MGT605 Business Capstone Project Report 3
Reflection provides the opportunity to detail what learning has occurred and the meaning you have gathered from various learning experiences. This practice helps to solidify new knowledge and prepare the brain for similar experiences in the future. Given you will be part of many projects in your career, this assessment provides an opportunity to reflect on the process and experiences you have encountered throughout your capstone project so you can consolidate your ‘lessons learnt’ to apply to future projects.
Throughout your capstone experience, you will have developed a substantial project that assimilates the learning from your MBA subjects. In addition, over the course of your MBA you have recorded your journey in the form of journal entries. This final report is about reflecting on the process and experiencesof putting your business capstone project together and how you have drawn on the learning from your MBA.
Before you can attempt this assessment, it is essential that you understand clearly what reflective writing/thinking is. To help you with that, please read your learning resources in In 1500 words or less , present a reflection, using one of the more widely accepted Reflexive models as a guide, on changes to your understanding as you applied theory to practice from your MBA journey and the process of producing your project. Below are some suggested questions that you can use to help guide your reflective thinking.
• What did you learn and how useful do you think it will be in future for you?
• What was challenging and what was easy?
• Compared to the beginning of your capstone project, has your thinking changed? If so in what ways?
Please note that these are guiding questions only. They are not intended to be all and everything about your reflection. It is advisable to do more research about reflective writing models and questions before you attempt this assessment.
Present the reflection in any way you wish – this could be poetry, a video, or a more traditional format - as your way of demonstrating the wider implications of your learning. That means your reflection should also look at how your learning will impact your future. Though reflective work is written in the first person, you must still meet the requirements of an academic assessment. All references should be noted in APA 7th edition format at the end of the submission.
I was introduced to H&R Block, for which a tax and accounting agency will be set up. H&R Block is a tax filing service that will provide more and for free than TurboTax-Free. This will include the IRS letter that will be filled out before, the parents will like this as they would be able to keep track of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit, and the students will also appreciate it as it will provide an easy and fast feature (Simonsen, 2022). In the Business Capstone Project, I was introduced to the critical stakeholders of H & R Block, which included the CEO and the Chairman to be the prime head, Jeff Jones. As per the MBA Assignment Experts, The Board of Directors, such as, Sean Cohan, Robert A. Gerard, Any Gupta, and many more. Then the departmental managers who control the IT department and the company accounts department mainly look at the department and work as the departmental managers (Simonsen, 2022). And lastly, under the key stakeholders, I was told that the business's current shareholders, such as The Vanguard Group, Inc, Blackrock Fund Advisor, etc.
Then I was introduced to the background of the context, and the set involved a history of H&R Block which said that this is a tax preparation company with the potential to expand in Melbourne. The services provided by this company will be available to the anticipated clients of Melbourne. The target of this corporation is to reach the highest level in Melbourne itself (Deneault, 2021). To brief out more about the company, I also got introduced to its SWOT and PESTEL features, how it will be great to be a part of this company for taxation in the future and how it will be a disadvantage. I feel going with any Taxation Company is equal to taking risks as no company has only advantages, there is something that they lag, all we as their customers have to trust. Even they have to work in such a way to our trusts built on them, so it works two ways. The SWOT and PESTEL explanation provided was based on the company-based political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors (Deneault, 2021). Through its political analysis, I understood that the company had been certified by the AUFTA, the Australian Free Trade Agreement, so that it will provide free trade facility as per the agreement.
Knowing more about the company, I had to search for the limitations that this company should follow or they are already following. I had to give proper recommendations for every limitation. The limitation involved the writing of the technological advancement that the company follows and the company has to follow in the future (Josephson et sl. 2021). Finding the limitation and giving recommendations was not easy to work for me as well. I had to work for the company in depth to find its drawback, and finding a big company’s drawbacks is not easy because, according to logic, every prominent company masters every field and cannot have any drawbacks.
While going through the Business Capstone Project, I can say the company and the ideas they want to build in the future are great. Still, I learned a few things about the company that might be good, but there are a few things that are also not straightforward. I will start with its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Working on the SWOT analysis was easy (Benzaghta et al. 2021). As I was working and learning about the company, I could figure out their strength and weaknesses quickly. PESTEL analysis was a bit tough (Christodoulou & Cullinane, 2019). I had to search how the company benefited in terms of political, economic, social, legal, and environmental basis. I was not supposed to mention its impact. For this, I had to study the Australian government and its companies and write how H&M Block creates a good image. The opportunity the company has come up with is the new taxation policy that they impose, but the threat to it is that the company faces competitive threats. That is, the taxation policy that the company might be thinking or has imposed has already been used or might have been used by the other taxation companies. This is not the only company providing free taxation; there might be many other companies (Cairney, 2021). The other opportunity is their additional online services, but the company faces threats in Intuit and Credit Karma.
The company follows the core KPI, which is Key Performance Indicators. Firstly, I had to study what KPI is, how it works in every company, and its importance. While surveying this, I found that 33% of the employees working in the H&R Block Company were aware of the KPI, which I consider is not a very good percentage. I had to search the web and look at how likely the KPI was in this company and compare it with the other companies. I also had to look for graphs to prove my writing along with proper referencing, which was difficult for me. I was taught that KPI is essential for every running company was it measures the values that demonstrate how efficiently it achieves its business objectives (Josephson et al. 2021).
From the beginning of my capstone project, I understood the company has built on good concept planning and the place they are willing to grow their business. Melbourne is one of the compelling opportunities for H&R Block to have a sustainable tech system (Schmid et al.2021). Still, if I choose to be a customer of this company, the drawback that will stop me from being a customer will mainly be the technological use. To build up in this age of technologies, a company must work a lot in it to provide their customers with online services and orders. Knowing further about the company while doing this project, I came across the human resource requirements of the company. As per my learning, a consultation agency is to build its effectiveness and skills in handling crises, which is the fundamental strength of any such company. If H&R Block wants to get in the market in Melbourne, they have to select specific staffs who are not only experience but are well versed in what steps should be taken in crises to save the company. This is because a company will face problems with different competitors in the market or with the market prices or customer demands, or problems with technological advancement. Human resources management should be trained to think of an immediate solution, even if hiring an employee for it (Schmid et al.2021).
Coding technology instructs the machines on how they should work and what. Still, by reading this company, I came to know the codded technology is provided to the clients by this company to assist and safeguard their bookkeeping. With the financial stability that H&R Block is now providing, I can be pretty sure that the people who invest their money with this company will be highly concerned in the future about it. As a result, H&R Block will be well set in Melbourne.
In future, I can use my knowledge in economic analysis. H&R Block Company will set up its new agencies as it will be economically stable enough and play a role as an advantage for the company. Through social, technological, legal, and environmental, I understood that it would create a better society. In the future, it will offer better-specialized consultancy and a smooth transition, and as it is an Australian company, it will have no suitable weather for the resources (Whitney, 2020). Reading this company's strengths and weaknesses of this company I learned that the idea with which it is thinning to build up in the future is good, and maybe it will also help me choose it. Learning the critical stakeholders, the background, the PESTEL and SWOT analysis, noticing the KPI rate of the company, limitations that should be considered and everything, I think H&R Block needs to work more on its policies and other management systems of the company as it is a taxation company and before letting people invest on their company they have to work on it.
Issues |
Action |
Time taken |
Presentation skills |
I have to ensure that I use software such as Canva. With the help of this, it will become easier for me to define the graphical presentations such as graphs for demonstrating the KPI of the project. |
1 month |
Evaluation of data |
I had to ensure that I learn more about the strategic tools and models such as PESTLE so that it could easily help me in evaluating the external environment of a firm. |
2 months |
Lack of technological advancements |
Since I highly lack in technological skills, it became difficult for me to evaluate the technologies that were implemented by the company. To mitigate this issue, I can take various courses on technologies such as AI, IoT, Big Data, etc. Through this, the understanding of these technologies would be more clear and specific. |
4 months |
Benzaghta, M. A., Elwalda, A., Mousa, M. M., Erkan, I., & Rahman, M. (2021). SWOT analysis applications: An integrative literature review. Journal of Global Business Insights, 6(1), 55-73. https://www.doi.org/10.5038/2640-6489.6.1.1148
Cairney, P. (2021). The UK government’s COVID-19 policy: assessing evidence-informed policy analysis in real time. British Politics, 16(1), 90-116.https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-020-00150-8
Christodoulou, A., & Cullinane, K. (2019). Identifying the main opportunities and challenges from the implementation of a port energy management system: A SWOT/PESTLE analysis. Sustainability, 11(21), 6046.https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216046
Comparably.com. (2022). Retrieved 18 August 2022, from https://www.comparably.com/companies/h-r-block/kpi-okr.
Deneault, C. (2021). College enrollment and mandatory FAFSA APPLICATIONS: Evidence from louisiana. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.https://doi.org/10.26300/m28g-5v80
Josephson, A., Kilic, T., & Michler, J. D. (2021). Socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 in low-income countries. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(5), 557-565.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01096-7
Schmid, M., Brianza, E., & Petko, D. (2021). Self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of pre-service teachers in relation to digital technology use in lesson plans. Computers in Human Behavior, 115, 106586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106586
Simonsen, R. (2022). How to maximize language learners' career readiness. Language Teaching, 55(2), 156-162.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444821000227
Whitney, M. (2020). Teaching Accessible Design: Integrating Accessibility Principles and Practices into an Introductory Web Design Course. Information Systems Education Journal, 18(1), 4-13.https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287399