Fields in the LPB Business - Assignment Example

of the of the of the Mrs. Field’s Writeup ISMG 3000. What were Fields’ initial actions upon acquiring LPB?  Upon acquiring La Petite Boulangerie in the year 1987 the Fields’ initial actions were the reduction of the company’s supporting staff from a number of fifty three to three. Moreover the downsizing was given the excuse that most of the divisions of the newly bought company already existed in its parent organization and thus could be merged into the existing departments. The names of few of the departments that were merged were as follows: Accounting, Finance, Personnel, Human Resource, Training and Development. Among the three of the people that were left from being expelled two were from the Operations department while one was from the ‘Research and Development’ Department. This was followed by the creation of Combination Stores that were not merely Cookie Selling Stores but also offered a wide range of other bakery products like Croissants, Bread, Hot Soups and sandwiches etc that were all being sold initially under the brand name of La Petite Boulangerie separately that had now been purchased by the Fields’. Moreover, these were not only store outlets but were sit-down cafes as well. Why did they take these actions?  The Field’s took these actions because they wanted to expand on their existing business. They were afraid that their name was well established in the present times but this may not be persistent and the monotony in their products and sales outlets may lead to the drifting away of their trusted customers as well. Since they were earning stable benefits and all their business processes were running smoothly Mr. Field thought that the merging of one or more companies into their existing setup would bring the well hailed boost to their product line. Mr. Field was primarily eyeing the revenue that he expected would be generated when the merger of the purchased companies would eventually be complete. Mr. Field was foreseeing the purchasing over even more new stores as a result of the revenue he expected to earn after this practical merger. His main motive was that he will have enough profits to make future payments by them. The demographical strength of the fields’ store, he thought would not effect any slight fluctuations in the economy that might take place during the transitional process of incorporating new companies and earning profits for the further new companies that were expected to be added to the combinational Stores’ Chain. Put yourself in the position of an LPB store manager at this time. What’s your view of this?  Being an LPB store manager I wouldn’t be the happiest person on Earth. The company thatwas managed by me was being sold to another owner and rather than being downsized. Thus the elimination of all the core staff would definitely come as a surprise to me. Secondly I would not think of the elimination of all the existing staff to be appropriate in nature. This is because for an existing running company like the LPB its employees are its major asset that are well aware of its business processes and are fully functional with them. Their sudden elimination might have given a hard time to the existing Fields’ staff in incorporating the norms of the running anf functional company. Debbi and Randy clearly see the LPB business as being similar to their own in terms of products, customers, management challenges, and so on. How do you see this?  In my opinion, Debby and Randy see the LPB business unlike I do. I see the business as being different from The Fields’ in the respect that unlike the latter the former contained a diversified range of products and thus were home to a diversified range of customers as well. The LPB had an automated system incorporated into it. The managers in the firm were usually made to do report generation jobs unlike the Field’s where administrators were assigned all managerial tasks as it incorporated the information system . How do you see the Fields information systems being used at LPB? How "portable" are these systems?  The Fields’ Information System that was now being used at the LPB had a class of its own. Mr. Field had the point of view that a computer could incorporate whatever you wanted to get done from it. Since the LPB was merely an expansion of the Fields’ information system itself and no major entities were required to be added to the information system in order to incorporate LPB thus it can very well be said that the information system at LPB was pretty much portable. The accounting, human resource and people’s business processes were very much like the existing business processes of the Fields’ and thus the information system proved to be highly portable. What do you make of Randy’s explanation of the losses after the acquisition?  There wasn’t much that Randy could give as an explanation to the losses that had been incurred after the acquisition. He just kept the notion that with the beginning of the combination stores he had expected generation of higher profits. He had even linked the generation of these profits to the opening of further new stores that were to be combination stores as well. What do you think is going to be the future of LPB and its employees, including store managers, when Fields begins bringing in its marriage of management structure and information technologies?  Mr. Field at the Fields is highly optimistic about his Management Information system that is operating at the core of the organization. In his opinion most of the conventional tasks that managers perform must be transferred to computers who can perform them in an equally good manner or rather in an even better manner at times. Thus, the marriage of management structure and information technologies would result in most of the tasks of managers of LPB being taken off them. Other than this observation the future of the leftover employees of LBP and the division itself seems pretty much stable. This is owing to the fact that the products associated with the LPB such as soups and breads etc are their trademarks and their popularity and demand would have increased manifolds once the merger would have taken place. Why do you think so? I think it is so because whenever new steps are being intended in any business scenario there always are times of recession that eventually lead to profit generations after a while. The time lapse that occurs in between seems to show losses but those losses are temporary and are incurred at a lower scale only in the duration in which business processes are internally merging up in order to finally emerge and combination stores that run all their business processes successfully and that too with substantial profit generation. WORKS CITED: Harvard Business School. “Mrs. Field’s Cookies.” September 14 1993. Read More