Changing Baderman Island Resort - Coursework Example

Changing Baderman Island Resort Located in Baderman Island, Baderman Island Resort offers variety of restaurant services. With the restaurant’s future expansion plans, the restaurant will undoubtedly need to bolster its technological infrastructure so that it can effectively manage its processes, human resources and customer surge. Companies usually focus their efforts on innovation in order to improve their business processes as well as product. Innovation is usually geared towards achieving organizational efficiency and hence higher profit margin. There are three fundamental technological approaches that have high potential of significantly transforming Baderman Island Resort. In order to gear Baderman Island Resort towards efficiency owing to its growth plan, it would be crucial to implement customer relationship management (CRM). CRM integrates all dimensions of company-customer interaction (Goldenberg, 2008). It focuses on improving how a company relates with its customers in terms of sales or service delivery. A CRM system goes beyond business-customer relationship into managing clients and business contacts. CRM thus helps a company to attract and retain customers, improve customer experience, develop greater understanding of clients and also boost profitability. Baderman Island Resort constitutes different buildings under one management and thus a CRM would surely improve the ability of the company to manage its customers effectively. Baderman Island Resort can also adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP). ERP will enable the company to manage its business and office functions using integrated applications. ERP will help boost the management capability of the company because it incorporates all facets of organizational operations. Also, to improve efficiency in the face of expansion, the company will find it crucial to implement enterprise collaborative systems (ECS). This will ensure effective sharing of documents. It facilitates efficient communication throughout the organization and eliminates obstacles such as program incompatibility (Ziemann, 2010). By implementing all these innovations, Baderman Island Resort can improve its ability to effectively manage its expanding resources and boost profitability. Part 2: Organizational Transformation Q & A 1. How would you identify and characterize the roles of incentives, training, and education in promoting innovation in Wal-Mart? Incentives, training and education ensure a culture of innovation within a company. Incentives play critical role in motivating employees to pursue creative ideas. At Wal-Mart, there are various benefits and incentives plans such as health benefits, 401(K) plan, stock purchase plan and employee bonus program, which give employees motivation to explore new ideas. Wal-Mart offers open door management policy, which further establishes a culture of innovation since employees have the freedom to explore ideas they deem viable. Wal-Mart focuses on developing its employees and leaders through training and education. The company’s success relies on entrepreneurial associates with enthusiasm to learn and grow with the company. The company has invested in training and developing its Associates. Training and education of the Associates equip them with relevant and new knowledge in the industry and gives them the ability to proactively explore their creative minds. 2. What is the role of leadership in creating, managing, and sustaining innovation in Wal-Mart? More than just a buzzword, innovation has become one of the most crucial success factors for companies in the contemporary world. However, success founded on innovation does not usually come on a silver platter. The extent to which innovation can spur an organization to success absolutely depends on the nature of the leadership at the company. Leaders must be ready to articulate the requirements, vision as well as the priorities for the company. Effective leadership is that which fosters a culture that promotes innovation by empowering employees to experiment ideas and fail. Effective leadership is one that understands that success stems from failure. Learning from failure is usually the key to success. As such leaders should always focus on helping employees to learn, develop and grow, which calls for a strong culture that supports creativity and innovation. Top leaders of an organization must be in the frontline and act as role models for other employees as concerns creativity and innovation. At Wal-Mart, creativity and innovation takes lead in performing organizational task. The company is a leader in supply chain management globally. Wal-Mart has invested heavily in technology, which has seen its supply chain management emerge amongst the best in the world. However, this would never be possible without existence of an innovative culture. The leadership at Wal-Mart embrace creativity and innovation as encourage employees to develop and try new ideas. Top management at the Giant retailer works tirelessly to create a sustainable culture of creativity and innovation thus promoting creation of new ideas among the workers of the organization, which has been a source of sustainable competitive advantage. 3. What are the ethical implications of an individual reward system? Support your answer. Rewards are usually focused on encouraging certain behaviors within the organization (Gilliland, Steiner & Skarlicki, 2007). They are usually perceived to be motivating factors that could spur the productivity of workers and hence the organization. However, any particular reward system adopted by an organization usually has its implication on the workforce. Reward systems can be group or individual. For a company that uses group reward system, the result is a high teamwork spirit in the company, high morals, group innovation, high group growth and a highly motivated workforce (Gilliland, Steiner & Skarlicki, 2007). However, some employees work best on individual basis and do not prefer working in groups. As such, team-based reward system demoralizes employees who are not group oriented in their work approach. On the contrary, individual reward system can prove beneficial and hazardous to the company at the same time. Individual reward system may ensure creativity and innovation among employees by triggering healthy competition where each employee strives to be the best. Consequently, individual reward systems also remain pivotal to increasing the productivity of workers provided that the company can effectively implement the reward system without creating negative impact on other unrewarded employees (Gilliland, Steiner & Skarlicki, 2007). However, in most cases, the top management tends to receive high perks and other employment benefits unlike their junior employees. This might lead to high level of demoralization within an organization. 4. Would you describe Wal-Mart as innovative or non-innovative? Explain your answer. The description of Wal-Mart clearly fits an innovative company. This is in relation to its proactive measures in technological research and development. Wal-Mart established its Labs to spur innovation at the company. Wal-Mart is restructuring its E-commerce through the Labs, which have enabled the blending of social, mobile and retail networks. Wal-Mart Labs are focused on improving customer experience and helping the giant global retailer to achieve its mission of saving people money and bettering lives. Wal-Mart has seen its revenue skyrocket beyond its competitors in the retail e-business in recent years. In 2010, the retail giant was ranked ninth from position thirty-third in 2009 and the company is still climbing the innovation ladder (Hegar, 2012). Through its active role in technology development and commitment to create a sustainable innovation culture, Wal-Mart remains one of the most visible innovative companies in the global retail industry. References Gilliland, S., Steiner, D. & Skarlicki, D. (2007). Managing social and ethical issues in organizations. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Pub. Inc. Goldenberg, B.J. (2008). CRM in real time: empowering customer relationships. Medford, N.J.: CyberAge Books. Hegar, K.W. (2012). Modern human relations at work. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Ziemann, J. (2010). Architecture of interoperable information systems an enterprise model-based approach for describing and enacting collaborative business processes. Berlin: Logos-Verl. Read More