Melbourne just over 15 years ago and today has expanded to different locations around Australia with plans for
further growth and development. In order to do this in a planned and sustainable way, the company needs to
examine the following questions. Your task as a group (formed in week 2) is to systematically analyse the questions
with appropriate business, industry and market research. How well you do this as a group will determine your marks.

Key questions the company needs to answer:

1 What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? (SWOT)

2 Who are our major and minor competitors? What are they doing, how quickly are they growing, are they are
threat - should we be concerned?
3 Undertake a detailed competitive analysis of our competitors, recording and reporting findings with details
on what are the other builders doing , what is their point of difference, what is our point of difference?
4 What are other revenue streams/earners that we should consider (competitor and global trends)? Why? How
and why are they value adding for the business and our current and potential clients? Will they assist with
our long term sustainability?
5 Identify the legal frameworks, requirements, skill sets, licences, work-force and IT system
requirements for these other revenue streams
6 Identify and conduct a risk assessment on what are the pro’s and con’s and pitfalls associated with
pursuing these other revenue streams
7 Identify who, if anyone, is currently pursuing these other revenue streams - not just locally or nationally,
but globally as well.
8 Identify the future trends – building, tech, materials, environmental, processes, IT etc. - in the local, national
and global industry. Understand and analyse how does this can and will impact us, our competitors, current
and future revenue streams and sustainability?