Managing Activities to Achieve Results - Essay Example

 Managing Activities to Achieve Results Task 1 Question 1a) Tesco Plc organisational structure is complex, with a number of different departments and areas of operation. It’s structure can be considered divisional given the large number of different groups that are presents, such as the different regional departments as well as divisions for types of market, such as Internet Retailing and Fresh and Easy. The company board has eight Non-executive Directors and six Executive Directors, additionally, there is a CEO for each of the region that Tesco has a significant investment in . The company has published little information about its organisational structure or chain of command online. Because of this Figure 1 represents the organisational structure as derived from their website. However, because of the limited amount of information that Tesco Plc has published, it is likely that this does not form a complete picture. The large structure of the company means that there are a large number of people in top-level management. The company operates using specific chains of command and both within and between department communication . The advantage of this is that it allows for strong organisation, with each person knowing exactly who they are to report to, and where they receive their instructions from. This helps to company to be extremely efficient and to make substantial profits. Figure 1: Organisational structure of Tesco Plc (Data obtained from Tesco Plc Corporate culture can be loosely defined as the way in which a company operates and their priorities. Tesco Plc uses the role culture, which is bureaucratic in nature and authority is based on the position that a person occupies within the hierarchy. This is the case because the structure of the company is highly organised, and the company appears to place strong focus on the level that an individual occupies in the company, listing six different organisational levels . Additionally, the company makes use of four ‘strategic business units’ each focusing on a different area of the business . This further reinforces the idea that the companies culture is role based, with each person or group working to perform their specific role to the best of their ability. Tesco Plc’s company culture is to consider that their customers are above all else and aim to give customers a positive experience to ensure that they continue to shop at the company . To achieve this all the levels of management within the organisation interact and communicate efficiently with one another with a strong focus on customer service and customer satisfaction. 1b) Tesco’s website states that the vision of the company is “for Tesco to be most highly valued by the customers we serve, the communities in which we operate, our loyal and committed staff and our shareholders; to be a growth company; a modern and innovative company and winning locally, applying our skills globally” . This can be broken down into four key aspects each of which has implications for the structure and culture of the business. To be the most highly valued business: to be highly valued as a business, Tesco needs to continue its focus on satisfying customers. This involves all levels of management. Specifically, the company needs to ensure that the customers are happy with the service they receive at the individual level, through interactions with frontline (level one) staff. In addition, value within the company image must be maintained, with business advertising and actions reflecting their desire to help the customer. This can be seen in the focus of the company culture on satisfying customers, and in the manner in which all levels of the business interact and communicate with one another. To remain a growth company: the organisational structure of Tesco allows for significant communication across different areas of the business. Because of this, the company is able to quickly adapt to any important events such as sudden demand for a particular item or a national or global crisis. To be a modern and innovative company: for the company to remain competitive in the modern environment they need to be innovative. The organisational structure of the company specifically allows for this though the fourth and fifth levels of management. The company must balance this mission with its culture of satisfying the customer to ensure that both are done. To win locally by applying our skills globally: the structure for this to be achieved is already present in the organisation of the company. Of its four strategic business units, one focuses on the local (Core UK) while another focuses on the global (International). Consequently, implementing this mission should not go against and of the core structure of culture of the organisation. The company visualizes itself to be serving and retaining its loyal customers by providing them with quality products and services. It aims to be the leading contributor in the grounds of retail store networks and sees itself as one of the biggest challenger in the retail store networks. The biggest vision of the company is to be valued highly by its loyal customers, the comitted staff and stakeholders and the communities and societies in which it carries out its operations. The organisation has already become an advanced and a well developed winning company locally while applying its implications and managerial skills globally at the same time. 1c) One functional area of Tesco is the financial department. The role of this department is to ensure the financial viability of the company and to maximise profits. The main activities of this department are recording the transactions of the business, measuring how well the company is performing financially, controlling the cash flow and finances of the company, and to use this information to make financial decisions. Consequently, the financial department plays an important role in the company objective of maximising profits. The department is able to provide recommendations to management for which areas of the business are worth pursuing, where the best areas for investment are, and what areas need re-evaluation. 1d) For a business to be effective, it is important that the company processes are aligned with the objectives of the organisation. One way that this can be achieved is through efficient communication between different levels of the business. For Tesco, the business has six distinct levels of employees. It is important for these aspects of the business to communicate effectively with one another as well as for the management of the company to continuously evaluate the level to which the objectives of the organisation are being achieved and what changes can be made to ensure more effective integration. Question 2: Tesco Plc has adopted its own model and systems for the operations and function of its retail stores. The company has exploited the operational expertise of the entire UK through its efficient and an effective model of the operating systems which are in practice inside the organisation. Figure 2: The Operating Model The figure shown above describes the operations model of the company in a pictorial format. This model explains that the elements which perform the operations and core activities in the company include people, processes, policies, systems, and measures. All these components integrate into the operability of one another and execute a proper, sophisticated system. JIT Inventory System The company can also apply the JIT inventory system and integrate it as a part of the business activities. The JIT or Just-in-Time system is a strategy of production which helps in improving the returns of business on its investments by reducing the inventory which is in process and also minimizing the carrying costs linked with it. The production method of JIT is also called the Toyota Production System. The process relies on Kanban in order to match and align themselves with the JIT objectives. This method of production and inventory management concentrates on the system of continuous improvements and works for the betterment of the quality, organisation’s returns on investment and the effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s resources. Moreover, this method can also be applied for the purpose of continuously improving and enhancing the key areas of focus, which can include quality, flow and the involvement of employees in decision-making. Statistical Process Control (SPC) The leading firms and those operating on a larger scale, such as Tesco Plc, can apply the methods of SPC. The Statistical process control or SPC is the practical application of statistical procedure to the supervising and commanding of a procedure to ascertain that it functions at its maximum potency to develop adapting product. Under SPC, an operation acts as expected to develop as much adjusting product as possible with the least potential wastefulness. While SPC has been enforced most often to ascertaining constructing channels, it employs evenly comfortably to any procedure with a quantifiable yield. Fundamental tools in SPC are designed experiments, a focus on continuous improvement and control charts. Question 3: The quality culture has become the central aspect to the production and manufacturing in any organisation. A normal business organisation, irrespective of its scope and nature, has the following elements penetrating in its operations: Cultural Transmitters Organisational Values Business Improvement Cultural Role Models Organisational Rites, Rituals and Customs All these elements play their part in the goal achievement and product development in the business organisation. Keeping this in highlights, a quality culture is formed which refers to the value system of an organisation which forms such an environment that proves to be most appropriate and conducive for the creation and persistent improvement and betterment of the quality of the product or services. Most of the management gurus and experts identify the six values of quality culture in an organisation. These include: The company, supplier and customer, all are responsible for the quality, There is no superior or subordinate in this culture, The openness and honesty in communication is most important, There is an open access to everyone to all the information and situation in the organisation, The entire focus of the organisational resources is on the processes, There is no concept of failure or success, but everything is a learning experience. All these factors encourage a learning environment in a company instead of making it a challenge for the employees. The concept of elimination of superiors and subordinates, and the idea of no failure and success, motivates the employees to learn and move further regarding the quality and culture of the organisation. The real life example of this situation is Tesco and Wal Mart. Tesco has successfully implemented a learning environment and the quality culture in the organisation. It has been managing its networks of retail stores in a great manner by taking care of all its employees and human resource base properly. While, Wal Mart has been facing problems in implementing the quality culture in the organisational structure, and this is due to the fact that the concept of quality and learning has not yet penetrated well in the hierarchical ladder of the company and its network. The philosophy of Total Quality Management is also implemented in the Tesco Plc and its retail stores network. They take care of the product which is being provided to the customers and they make sure that superior quality services are provided to the customers to make their retention possible. On the other hand, the small retailers, or even large retailers but not with much distinguished philosophies, are not able to handle the quality management concepts in their retail store networks. Question 4: Tesco Plc works to ensure that the safety of their customers and staff is ensured under all circumstances. To do this a health and risk assessment process is used. The performance of the company is monitored and reviewed on a regular basis. In addition, feedback is sought from individual staff members. Every three months stores are required to report on their performance at a Staff Forum. At this forum, the problems are addressed, and campaigns are instigated to reduce the risk within stores. This process has resulted in the decrease in staff accidents . The current risk management approach involves working with awareness, action and accountability. Tesco Plc has been considered to be the corporate risk manager of the year for 2010 . See appendix 1 for a sample risk assessment for Tesco Plc. This risk assessment makes use of the form that the company uses, however the risk assessment information itself has been made up and is not from the company. Question 5: Tesco is a large powerful chain that is highly competitive and aims to maximise profits. However, as a consequence of this the company gives the impression of having ruthless business tactics, such as pressuring suppliers to decrease their prices to a level that is uneconomical for the supplier. Other claims against the company have included unfair dismissal of employees, pressuring smaller competitors, and injury occurring to customers. Such an image can be damaging to the company, decreasing customer loyalty and the ability to retain staff. A specific example of this occurring was in 2004 where Tesco acquired Administore, which led to protests throughout the UK. Generally speaking, when a single company has control over more than a quarter of one particular business sector, it is prevented from purchasing other companies within the same sector. This is designed to prevent one company gaining a monopoly on the market and consequently having control over prices. Tesco operates two different types of stores, convenience stores and supermarkets. Under the Office of Fair Trading, these two are treated as distinct sectors and consequently Tesco is not considered to have more than 25% control over a single sector, and thus was able to purchase Administore. Many smaller stores and organisations contest this decision, arguing that Tesco does own more than 25% control of a sector, and that this expansion constitutes manipulation of the law. In an organisation that focuses on the customer and on generating customer loyalty, such an image can be extremely detrimental. It can cause a decrease in the amount of customers that visit the store which in turn leads to a decrease in revenue. However, the same strategies, which cause negative opinion of the organisation, also increase the profits. Consequently, the company must carefully weight up the costs and benefits of any change, as well as what the associated risks are. One improvement that the company could make would be to try to increase its image by involvement in community or charity work. This would be in line with the culture and mission of the company to be preferred by the customer and additionally would increase the company exposure. When choosing which community or charity work to be involved in, the choice should involve a cost/benefit analysis, considering what type of work would derive the most benefit while costing the company the least. Such work could include organising a food drive, donating goods that are near expiry to the homeless or sponsoring charity events. This analysis would need to be done at the management level of the organisation and would impact all levels, with front line employees being involved in instigating much of the change. It would be important to evaluate the success of the change in terms of customer image rather than profits. As such, evaluation could include the proportion of the community that get involved in the projects, the viewpoints presented in newspapers and the media, and viewpoints of customers and non-customers about the store. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is involves analysing the tasks and workflows that occur within a company. It can be considered to consist of four distinct aspects: identifying the processes involved, review, update and analyse the current processes, design the new processes and test and implement the new processes.BPR is a cycle, so that once the new processes are implemented the cycle returns to the first aspect of identifying processes, and repeats itself. This allows for the business to continually refine and improve itself, ensuring that it works at maximum effectiveness. In the case suggested here, the new process is that of community activity or charity work. This process would be designed, and once the design was satisfactory it would then be implemented and tested. If the process was effective, then in the next cycle of the BPR it would remain, perhaps being further refined, if it was ineffective, then a new approach would be considered. Task 2 Question 1 In the implementation of any new process within a company, careful planning and organisation is required. For the following sections, the implantation of an operational plan to increase the image of the company through involvement in community activities will be considered. The project must be effectively managed, with solid goals which can be evaluated. SMART Objectives for implementation Specific: Project aims to increase consumer confidence in Tesco Measurable: Measures of success include, Changes in customer satisfaction (derived from survey responses and in store feedback) prior to the project, during and afterwards Changes in representation of the company in the media (number of positive, negative and neutral articles) Changes in the number of customers that visit stores (stores near community activity compared to stores far away may provide a measure of change Attainable: It is likely that over the four years of the project some change will be observed in the view that media and customers have of the brand, and potentially an increase in customer base will be observed (particularly in areas where the community activity is most prominent) Relevant: Tesco is commonly seen as a retail giant that does not care about its consumers or staff. The aim of this project is to change this image through participation in community activities that do not directly increase the revenue of the company, but help the community Through these activities customer loyalty towards Tesco should increase, as well as opinions within the media This in turn should lead to an increase in sales and a decrease in complaints concerning the company Time-Bound: Approximately one year can be allocated to the development of plans for this project and determination of which community activities will be most beneficial. By the end of this year the staff of Tesco need to be directly involved in the community project(s) that are determined to be most beneficial Following the implementation of the community action, the effects will be monitored over a 36 month period, through periodical surveys of customers, observation in trends of customer satisfaction, level of customer loyalty and the proportion of staff that are retained Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a statistical technique that is used in managing a project. It considers the different tasks that are involved in the project and the time that is required to complete each task as well as to complete the overall project. It differs from other techniques in that it does not focus on the start or completion of the project, but on the interactions between the different components. Notably, it is used on projects where time is the most important factor as opposed to cost. For the project being considered in this topic, PERT analysis could be used. Different tasks in the project could include some or all of the following: evaluating which community events would be most suitable, contacting community leaders and discussing possible goals and outcomes, creating an action plan, and advertising the company’s plans. An alternative method of planning that was developed around the same time is Critical Path Analysis (CPA). Like the other techniques, this planning method helps in the management and scheduling of complex projects. It focuses on the different requirements of the project and on monitoring whether the goals of the project are being achieved. This is important, as it shows when the project is no longer on track and remedial action is required. Market Research In order to meet the needs of the consumers successfully, the organisation and its management has to research the market for a proper and an in-depth analysis. This research would provide the company with an idea of the dominating and shifting demands of consumers and their needs and wants. Customer Orientation The product and services which are to be developed and provided need to be customized according to the demands of the customers. These should match the accurate requirements of what the customers are satisfied with and what they want and expect from the producers and sellers to provide them with. Question 2 Planning (~6-9 months) Analyse customer satisfaction and the views of the population towards Tesco through surveys to determine the level prior to any work This is important for determining whether the project is successful Determining where community activity would be valuable Creation of SMART objectives Communication with community leaders and agencies that work with needy or at risk individuals to determine where Tesco would be able to be effective Cost/benefit analysis of what activities would be effective in terms of increasing Tesco’s image Advertising of Tesco’s objectives in the general media, asking for advice and volunteers This helps in planning, but more importantly has a significant role in increasing the image of the company Determination of three to four community activities which the company will invest in and decide specific locations across the country where this will be done Work out guidelines for each of the distinct activities and how this would change depending on which part of the country the activities are in Create quality standards and risk assessments for the activities, and determine how much employee time and company resources will be dedicated to the activities Implementation (~36 months) Implement each of the community activities and monitor their effects, the cost on company resources and the opinions of staff towards the project Activities will be continued for a period of 36 months, with continual optimisation throughout the process Activities may involve the presence of multiple employees perhaps for several hours over a weekend, as well as the use of company funds where necessary It is important that the use of staff in these activities does not come at a significant cost to in store productivity Communication with community leaders and those directly involved in the activities as to what changes could be made Optimisation of the costs to the company versus the benefits Question 3: It is important that these processes are closely managed, and that any problems with the project are fixed or the project abandoned if it begins to cost the company significantly more than the potential benefits. The SMART objectives can be used to determine whether the project is having the desired effects. One recommendation is that at each yearly marker, an overall evaluation of the project is made to determine whether it is providing any significant benefit for the company, or whether it is likely to in the near future. Objectives from the SMART analysis (examined earlier in this document) can be used to determine the success of the project. One important aspect of this is risk management. It is crucial for every aspect of a business, particularly new elements, that any risks are analysed and methods to reduce the likelihood and effect of these are derived. Tesco already has a strong risk analysis program so it would be simply to extend this to incorporate the new project. Question 4: In respect to the planned project there are two different quality systems that need to be taken into account. The first is the quality of goods and services within the Tesco environment. The aim of this project is to increase the image of the company and as a consequence it cannot result in a decrease of quality. The second system is that of the project itself. The community work that is being instigated throughout the duration of the project will only be effective if it is of high quality. If it appears the the company is only putting a ‘half-hearted’ effort into the project, or is only doing it for the sake of image, then it is likely to be unsuccessful in achieving its objectives. An important way of analysing this is Total Quality Management (TQM). This is a process of management that works to continuously improve the quality of the processes and products of an organisation. Working with TQM involves many different aspects of the business, including suppliers, leadership, employees and customers. There are a number of different principles of TQM. Focus on the customer Involve employees Be process centred Use an integrated system Systematic and strategic approach Constantly improve and develop Make decisions based on data and fact Communicate effectively across the business All of these factors are crucial for managing the quality of the business, both within the traditional bounds of the organisation and within the project. Implementation of TQM is most effective if the top levels of management are trained in its use and if it focuses on the core principles and values of the company. If quality is not maintained, the business will not benefit from the project, instead may suffer losses, such as loss in income, in employee retention and customer loyalty. Question 5 Certain legislations govern the health and safety issues at the work place. Legislations such as those listed below must be followed properly to ensure proper safety of workers as well as clients. Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 Tesco’s health and safety policy is the provision of a safe environment for its visitors and customers. They identify a range of different ways in which the company incorporates safety into its procedure. These include ensuring that the staff receive full training, that risks are identified as well as methods of minimising the risks and that any accidents are reviewed and that the company learns from the mistakes. Additionally they aim to reduce ill health and accidents that occur within the work place and to comply completely with workplace health and safety laws, such as those described above. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 states that “It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees” . It is this law that forms the basis of work place health and safety practices. References Read More