Organization of Young's Seafood Company - Case Study Example

Table of Contents Executive Summary 2. Introduction 3. Entrepreneurial Organisation 4. Creating And Developing Opportunities 5. Managing Innovation In Logistics 6. Conclusion 7. References EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper undertakes the study of Youngs Seafood Company, which is the largest sea food company in UK. This paper intends to study the three main aspects of the organization – Innovations in Logistics, creation and development of business opportunities for the company and the performance of the company as a real world enterprising organization.   The organization planning, workforce development and the work culture are the various areas of interest of study in context to entrepreneurial organization. Further, the paper studies the methods employed by the company to increase their market share through mergers and acquisitions apart from brand promotion and marketing strategies. Lastly, the different application of modern logistics and how the company profits through these sophisticated logistic applications is also studied in this paper. INTRODUCTION Young’s seafood is the most popular seafood joint in the UK. The company headquarters are in Grimsby, which is a small seaport town on the Humber Estuary. The company boasts of an annual turnover of more than £320 million in the last financial year, and plan to make large investments of over 50 million during the next quarter to expand its business plans to other parts of the world. The fast building chain of Young seafood restaurants have been one of the most desirable eating joints for youngsters and teens. The company provides employment opportunities to over 5600 professionals employed in 30 countries at the company outlets. The company has been successful in sustaining the market glitches caused sue to the economic crisis due to its unswerving performance and aspiration to lead the industry with elating new techniques to attract and help out people enjoy more fish. ENTREPRENEURIAL ORGANISATION As an organization, Youngs seafood has been taking keen interest in its manege rial activities, like proper assessment of business requirements, profits and loss of the business, and the product quality and uniqueness that is required to run the business in a competitive global industry of seafood, (Brown, Lamming, Bessant & Jones, 2005).  The managers are required to propose an yearly and monthly target plan and activity schedules based on a common platform which consists of:  1. Defining and setting up monthly and yearly business goals and objectives 2. Detailed Planning and Scheduling of activities including procurement, resource     allocation, production, delivery and logistics 3. Implementation of tasks 4. Post Implementation of the plan  Also, the issue of work force development within the organization holds a very significant value as the workforce is the one which delivers the targets and profits to the company, (Guest, Michie, Sheehan, and Conway, 2000). Leadership is given due importance in the company is suitably promoted by the management. regular workshops are held to inspire and motivate people towards taking leadership and install a sense of responsibility towards their job. Other workforce approaches that are employed at Youngs seafood are promoting team work, performance management, and developing competences of the employees, (Johnson, and Scholes, 2005).  Performance based management has been applied as a methodical approach at Youngs seafood to enhance the performance of the company by setting monthly / quarterly / yearly targets of employees, measuring their performance against these set targets, and analysis of this performance evaluation data to drive further performance improvements in the company. Apart from identifying an employee’s weaknesses and strengths, performance base management helps the company to evaluate the contribution made by every employee involved in the operational chain, (Huselid, 1995). It also helps the company in taking significant decisions about the merit scales and employee promotions, and effectively assisting the manager to convert his division targets into individual objectives.   Discussing the work culture at Youngs sea food, there has been a drastic change in the workculture during the last five years. The senior management has realized that the development of the human resources of the company is vital to initiating a strategic change within the organization and therefore greater emphasis is given on manpower planning and development, (Handy, 1985). Systematic training and integration of soft skills is method to enhance the work culture at Youngs seafood. CREATING AND DEVELOPING OPPORTUNITIES Youngs seafood employs more than 5000 personals across 11 centers in UK, and has been excessively planning to open its outlets in other parts of the world. The company management has undertaken many acquisition deals in the past and possess good know how about how to create and leverage opportunities in business. In order to continue leading the fish market, it is important that the company management regularly creates new opportunities and subsequently develop those into reality. In order to do this, the management at Youngs has employed a number of approaches. This section studies how the company has been able to capture new markets and opportunities. 1. Increasing Consumer awareness and responsiveness - with the recent trends highlighting the seafood industry, consumers are now more aware and cautious about environmental issues. They are keen on demanding accountability of the quality of seafood being served to them. In the wake of the BP oil spill accident, customers have lost faith and profits are going down for the industry as a whole. With respect to the public recognition gained by Youngs seafood on being a leader in seafood, the company has maintained its efforts in purchasing safe and healthy seafood products. The company is also maintaining its policy to follow government regulations and directions inthis cause. Youngs seafood has recently tied up with some more companies who have a license to fishing and turned down previous tie-ups with companies who have failed to follow safe and healthy fishing directives laid down by the government. The company is recently trademarked its products in line with the new regulations which have restored the customer’s satisfaction to certain levels in seafood.  2. Acquisitions and mergers – In the wake of the Oil spill accident, many small companies have lost their business and are now looking to merge with leaders in the industry. Youngs seafood is quick to grab this opportunity and has acquired some independent retailers and seafood business companies. This will create a larger perspective and client age for the company in the near future, (Porter, 2000). Since, a large section of the UK consumers rely on the brand image of Youngs seafood, the management will not find much hindrances to capture new markets with the help of newly acquired businesses.   Also, more investments are lined up to support the world wide increasing demands of the seafood industry. 3. Legal Outsourcing – Apart from the BP oil spill case, there is a regular trend in the seafood market – growing demand of organic and natural seafood. Experts state that customers are willing to spend more to buy legally sourced sea food products, (Findlay, 2004). The Youngs seafood management was quick to grab the fact that seafood products from certified fisheries install higher confidence in the customers and are able to per sue the client to spend more on the same product, which is being sold at lesser prices in the non certified markets. Seeing this as an opportunity to grab customers, the management has initiated to use new packaging for its products bearing the certification of health and safe consumables, (Porter, 2004). This way, Youngs seafood has been able to command higher prices in comparison to its competitors and also build a faithful client age in the industry.   4. Brand Development - An example of brand development intuited by the company was to reinvent the outlets and the infrastructure. The makeover of the company outlets and restaurants was to propose a complete makeover that offers a more softer look, (Sustar, & Sustar, 2005). This was intended to attract more customers from older generation to the company products. Also offering free services like Internet TV, and chat rooms (served with coffee) are some techniques employed by the management to create more opportunities for the company, (Gavirneni, 2006). The company is also suggesting some price changes in its menu’s – some favorite dishes are intended to be fixed at relatively higher prices in the coming Christmas season and less popular dishes at lower prices to boost higher sales for the company, (Abernathy, Dunlop., Hammond, and Weil, 2000/1).  The above methods used by the company management at Youngs seafood have definitely helped the management to create new market opportunities, attract larger section of clients and deliver quality service to maintain the enhanced profits.  MANAGING INNOVATION IN LOGISTICS  Innovation within the logistics services has been described as a new and helpful logistics service which is catered to particular significant clients or is utilized to reach out to new clients, (Christopher, 2005). Moreover, the effects of logistics innovation strategies is focused on improving the operational efficiency of the supply and demand chain (internally) and / or better serve company clients (externally). For Youngs seafood, logistics innovations have been divided into two broad sections - technical and administrative logistics. The first one is related to techniques that are employed by the company data collection, efficient information management, warehousing and transport. The latter one is utilized for involved business processes, enhance client-company and supplier- company relationships, and other innovations in the basic business structure that lead to enhanced and innovative logistics services for the seafood company.  The following two sections will describe the technical and administrative innovations in logistics carried out by Youngs seafood to enhance its logistics performance to increase client satisfaction and reduce company costs. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and transport technologies have played a key role in changing the face of logistics for Youngs seafood. 1. Telematics – This innovation has been employed at Youngs to monitor and control remote applications and devices. This includes tracking and tracing of shipments, diagnosis of goods and other logistic vehicles, and monitoring of driving hours. The GPRS system has been installed in all the company logistics vehicles that help the management to fast track the position of the driver and help them in real time logistics planning and scheduling. This has helped greatly in achieving real time end to end visibility of the supply chain, (Christopher, 2005). 2. GIS and RFID - Radio Frequency Identification has also been utilized by the management to track and trace the resources, logistics, shipments etc. through the entire supply chain. The application of this innovation has assisted the company management to ship ahead of its competitors by a fair margin as most of its competitors are still lacking the use of RFID in its supply chain. Further, application of GIS has helped the company to add more value to the existing inbound and outbound logistic services – like easier routing, scheduling and tracking. With the company expanding its business in the Internet retailing, multi drop deliveries are bound to increase profits and save costs. 3. E-Logistics – Youngs seafood is also focusing its efforts on initiating full time E-logistics for the company. This is basically about managing the order-to-cash process electronically. The innovative process offers the client to place order electronically, pay online, track his order online, and also select delivery time as per conveniences. This online process helps to maintain higher efficients in the picking, packing, order confirmation and dispatch, customer help lines and returns processes for Youngs seafood. As a result of these technical innovations employed by Youngs seafood, the company has been able to drive its resources and funds to a more productive approach. Further detailing the innovations that the company has recently been able to manage in the administrative section of the logistics are given in detail: 1. Just In Time – This technique has assisted the logistic performance by promoting smaller and more frequent delivery schedules. The basic concept of the JIT is the Kanban (signalling) method which is based on pulling products from the supply chain rather than the push concept based as per client demand forecasting. Young’s seafood has been able to successfully manage JIT in its logistics chain. 2. Value added Services – Managing more innovation in the administrative logistic chain, the company management has been quick to introduce new methods like warehousing, labelling, co-packing, rescheduling, and mass customization. All these innovative techniques have added high value to the logistics of Youngs seafood. 3. 4PL Logistics – The Company has recently switched to 4PL logistics system which is an extension of the 3PL logistics. In this, the management now outsources its logistics services to companies who do not possess the assets and resources, but own smart computer systems which assist in smart logistics. These companies also have intellectual capital and offer complete end to end logistics services across the globe. This has helped Youngs sea food to reach many more destinations and thereby expansion has been relatively easier. Also, the company has been smarter to approach smaller logistic providers to collaborate smaller logistic assignments which have reduced the time spent and cost to the company. 4. Coopetition – This is a relatively new innovation in the logistics sector. Youngs seafood has been grasp the concept of the innovative method which is basically about effective and efficient real time collaboration with clients, suppliers and at times competitors as well, to minimize industry waste and enhance the responsiveness, (Findlay, 2004). An example of this innovative strategy employed by Youngs seafood is that the company has tied up with its competitors in some places to utilize their empty containers on back route and some other shared services.   CONCLUSION Youngs Seafood has been able to survive the market glitches due to its competent market strategies like constantly promoting products, building up brand awareness amongst its clients, and adopting modern trends in advertising. In the wake of the BP Oil spill accident, the company has shown interests in acquiring small and medium companies involved in marine logistics and frozen seafood business. This is a drastic step towards increasing their market share and product variety. Also, strict values maintained by the company to offer safe and healthy food to its customers has maintained client satisfaction for the company. Also, within the rapidly changing logistics sector, Youngs seafood has been fast to grab new technologies to save time and money. Use of GIS, PRS, and other similar value added services has helped the company to save on its logistics costs and provide timely and fast deliveries to its customers. And lastly, the management attitude as an enterprenuil organization has helped the company to drive forward and attain a sustainable growth rate.   REFERENCES 1. Porter, M. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, The Free Press, New York, NY, 2000 2. Abernathy, F. H., Dunlop, J. T., Hammond, J. H. and Weil, D. (2000/1), "Retailing and supply chains in the information age", Technology in Society, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 5-31. 3. Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2005). Exploring corporate strategy: text and cases 7th ed. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall. 4. Porter, M. E. (2004). Competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors. New York: Free Press 5. Christopher, M. 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