Neil and Joan a brother and sister duo own a small dry cleaning business. NeJoWe Cleaners! provides several services to its customers: dry cleaning of clothes and household linen, laundry, ironing, repair work and clothing alterations. They currently have 5 locations across the capital city, with the sixth location being that of the main office where most of the cleaning and laundry is carried out. NeJoWe has been in business for about ten years and believe that personal contact with customers, operational efficiency, fast and quality work has given them the edge in building the business. A key feature of their customer service is soliciting feedback from customers about their service quality, this they were able to do in person on their daily deliveries as one or the other travelled around to each location on a daily basis. These trips would also give them the opportunity to physically check on what was happening in each location and have formal and informal talks with the staff. While business is growing, a number of issues are emerging for the young entrepreneurs: A. There is a city-wide water shortage and water lock-off therefore, the laundry side of their business is growing as clients now find it difficult to wash all laundry at home; B. Paper work has grown exponentially with the growth in business; while the locations are connected by email, all processes are still paper based; the accounting system in particular is a nightmare when taxes are to be paid, involving many hours and sleepless nights, and C. Deliveries to each shop are made three times a day, because of road works and an influx of more affordable cars, time spent on the road is now eating into the time available to complete main office activities and gasolene purchase for delivery has increased. Consequently delivery times are unpredictable and customer delight has been sliding downwards at 1 % per month for the last 5 months, this has been attributed to a 5% increase in completed jobs being delivered to the wrong location and the inability to maintain the 96% same day delivery target. NeJoWeCleaners, has been in operations for 10 years. Neil has a first degree in accounting and IT and Joan one in management with minors in human resource and operations management. As the business has grown, they have each transitioned themselves from managers of the outlets and now manage the business from the head office. Each outlet employs five persons, most of who have been with the NeJo from the beginning. Neil and Joan are thankful that they have a low level of absenteeism, low staff turnover and few accidents, but are concerned that the issues, if not managed will lead to de-motivated staff and further slide in business goodwill and growth. The business supports 41 persons, composed of customer service representatives, dressmakers/tailors, drivers and persons who operate the specialized laundry equipment as well as complete general laundry and ironing and the newly formed logistics unit All is not bad news, they now have the opportunity to buy out and rebrand a competitor’s location. A 4 man logistics team was put togehter to look at proposing possible resolution to the problems mentioned. The intial problems identified by the team to immediately tackle were missing guaranteed deadlines and the increase in the gas bill. These operational problems if not corrected will continue to negatively impact the financial side of the organization. Neil see the opportunity to control performance across the various outlets with the use of the customer and job handling IT solution that would come with the purchase. He feels that eliminating the crushing paperwork along with budgetary controls will bring the problems under control. Joan is of the opinion that all they have to do is to employ more drivers, change the delivery times, and abandon their same day service. She believes that introducing IT Accounting solution computers will adversely affect the staff productivity and retention, as it appears that the entity is moving away from staff related benefits and welfare. Joan strongly believe that an HR software would be the answer to staffing relations. Staff were accustommed to receiving e-alerts of salary lodgement at 10 am every fortnight. Despite the best laid plans, for the last 6 months, the e-alerts come between 2-6 pm, on pay day, as the operational side takes priority and staff benefits, such as approved vacation leave, and salary payments are unintentionally delayed. Neil thinks that once the business inflows increases, then the HR software could be had. Joan decided to contract a software designer for HR operations, to ensure that the staff is not neglected during the new acquisition and changes. Identify and analyse two (2) staff related control problems, that the accounting software proposed by Neil, could be used to resolve possible HR issues. Ensuring that you justify your response.
Neil and Joan a brother and sister duo own a small dry cleaning business. NeJoWe Cleaners! provides several services to its customers: dry cleaning of clothes and household linen, laundry, ironing, repair work and clothing alterations. They currently have 5 locations across the capital city, with the sixth location being that of the main office where most of the cleaning and laundry is carried out.
NeJoWe has been in business for about ten years and believe that personal contact with customers, operational efficiency, fast and quality work has given them the edge in building the business. A key feature of their customer service is soliciting feedback from customers about their service quality, this they were able to do in person on their daily deliveries as one or the other travelled around to each location on a daily basis. These trips would also give them the opportunity to physically check on what was happening in each location and have formal and informal talks with the staff.
While business is growing, a number of issues are emerging for the young entrepreneurs:
A. There is a city-wide water shortage and water lock-off therefore, the laundry side of their business is growing as clients now find it difficult to wash all laundry at home;
B. Paper work has grown exponentially with the growth in business; while the locations are connected by email, all processes are still paper based; the accounting system in particular is a nightmare when taxes are to be paid, involving many hours and sleepless nights, and
C. Deliveries to each shop are made three times a day, because of road works and an influx of more affordable cars, time spent on the road is now eating into the time available to complete main office activities and gasolene purchase for delivery has increased. Consequently delivery times are unpredictable and customer delight has been sliding downwards at 1 % per month for the last 5 months, this has been attributed to a 5% increase in completed jobs being delivered to the wrong location and the inability to maintain the 96% same day delivery target.
NeJoWeCleaners, has been in operations for 10 years. Neil has a first degree in accounting and IT and Joan one in management with minors in human resource and operations management. As the business has grown, they have each transitioned themselves from managers of the outlets and now manage the business from the head office.
Each outlet employs five persons, most of who have been with the NeJo from the beginning. Neil and Joan are thankful that they have a low level of absenteeism, low staff turnover and few accidents, but are concerned that the issues, if not managed will lead to de-motivated staff and further slide in business goodwill and growth. The business supports 41 persons, composed of customer service representatives, dressmakers/tailors, drivers and persons who operate the specialized laundry equipment as well as complete general laundry and ironing and the newly formed logistics unit
All is not bad news, they now have the opportunity to buy out and rebrand a competitor’s location. A 4 man logistics team was put togehter to look at proposing possible resolution to the problems mentioned. The intial problems identified by the team to immediately tackle were missing guaranteed deadlines and the increase in the gas bill. These operational problems if not corrected will continue to negatively impact the financial side of the organization. Neil see the opportunity to control performance across the various outlets with the use of the customer and job handling IT solution that would come with the purchase. He feels that eliminating the crushing paperwork along with budgetary controls will bring the problems under control. Joan is of the opinion that all they have to do is to employ more drivers, change the delivery times, and abandon their same day service. She believes that introducing IT Accounting solution computers will adversely affect the staff productivity and retention, as it appears that the entity is moving away from staff related benefits and welfare. Joan strongly believe that an HR software would be the answer to staffing relations. Staff were accustommed to receiving e-alerts of salary lodgement at 10 am every fortnight. Despite the best laid plans, for the last 6 months, the e-alerts come between 2-6 pm, on pay day, as the operational side takes priority and staff benefits, such as approved vacation leave, and salary payments are unintentionally delayed. Neil thinks that once the business inflows increases, then the HR software could be had. Joan decided to contract a software designer for HR operations, to ensure that the staff is not neglected during the new acquisition and changes.
Identify and analyse two (2) staff related control problems, that the accounting software proposed by Neil, could be used to resolve possible HR issues. Ensuring that you justify your response.
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