The End~

Week 13. After calculating the net profits, we decided to donate part of them to an old folk’s home at Pokok Sena, Alor Star with hope that we would be able to help improve their quality of life. Next, we were preparing for our final report to be submitted next week. A meeting was held to determine the contents to be included in the report and also, to divide the tasks among team members to break even the workload. We tried to make it as interesting as possible to capture our lecturer's interest.

Week 14. Finally, it was time for final presentation!! My group volunteered to present on Monday. We had to pass up our final reports too on the same day. Besides presenting about our business that had been carried out for the whole semester, we presented about our website and also, a summary of everything we did in the form of video presentation. When my group members presented the videoclip, it reminded me of everything that we had gone through together in the whole journey of being entrepreneurs.

I understand that unity of a team is the key to a business' success. If everyone owns a team spirit, together they can go through difficulties to succeed! I also learned that I have to experience something to know what it is actually like. Last but not least, I would like to thank my lecturer, Pn Rafidah for giving me this oppurtunity to experience a short journey of being an entrepreneur.

Guidelines

Week 12 was my turn to present on behalf of my group's weekly presentation progress. When it was my turn, I sucked up all my negative feelings and gave out all my best. After all the presentations, Pn Rafidah gave us a lot comments so that we can do better in the final presentation.

I went for the MIBPC workshop on Tuesday to know more about the competition. It was held by Prof Madya Azizi Bin Zakaria. He gave a really good talk and it caught my interest. Unfortunately, I realised that I do not have the time to do preparations for the competition because there were so many unfinished assignments.

In the next class on Thursday, Pn Rafidah talked us about final report writing and also final presentation. She told us that there was no specific format required for the final report and that we have to be independent as we will always be on our own in the journey of life; when we work in the future, we do not ask our boss for a guideline, instead to find our own way. She was really kind to show us some samples of good and bad reports from her previous students to aid us in writing a good report. Besides that, she also prepared some final presentation videos as our reference.

I have learned that to develop a good production, we need to put in a lot of effort in doing it. I also realised that Pn Rafidah was actually training us to be more confident and independent to prepare for future challenges. However, I am afraid that the final product will not be as good due to shortage of time.

Challenges...

In Week 11, Pn Rafidah gave us a lecture talk on preparing for evaluating the challenges of growth. Benchmarking is one of the main steps that should be taken against successful growth firms. A firm usually would be willing to help if it is an indirect competitor. She then explained some examples on the fast food found in Malaysia where Marrybrown is kind of like another version of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). In the process of growing a firm, there should be typical challenges that includes cash flow management, price stability, quality control and capital constraints.

Meanwhile for the dedication, we found a suitable supplier in Changlun who offered high quality and low costs products after doing several surveys. After collecting the essential supplies of dedication materials, my group members and I started packing the dedications. It had to be done quickly to make sure dedications can be delivered on time before the Mid-Autumn Festival which falls on 3rd October 2009. Due to the difficulties to deliver a big amount of dedications, we had delegated the task among our members by separating and scheduling the delivery to respective residential halls. However, there were challenges that we faced during delivery process that involves several factors like weather, transportation and the unavailability of the recipient but we finally manage to pull it off.

From the lecture, I realised that identifying challenges that are bound to happen is important to sustain a healthy growth of a business. Besides, I have learned to always be prepared for worse situations and at the same time, improve my time management to reduce unnecessary workloads. I am just worried that the challenges are too much for me to handle as I'm a novice in this field.