Implementation of Sales Application System - Hill Foods Restaurant - Case Study Example

Case Study: Implementation of Sales Application System Name Institution of Learning Case Study: Implementation of Sales Application System Section 1: Summary of the Case Context This section of the paper provides a brief summary of the organization, and its problems that need to introduce changes with an aim of resolving the problem at hand. Brief Description of the Organization Hill Foods Restaurant is one of the fastest growing food stores in the last one decade. The restaurant is located near California State University. This organization was founded in 2003, with an intention of providing food and beverage products in the U.S market. The restaurant target market has always been college students. Given that most of the college students usually prefer take away food products, the restaurant has been using the take away system to sell products to its customers. In order to meet the growing demand for its products, the restaurant has opened three new branches in different parts of the U.S market, which are approximately located near its target market. The company mission is to ensure that it engages in environmental sustainable activities, at all times. On the other hand, their purpose is to meet the needs of its customers, at any given time, by providing high quality services and products to its customers and at affordable prices. Organization Structure The following picture shows the organizational structure of Hill Foods Restaurant. Within the restaurant, my position is that of the assistant manager who is responsible for dealing with sales and financial related matters. My role is to develop sales strategies for the restaurant. Additionally, it is my duty to ensure that future demands for the restaurant are forecasted correctly to guide future production processes. Size of the Organization and its Complexity The restaurant started as a small business with 20 employees. Today, it has grown to a medium sized business with over 300 employees. It has also opened three other branches in different parts of the U.S for the last three years. In addition, the restaurant offers a wide variety of products to its customers and it is looking to expand the range of beverages and food products as well as services its offer to its ever growing customer base. The organization is not complex in nature. It always tries to reduce the line of authority and power as possible to facilitate the process of employees making decisions as fast as they can in order to respond to the needs of customers. The owners of the restaurant are aware that, the more line authority and power that the organization has, the higher the rate of confusion among employees, thereby affecting their motivation and at the same time lowering their performance. Therefore, the objective of the owners is always to ensure that the organization’s management structure is not complex to an extent of slowing down the decision-making process. This is because this may have a negative impact on the overall performance of the organization. Brief History of the Problem Facing the Organization At the initial stages of its businesses, the restaurant did not have many customers, but as it business did grow, the number of customers increased. Therefore, at the initial stages, the sales department of the restaurant was running smoothly as it could easily record sales with accuracy, predict future demands, and come up with marketing strategies with a lot of ease. Things have changed for the last three years due to increased customer base and changing external business environment. This makes it difficult for the restaurant sales team to perform their roles without challenges. Hence, for the last two years, the company has recorded a huge number of inaccuracies in the area of sales. One example is poor demand forecasting whereby, at times, some customers end up being unsatisfied due to production of products that inadequate to meet all the needs of customers. On the other hand, the restaurant, at times, has found itself having to waste a huge amount of products due to low demand for its products at certain periods within its financial calendar (Marshak, 2005). Additionally, the restaurant has found itself investing heavily in the wrong sales strategies at the at times, resulting to huge wastages in the long run. The problem being experienced in the restaurant sales department has also affected the overall performance of the restaurant with increased operational costs, losses, and poor planning. This is due to inaccurate data available on what the organization needs to produce at a given time (Marshak, 2005). Therefore, there is urgent need to address the current problem facing the restaurant before it affects its ability to be in business in the near future. Section 2: Development of the Change Plan and Process This section of the paper provides details on how the restaurant will undertake its change process in order to ensure the problems that it is facing currently are fully addressed. Identification of the Problem As an organization that is fast growing; Hill Foods Restaurant, is faced with a number of challenges in its sales section that have impacted negatively on its overall performance. One of the symptoms of the problem is that the restaurant has not being able to accurately make demand forecasting for the last one year. This has resulted in huge losses due to loss of customers and other finances used to purchase materials used in the production process within the restaurant. Secondly, the sales recorded presented to the restaurant management for decision-making process have not been accurate at all, resulting in the wrong decision being made regarding sales and other related services in the restaurant. Another symptom that shows that there are problems within the restaurant sales section poor stocking practices within the restaurant. The production unit has found itself at times short of materials needed for production purchases due to inaccurate demand forecasted by the sales unit (Haag et al., 2006). The above symptoms shows that there is an urgent need to come up with a solution to the challenges facing the sales unit of the restaurant with an aim of addressing these symptoms given that they are having a negative impact on the overall performance of the restaurant for the last one year. The solution to the identified problems within the sales unit can be addressed by implementing a sales application system that would be used by the sales team in recording sales transactions accurately, decision making and forecasting future sales (Haag et al., 2006). The new application will have the features needed to address the current challenges facing the sales team. Firstly, it will increase accuracy when making sales records, thus, enabling the management of the restaurant to use the data in making the right decisions about marketing strategies and other units that depend on the information from the sales unit (Jordan, 2009). Secondly, it enhances the process of demand forecasting within the organization, hence, enabling the appropriate units to put measures in place to ensure that those projected demand will be met in the future. Due to the advantages associated with the sales application system, it would be advisable for the management of the restaurant to change the current processes used in recording data and forecasting demand in the sales unit. Additionally, in order for the restaurant to increase the performance of the sales force, it can use the new system to monitor the activities of its sales team (Darmon, 2007). Approaching the Change Process as an Organization Consultant It is important to understand that any change process needs to be approached with a lot of care as it may impact the organization positively or negatively depending on how it is approached. As a consultant, the first thing would be to identify the problems that need to be addressed by the change process and assess whether the proposed sales application system will have the capacity needed to ensure that problem being addressed by implementing it will be fully addressed (Levin, 2012). The second step will be to determine whether the employees of the organization are in support of the change process in order to come up with strategies that will be used to win them to support the entire change process (Filicetti, 2007). In many organizations, introducing any form of change is usually met with a lot of resistance by the affected employees. In addition, as a consultant, it is my duty to avoid a similar situation as this may derail the entire change process (Albert, 2004). Finally, as a consultant, the other thing to take into consideration, is the preparedness of the restaurant financially to implement this expense change in its sales process before going ahead with plans of guiding the organization in the change process (Dinsmore et al, 2005). This will be aimed at ensuring that the intended change process does not have a negative impact on the other restaurant activities. Ways of Creating Readiness for the Change Process In order to ensure that the restaurant stakeholders are prepared for the change process, there are a number of measures that will be put in place. Firstly, the stakeholders will be involved in the change process, where they inputs on what best need to be done to address the challenges facing the organization will be taken into account (Dean, 2009). Secondly, a budgetary plan will be prepared in order to ensure that the required resources to oversee the implementation of the sales application system are availed by the management on time. Additionally, the procedures that will be followed during the implementation process will be formulated and communicated to the concerned employees with an aim of creating awareness among them (Kerzner, 2003). This will ensure that they are well prepared for the changes that will be experienced in their respective units during the change implementation process. One of the interventions measures to ensure that the change process follow the right direction, will be to conducting periodic reviews to ensure that the change process is within the planned course. Secondly, a timeframe will be developed in order to ensure that all activities needed to oversee the overall success of the implementation process are allocated adequate time and will be completed within the set deadlines (Kotter, 2011). This measure will be aimed at avoiding delays in completing the change process since this may increase the planned cost of implementing the sales application system in the restaurant. Handling of Communication and Readiness For purposes of ensuring that the organization is prepared for the implementation of sales system, a team will be set that will handle communication and other issues related to this project. The team will be mandated with the role of formulating the communication channels that will be used during the project with an aim of ensuring that they ensure that the issues that need to be communicated to employees are communicated in a manner that is effective (Anderson & Anderson, 2001). Additionally, the team will be mandated with the role of preparing the employees for the change process by formulating methods of compensating those employees that will be negatively affected by the sales system being implemented. Furthermore, it will be mandate of the team to develop a training program to ensure that employees develop the right skills and expertise needed to run the new sales application system in the restaurant in an effective way (Cattani, Ferriani & Florian, 2011). Evaluating the Change Effort and Learning from Unexpected Outcomes The success or failure of the implementation of sales application system within the restaurant will be measured by the ability of the process to attain the intended objectives. To start with, the evaluation process will first focus on determining whether the change process enabled the restaurant to address the problems that were being experienced in the sales unit. On the other hand, the ability of the project to be completed within the set budget and timeframe will also be determined in the evaluation process (Bjarne, 2007). If the change effort will attain the intended outcome in the planned budget and timeframe, the process will be termed as a success. On the contrary, if any other outcomes are recorded the change process will be termed as a failure. One of the major things that can be learned from the unexpected outcomes, understanding of some the risks within a project that may affect its implementation and how they can be avoided in the future (Ireland, 2006). References Anderson, D. & Anderson, L.A. (2001). Beyond change management: Advanced strategies for today’s transformational leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. Bjarne, K. (2007). Project management –. theory and practice. Nyt Teknisk Forlag. Cattani, G., Ferriani, S., Frederiksen, L. & Florian, T. (2011). Project-based organizing and strategic management. Advances in Strategic Management, Vol 28, Emerald. Darmon, R. Y. (2007). Introduction to the dynamic sales force management process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dean, C. (2009). RIMER Managing Successful Change. Australia: Uniforte Pty Ltd. Dinsmore, P. C. et al (2005). The right projects done right! John Wiley and Sons. Filicetti, J (2007). Project management dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.pmhut.com/pmo-and-project-managementdictionary Haag, S., Maeve C., McCubbrey, D., Pinsonneault, A., & Donovan, R. (2006). Management information systems for the information age (Third Canadian Edition ed.). Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.. Hamilton, A. (2004). Handbook of project management procedures. TTL Publishing, Ltd. Kerzner, H. (2003). Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (8th Ed. ed.). Wiley. Ireland, L. R. (2006). Project management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. Jordan, J. (2009). Sales Management Best Practices: Six Essential Processes. Retrieved from http://www.salesandmarketing.com/article/sales-management-best-practices-six- essential-processes Kotter, J. (2011). "Change management vs. change leadership -- what's the difference?". Retrieved from http://www.kotterinternational.com/news-and-insights/2012/09/25/change- management-vs.-change-leadership-what-s-the-difference- Levin, G. (2012). "Embrace and exploit change as a program manager: guidelines for success. Retrieved from http://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/Knowledge- Shelf/EmbraceExploitChange_Levin.ashx Marshak, R. J. (2005). "Contemporary Challenges to the Philosophy and Practice of Organization Development". In Bradford, David L.; Burke, W. Warner. Reinventing Organization Development: New Approaches to Change in Organizations. Read More