Neil and Joan a Missile and sister duo own a small dry cleaning business. NeJoWe Cleaners!...

70.2K

Verified Solution

Question

General Management

Neil and Joan a Missile and sister duo own a small drycleaning business. NeJoWe Cleaners! provides several services toits customers: dry cleaning of clothes and household linen,laundry, ironing, repair work and clothing alterations. Theycurrently have 5 locations across the capital city, with the sixthlocation being that of the main office were most of the cleaningand laundry is carried out. NeJoWe has been in business for aboutten years and believe that personal contact with customers,operational efficiency, fast and quality work has given them theedge in building the business. A key feature of their customerservice is soliciting feedback from customers about their servicequality, this they were able to do in person on their dailydeliveries as one or the other travelled around to each location ona daily basis. These trips would also give them the opportunity tophysically check on what was happening in each location and haveformal and informal talks with the staff. While business isgrowing, a number of issues are emerging for the youngentrepreneurs: A. There is a city-wide water shortage and waterlock-off therefore, the laundry side of their business is growingas 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 stillpaper based; the accounting system in particular is a nightmarewhen taxes are to be paid, involving many hours and sleeplessnights, and C. Deliveries to each shop are made three times a day,because of road works and an influx of more affordable cars, timespent on the road is now eating into the time available to completemain office activities; consequently delivery times areunpredictable 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 locationand the inability 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 theopportunity to buy out and rebrand a competitor’s location. Neilsee the opportunity to control performance across the variousoutlets with the use of the customer and job handling IT solutionthat would come with the purchase. He feels that eliminating thecrushing paperwork along with budgetary controls will bring theproblems under control. Joan is of the opinion that all they haveto do is to employ more drivers, change the delivery times, andabandon their same day service, she believes that introducingcomputers will adversely affect the staff productivity andretention. Neil and Joan has asked your group to give them someideas about designing a control system that they could use for NeJoWE Cleaners! 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 toNeil and Joan based on the above analysis; to include, types offeedback and concurrent controls that they could use and thebenefits of these controls to the business. 3. Neil has made thedecision to buy an off-the-shelf software that will connect alllocations, manage customers jobs and all accounting data. Design anAction Plan that Neil and Joan can use to ensure that theiremployees remain motivated based on the planned introduction of theIT solution. He plans to have the system running in 9months.

Answer & Explanation Solved by verified expert
3.7 Ratings (424 Votes)
Answer 1 Major problems 1 Company is not able to match the delivery times of the services that they offer to their customers as a result of which their customer experience is moving down which is gradually moving their market share 2 Accounting work of the business is manual and involves lots of paper work This is eating up the time of the business which could be    See Answer
Get Answers to Unlimited Questions

Join us to gain access to millions of questions and expert answers. Enjoy exclusive benefits tailored just for you!

Membership Benefits:
  • Unlimited Question Access with detailed Answers
  • Zin AI - 3 Million Words
  • 10 Dall-E 3 Images
  • 20 Plot Generations
  • Conversation with Dialogue Memory
  • No Ads, Ever!
  • Access to Our Best AI Platform: Flex AI - Your personal assistant for all your inquiries!
Become a Member

Other questions asked by students