Answered: What are your thoughts about which…

Purchasing and Supply Chain Management

6th Edition

ISBN:9781285869681

Author:Robert M. Monczka, Robert B. Handfield, Larry C. Giunipero, James L. Patterson

Publisher:Robert M. Monczka, Robert B. Handfield, Larry C. Giunipero, James L. Patterson

ChapterC: Cases

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 5.3SD: Scenario 4 Sharon Gillespie, a new buyer at Visionex, Inc., was reviewing quotations for a tooling...

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CASE STUDY - Bricks and Mortar This coursework concerns the development of information systems for the branch offices of Bricks and Mortar, a rapidly expanding estate agency in the south of England. Bricks and Mortar are considering computerising and "internetting" the main part of their business: that carried out in the branch offices; the selling and marketing of houses. They called this the "Business Improvement Project" (BIP). It is hoped that this will enable Bricks and Mortar to become the premier estate agent in the south of England although with the drop in demand to buy houses as the rental market expands coupled with new internet based estate agents emerging this could be a tough target to meet. However, the BIP should allow costs to fall as there will be a need for fewer administrative staff especially if they switch away from advertising in newspapers and move onto the web. Kate Hudson also hopes that this will enable houses to be sold more quickly. Current use of IT is limited to use of a general ledger accounts package, a payroll package, spread sheets for financial planning, and some word processing. These are run on four stand-alone PCs based in the Head Office which houses the Finance and Marketing departments as well as the Managing Director. Given the quality of staff in Head Office it is expected that Finance and Marketing will cope effectively with all the proposed changes. Having said that there is little experience within Marketing of what going digital would actually involve although a recent visit by a consultancy evaluated the marketing team to be one of the best and most innovative that they had come across. Bricks and Mortar have requested a thorough analysis of their business, reviewing their business strategy, and to identify opportunities for the use of IT in improving their profitability and market position. Due to the negligence of the other partner, Robert Jackson, the company has for some time now been without any effective personnel management (that being a major role of his) and as a result it has been decided that Robert Jackson should retire and leave the running of the company to his more diligent business partner Kate Hudson. Indeed, the Personnel team that Jackson was responsible for is clearly underperforming - it is rare to see anyone in the team before 10 am and the office is normally empty at 4pm. Long lunch hours in the pub are not unknown and there isn't a single person in this department that has an appropriate qualification. Despite the failures amongst the top management, their current position has been achieved by the drive of a few dedicated branch managers, who usually ignore all the rules of the organisation, and by some of the sales force, who can be ruthless in their pursuit of commissions and care not for any processes that they should follow. In expanding, Kate Hudson recognises the necessity of becoming less people and more process driven, as well as getting some management structure back in place. There is a tendency for offices to 'go their own way', one consequence being that opportunities to make sales are lost through failure to move a buyer from the office that they have originally contacted to one that can better meet their needs e.g. if they decide that a different location is preferable to the one that they are currently looking in. However Kate Hudson does recognise there are two issues that she needs to be aware of - Sales staff attrition rates (which she hopes can be reduced by standardising office processes and pushing up their commission rates - it is known that these rates are not consistent across branches - and there is expectation that BIP will help here and the need to operate according to the highest ethical standards; occasionally, customer surveys reveal that staff sometimes fall short of "good customer service" The register of properties for sale, the list of applicants (people who wish to buy property, the calculation of sales commissions, the production of certain standard letters for vendors, applicants, solicitors were all considered to be activities which could be computerised. There could be an issue here - there is very limited appreciation of I.T. within the admin teams. There are currently 16 branch offices; each in a different area and each have between eight and ten sales persons, five administrative staff: a branch manager, property registrar, sales administrator, adverts clerk, and appointments secretary. Administrative staff vary enormously in capability and it is clear that whilst about half of them are very good many are just lazy, some are incompetent and a few are both lazy and incompetent! It is thought that after automation admin staff should be reduced to 3 per office. What are your thoughts about which areas of the business should be outsourced, which should remain in-house - give reasons for all of your decisions.

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