Assignment 2- NejoWeCleaner! – Small Business on a SmallIsland

Neil and Joan a Missile and sister duo own a small dry-cleaningbusiness. NeJoWe Cleaners! provides several services to itscustomers: dry cleaning of clothes and household linen, laundry,ironing, repair work and clothing alterations. They currently have5 locations across the capital city, with the sixth location beingthat of the main office were most of the cleaning and laundry iscarried out.

NeJoWe has been in business for about ten years and believe thatpersonal contact with customers, operational efficiency, fast andquality work has given them the edge in building the business. Akey feature of their customer service is soliciting feedback fromcustomers about their service quality, this they were able to do inperson on their daily deliveries as one or the other travelledaround to each location on a daily basis. These trips would alsogive them the opportunity to physically check on what was happeningin each location and have formal and informal talks with thestaff.

While business is growing, a number of issues are emerging forthe young entrepreneurs:

A. There is a city-wide water shortage and water lock-offtherefore, the laundry side of their business is growing as clientsnow find it difficult to wash all laundry at home;

B. Paper work has grown exponentially with the growth inbusiness; while the locations are connected by email, all processesare still paper based; the accounting system in particular is anightmare when taxes are to be paid, involving many hours andsleepless nights, and

C. Deliveries to each shop are made three times a day, becauseof road works and an influx of more affordable cars, time spent onthe road is now eating into the time available to complete mainoffice activities; consequently, delivery times are unpredictableand customer delight has been sliding downwards at 1 % per monthfor the last 5 months, this has been attributed to a 5% increase incompleted jobs being delivered to the wrong location and theinability to maintain the 96% same day delivery target.

NeJoWeCleaners! has been in operations for 10 years. Neil has afirst degree in accounting and IT and Joan one in management withminors in human resource and operations management. As the businesshas grown, they have each transitioned themselves from managers ofthe outlets and now manage the business from the head office. Eachoutlet employs five persons, most of who have been with the NeJofrom the beginning. Neil and Joan are thankful that they have a lowlevel of absenteeism, low staff turnover and few accidents, but areconcerned that the issues, if not managed will lead to de-motivatedstaff and further slide in business goodwill and growth. Thebusiness supports 37 persons, composed of customer servicerepresentatives, dressmakers/tailors, drivers and persons whooperate the specialized laundry equipment as well as completegeneral laundry and ironing.

All is not bad news, they now have the opportunity to buy outand rebrand a competitor’s location. Neil see the opportunity tocontrol performance across the various outlets with the use of thecustomer and job handling IT solution that would come with thepurchase. He feels that eliminating the crushing paperwork alongwith budgetary controls will bring the problems under control. Joanis of the opinion that all they have to do is to employ moredrivers, change the delivery times, and abandon their same dayservice, she believes that introducing computers will adverselyaffect the staff productivity and retention.

Neil and Joan has asked your group to give them some ideas aboutdesigning a control system that they could use for NeJo WECleaners! Prepare a proposal that covers the following:

1. Identification and analysis of two (2) control problems, youconsider major and an evaluation of the two opposing (different)solutions proposed by Neil and Joan;

2. Proposal of solutions to Neil and Joan based on the aboveanalysis; to include, types of feedback and concurrent controlsthat they could use and the benefits of these controls to thebusiness.

3. Neil has made the decision to buy an off-the-shelf softwarethat will connect all locations, manage customers jobs and allaccounting data. Design an Action Plan that Neil and Joan can useto ensure that their employees remain motivated based on theplanned introduction of the IT solution. He plans to have thesystem running in 9 months.