CASE STUDY – WORLDUCATION

Worlducation is a social start-up that manufactures tablet computers for primary school students.
They not only focus on the hardware, but they also have a competitive team creating software,
content and activities to better engage and educate the students.
Worlducation aims to change the way children learn at school by implementing artificial intelligence
technology that can follow up on each child’s progress and adjust to their needs as they learn,
creating the optimal path learning experience.
So far, Worlducation only sells their tablet computers business to business (B2B) as they realised that
their content and hardware proved most effective when a whole classroom was using it, and a teacher
was coordinating the activities. Also, this helped the sales team focus on larger sales, and minimised
the potential number of problems that could arise from individual customers. However, the long-term
plan is to also tackle a business to consumer strategy (B2C).
What makes Worlducation completely different from their competition is that they envision a world in
which every child learns how to read and write – a world without illiteracy. Given this vision, for every
classroom that buys their products, they donate and train a classroom somewhere around the world
that can’t afford the same technology. Furthermore, they connect the two classrooms (those who
bought the products and services and those who received the donation) so that they can grow
together and collaborate throughout their learning cycle.
Worlducation headquarters are in Sydney’s CBD but they have a development team in Bulgaria, a
manufacturing team in Hong Kong, and operation and sales and marketing staff in Colombia, Egypt,
Iceland, Russia and the Philippines. The management structure is shown below.

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Worlducation’s organisational structure is shown in the figure below.

Worldcation has a complex supply chain that begins when a sale is made usually via a sales
representative or through and online enquiry that is handled by the sales team. Sales are recorded in
an internal Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP System) which notifies the operations team
that an order needs to be delivered. The operations team verify the sales order and authorise the
delivery of a manufacturing request to the factory in Hong Kong. Manufacturing team in Hong Kong
notes the order specifications and delivery details and incorporates this within its production schedule.
The order is manufactured, and the operations team arrange freight and shipping directly to the
customer. New software is developed or adapted by the software development and the advertising
team develops adverts to reflect the software capabilities. A call centre exists to take customer calls
and resolve minor customer queries or complaints.
Worlducation was founded in 2016, and by the end of 2019 they had sold over 35,000 tablets to over
550 schools in 23 countries, generating revenue in hardware sales and software subscriptions. The
global COVID-19 pandemic surprisingly brought hundreds of new leads and that has led to an
unprecedented growth that brought alongside dozens of operation and production problems.
The CEO has made it a priority to address the critical and creative thinking skills in the organisation
to:

 equip employees to constructively deal with the COVID-19 pandemic challenges

 incorporate formal critical thinking processes in the organisation.

In the past, critical thinking has been valued but not formally recognised. Teams have often met to
brainstorm; problem solve and innovate – but this has been done ad hoc and unplanned.

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Each manager must address critical thinking in their team. As they do so, they must consider
legislation and regulations applicable to their team (e.g., Privacy Legislation, Consumer Protection
legislation, WHS requirements).

Specific information that may be used as for Section 1 of the Project Portfolio
You are the Sales and Marketing Manager. Specific problems associated with your work area include:

 sales meetings with customers occur online and sales representatives miss the in-person
interaction

 sales representatives are overwhelmed by the number of sales calls they need to make

 frequent shipment delays and manufacturing issues have resulted in an unusual number of
customer complaints to the call centre

 advertising staff must frequently adapt the advertising to reflect new and unique software
adaptations

 adverts are not always accurate for all customers.

Required resources frequently used by the Sales and Marketing team include:

 software specifications

 customer needs documents (e.g., surveys)

 customer profiles

 ERP system

 call centre technology

 Zoom.

As a start, the Sales and Marketing team completed professional development plans to assist you to
establish your team’s critical thinking development requirements. Three of the plans are shown below:

Role description Role: Sales representative in Russia

Key competencies:
 Able to maintain positive customer relationships (e.g., show empathy)

 Able to use ERP system

 Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

 Organisational skills to fulfill duties (e.g., team meeting)

 Interpret user requirements

 Navigate diverse opinions

Development Personal: Organisational skills to manage multiple zoom calls, interacting

requirements with difference cultures within the team (advertising staff in Australia)

Professional: Maintain positive online customer relationships

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 Role description Role: Call centre staff in Philippines

Key competencies:
 Use technology to solve and represent customer queries

 Communication skills to manage emotional customers

 Organisational skills to manage workload.

 Establish facts from fiction (i.e., what is a real issue and what is a
perceived issue) when dealing with a customer complaint.

 Resolve problems

Development Personal: Manage anxiety due to increased workload.

requirements
Professional: Deal with emotional clients, graphical representation of call
centre data

Role description Role: Advertising staff in Sydney CBD

Key competencies:
 Design and develop adverts for multiple mediums

 Attention to detail

 Organisational skills to manage workload

Development Personal: Improved attention to detail.

requirements
Professional: Improve digital advertising skills – creativity with technology

Internal communication within Worlducation Sales and Marketing Team is challenging due to the
different languages spoken by the different across the world (as well as the time zones they operate
in). This is especially noticeable because of the many ongoing COVID-19 related decisions that must
be made and communicated to internal employees as well as customers.

Specific information that may be used as for Section 2 of the Project Portfolio
After meeting with the Sales and marketing team you decided to address the team knowledge gaps
as follows:

Meeting Meeting outcome Action to be taken

discussion point

Team knowledge Experience difficultly Develop a process for the Sales and
gaps: establishing fact from fiction Marketing Team that uses an internal online
when dealing with customer discussion forum or chat group to assist each
issues other establish whether the customer
complaint is factual or perceived (i.e., is it fact
Cannot represent information or fiction).

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 Meeting Meeting outcome Action to be taken
discussion point

graphically Develop a procedure to guide the graphical

representation of customer complaint data.
The data is already captured in a feedback
register on MS Excel with information such as:

 Complaint type

 Time to resolve the complaint

 Whether the complaint is resolved

Informal learning opportunity – send a daily

riddle via email (for one week) to the team to
help them analyse facts.

Sales Online relationships Formal learning opportunity - email links of

representative relevant cultural sensitivity YouTube clips to
Valuing differing perspectives
knowledge gap: the staff member and ask that they watch it as
and cultures
part of their work hours and make notes about
what they’ve learnt.

Advertising staff Digital creativity Formal learning opportunity - Source best

knowledge gap: practice examples of digital creativity and
Evaluation skills to review
provide them in an email to the advertising
work for accuracy
staff member. Ask that the staff member to
look at the examples during work hours and
makes notes about what they’ve learnt.

Call centre staff Negotiation skills Formal learning opportunity – email a link to a
knowledge gap: useful YouTube video that shows how to
Graphical data
create graphs to the staff member and ask
representation
that they watch it as part of their work hours
and practice what they’ve learnt.

Specific information that may be used as for Section 3 of the Project Portfolio
The call centre staff member has improved their ability to graphical represent data. However, they are
still lacking in their negotiation skills. The advertising staff member has created digital adverts that
have received positive feedback form many customers, however, they are still lacking in attention to
detail when evaluating their work for accuracy. The sale representatives have developed solid online
relationships with customers but are finding the different time zones of the customers difficult to
navigate.
You have identified recommendations for improving future learning based on the outcomes above.
One of these recommendations is to hold monthly team meetings with a focus on critical thinking. You
have decided to develop an agenda that can be used for the first meeting. All meeting agendas at
Worlducation use the following template:

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 Meeting agenda
Meeting 2: Include description.

Meeting Date:

Meeting Time/duration:

Meeting Location:

Attendees:

Chair:

Please bring &/or read:

Agenda Items Time Allocated

1 Welcome and apologies 2 minutes

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STRATEGIC PLAN 2021 – 2023

Welcome
Welcome to the Strategic Plan for Worlducation.
This document sets out our vision for the next two years and how we hope to achieve it.
We hope you enjoy reading this document.

Lucas Lopez
CEO
Worlducation

Executive Summary
Founded in 2016, Worlducation is a social start-up that manufactures tablet computers for primary
school students. Our focus is not only on the hardware, but also creating software, content, and
activities to better engage and educate primary school students.
Worlducation aims to change the way children learn at school by implementing artificial intelligence
technology that can follow up on each child’s progress and adjust to their needs as they learn,
creating the optimal path learning experience. Worlducation envisions a world in which every child
learns how to read and write – a world without illiteracy. Therefore, for each classroom that buys our
product, we donate and train a classroom somewhere around the world that can’t afford the same
technology. We then connect the classrooms together so that they can grow and collaborate
throughout their learning cycle.

Vision Statement
To see a world without illiteracy.

Mission Statement
To be the change and facilitate a world without illiteracy by changing the way children learn at school
and the number of schools that have access to technology.

Our values are:

Core values underpinning our activities are:

 Ethical principles

 Innovation

 Collaboration.

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Strategic Priorities and objectives

To be well led, high performing, profitable and accountable.

 Ensure that all financial operations, performance indicators and results support the strategic
policies

 Identify new and expand existing sources of revenue and ways to help more classrooms in need.

 Achieve profits of at least 10% per annum.

Increase our reach

 Increase range of products and services offered to reach a larger target market

 Increase sales to increase donations to needy classrooms.

Continue building deeper customer relationships

 Customer-centred practice, with a focus on meeting their total needs for high-quality technology

 Strengthen the skills of our people, to better support customers

 Drive innovation to better meet customer demands

Attract, engage and develop the best staff

 Continuing the drive to a customer centred, high performance workforce and culture

 Strengthening the skills of our people, to better support customer needs

 Empowering innovation and responsiveness to change

 Continuing to enhance the diversity of our workforce

 Exploring the use of technology in human resources.

The Market
The technology market is a growing and ever-changing industry due to the rapid rate that technology
is being updated. Emerging technologies include artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IOT).
There is an increasing focus on cyber security.
Due to the global pandemic, the issues with the manufacturing industry have impacted on the supply
of hardware components.
The trend for consumer spending during the pandemic has taken a downturn but this has not affected
the ICT industry as due to more people working form home, consumer appetite for tablets has
increased.

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Situation Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses

 Value and quality  Brand name not developed as well it could

be
 Strong management
 Growing organisation
 Customer loyalty

 Friendly organisational culture

 Level of available finance for investment

Opportunities Threats

 Schools needing to upgrade technology  High level of competition

 Opportunities to offer a range of services  Economic downturn meaning less spent

generally
 Opportunities for synergies across all
services and products  Failing to satisfy clients demands

Marketing Strategies
Our marketing strategies aim to:

 Build our brand

 Generate leads now

 Convert those leads quickly

 Have every part of the business supporting each other

We plan to develop our market share by:

 Improving our marketing and advertising

 Continually improving the quality of service given to clients

 Maintaining effective communication channels with all stakeholders to ascertain industry

requirements and then develop products and manage services accordingly

 Continually improving communication channels with all our stakeholders, ensuring a flow of
timely and accurate information to facilitate effective planning and decision making

 Targeting identified growth markets with planned, market appropriate campaigns employing a
variety of promotional strategies and advertising mediums

 Offering attractive fee structures to our clients

 Continually improving the skills, knowledge and effectiveness of our team through our
commitment to training and development

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 Regularly reviewing the effectiveness of all our operations and making improvements when and
where necessary

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EMPLOYEE TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND
PROCEDURES

Policy brief & purpose

This policy refers to Worlducation’s learning and development programs and activities for all staff
members. Worlducation aims to help employees extend their knowledge and acquire new skills to do
their jobs better. We want our employees to feel confident to find new ways towards personal
development and success.

Scope
This policy applies to all permanent, full-time or part-time, employees of the company. Employees with
temporary/short-term contracts might attend trainings at their manager’s discretion.
Employees, managers and executives should collaborate to build a continuous professional
development (CPD) culture:

 The employee is responsible to seek new learning opportunities

 The manager is responsible to coach their teams and identify employee development needs

Training and development includes:

 Formal training sessions (individual or corporate)

 Employee Coaching and Mentoring

 Participating in conferences

 On-the-job training

 Job shadowing

 Job rotation

 Subscriptions or educational material

Individual training programs

All employees that have worked for the company more than four months are eligible to participate in
external training programs individually or in teams.
Employees can choose to attend as many training programs as they want, provided they don’t exceed
the budget and day limit.
All trainings should consider what employees need and how they can learn best. This is why, we
encourage employees and managers to consider multiple training methods like workshops, e-
learning, lectures and more.

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Corporate training programs
Expert training
Experts (internal or external) may be required at certain times, for example:

 Equal employment opportunity training

 Diversity training

 Leadership training for managers

 Conflict resolution training for employees

 Training new employees

 Training teams in company-related issues (e.g., new systems or policy changes)

 Training employees to prepare them for promotions, transfers, or new responsibilities

Other types of training

Both employees and their managers are responsible for continuous learning. Employees should show
willingness to improve by asking their managers for direction and advice. Managers should do the
same with their own superiors, while encouraging and mentoring their subordinates.
Employees and managers are responsible for finding the best ways to approach learning. They can
experiment with job rotation, job shadowing and other types of on-the-job training (without disrupting
daily operations). We also encourage employees to use their rights for self-paced learning by asking
for educational material and access to other resources within allocated budget.

General guidelines:
Managers should evaluate the success of training efforts. They should keep records for reference and
better improvement opportunities.
All employee development efforts should respect cost and time limitations, as well as individual and
business needs.
Employees should try to make the most out of their trainings by studying and finding ways to apply
knowledge to their work.

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