UMADDF-15-2 Financial Aspects for Marketing, Events, and Tourism Report Assessment Brief

Assessment Instructions 

Background 

PureFlow is a medium-sized UK company located in Southwest England, specialising in the production and sale of a diverse range of travel and leisure products. Recently, the organization has faced significant challenges, including declining profits and falling sales. As the financial situation continues to deteriorate, there is an urgent need for a new Mission Statement to guide the company's future direction. 

Following several urgent meetings between the marketing team and the finance director, the Board of Directors determined that the company's underperformance was due to a lack of eye-catching products, intense competition, and a failure to penetrate emerging markets within the industry.

The Board of Directors has observed that the current bestselling product is a reusable water bottle, introduced to the market five years ago. While initially very popular, the product was soon replicated by well-known brands that better targeted younger consumers who were more conscious of the environmental impact of their choices. 

Marketing have reported to the Board of Directors that most of PureFlow products are viewed by customers as old fashioned and not environmentally focused and the company desperately need a new product to increase its market share and ensure its financial growth. 

The new product needs to be in line with what they currently produce but needs to reinvigorate the organisation. It must be attractive, high-quality, and eco-friendly qualities that PureFlow has been lacking over the past five years. 

Financial Information 

The finance director has secured £ 600,000 in funding for researching, designing, and producing a new product for retail sale. Project teams are now invited to bid for this money.

 Project teams who want to make a bid for the money should consider the following: 

The £600,000 budget has been borrowed; one-third of this £600,000 is in the form of equity and a 15% return is required upon this, whilst the remainder (two-thirds of this £600,000) was borrowed from the bank, with a required return of 9%. Both groups of lenders have agreed that payment of the required return can be delayed until after the 5-year project period. The finance director has indicated that he will not sign off on a project that does not return more than the weighted average cost of capital. Furthermore, he would prefer projects that return the initial investment of £600,000 swiftly and will not consider projects that take longer than 5 years to pay back. 

Once the money is awarded to a project team: Up to £300,000 MUSTbe spent on new machinery to produce the new product and the remaining money should be spent as the team sees fit on initial labour, advertising, research & development and raw material costs in year 0 (before the product is launched in year 1). All £600,000 MUST be spent in year 0.

You should assume that your product will be on the market in its current form for the next 5 years and that at the end of this time any non-current assets used to produce it will have no scrap value.

Required:

Your project team has decided to put together a proposal to bid for the £600,000. Your cross- functional team is made up of representatives from the following areas:

• Senior management
• Members of the finance function
• Members of the marketing function
• Members of the production function 

Students should work in groups of 5 (can be less than 5 but no bigger than 6) and should consider their group to be the cross-functional team outlined above. Your project group must work together to design a product that is in line with the 'PureFlow' brand. Your team should draw up a proposal that convinces the management team to award you the £600,000. 

As part of your bid, the group must produce a written report of 1,350-1,500 words. 

The report should cover the following areas: 

(Percentage weightings in brackets represent the importance of each part of the report. NOTE that an additional 7% will be given for presentation, UWE Harvard style referencing, and appropriate report format) 

Explain why you have chosen this product in the context of this industry. How does the product fit with the proposed Mission Statement*? (15%*1) Preparation of a capital expenditure proposal containing (40%): 

• A yearly cash-flow forecast for the next 5 years.

Module learning outcomes assessed by this task: 

• MO1 Understand and apply investment appraisal techniques to evaluate long-term investment decisions.
• MO2 Explain how financial information systems within business organisations aid senior managers in planning and controlling activities with particular reference to the role of budgets.
• MO3 Explore the use of performance measurement systems in organisations, with particular reference to the Balanced Scorecard and responsibility accounting.