INF30003 - Swinny Supermarkets: Bringing About a Transformation`s Case Study

Assessment Task:

Swinny Supermarkets: Bringing About a Transformation 
Swinny Supermarkets established forty years ago by Rob Rogers in Victoria is a supplier of groceries which operates 321 supermarkets Australia wide. It employs 2,200 people deployed in the following departments: Sales and Marketing, Human Resource Management, Warehouse and Delivery, Accounting and Finance, IT, and Purchasing. 
To meet its customers’ demands, it has established connections with 240 suppliers, including manufacturers and wholesalers. Whilst the number of suppliers is expected to remain for the most part unchanged in the foreseeable future, the range and type of equipment supplied may change considerably. 
Over the last decade, thanks primarily to the initiatives of the current CEO, Clare Rogers, who three years ago introduced of an on-line presence, the business has expanded its market base. This initiative, which has led to 400% increase in sales over the last three years, has come at a time when the company has not only experienced administrative ‘growing pains’, but also felt the effects of increased competitive forces. 
One problem has been that the business’s existing administrative structure has not efficiently handled the increase in the volume of sales, primarily because it has outsourced the delivery of goods to their on-line customers. As a consequence, dealing with complaints and tracing the fleet have been very complicated because as the delivery staff are not part of the same organisational structure. Ms Rogers has been frustrated with the current state of play and has become fearful that the success of her online shopping venture may have been put at risk due to the problems that come with outsourcing delivery. 
With due recognition of the problem, Ms Rogers has called a meeting to which you have been invited to attend, along with the senior managers. Your role, as a business analyst, is to help them: (1) to analyse the problem; and (2) to come up with a decision as to an approach to put to the Board. 
At the meeting, you note the following: 
Point 1) Ms Rogers spoke about the problems that come with outsourcing delivery for online shopping. She mentioned competitors, such as Coles and Woolworths, who had gone through similar expansion paths and decided to create their own delivery departments. She said that, in order to compete with them, Swinny would have to do the same thing because outsourcing delivery: (1) is not cost-effective; (2) lead to less customer satisfaction; and (3) made the management of it complicated. According to her, if, with our expansion into the new markets, we are unable to handle the high volume of complaints received, we are opening the door to our competitors who are investing highly in on-line sector. The upshot is that, if we do not do the same, we run the risk of losing our customers. 
Point 2) Oliver, a soon-to-be-retired sales manager, said that adding a delivery department will only lead to more problems, as we do not have IT infrastructure and fleet for delivery. He suggested that we might consider either increasing the number of staff handling complaints or changing the outsourcing company. 
Point 3) Ms Rogers interrupted Oliver and said that, over time, we had tried several companies, but the problems remain. She said that, whilst buying delivery fleet would not be a big issue, the development of a computerised system that could receive orders and then allocate them to vans based in the suburbs, based on the date, time and time windows, would be a major undertaking The scheduling should be optimised to make the whole process efficient, and the system should be able to schedule each driver’s working dates and times, subject to their availability. 
Point 4) James, a young, ambitious IT manager, was impressed with her idea and said that drivers could have an app on their company mobile phones, which connected to the company system through the mobile phone internet, that could provide the route to destination for each order, as well as the delivery time window, so that GPS-guided-drivers might reach their destinations in a timely fashion. In this way, deliveries could be traced to make sure that they were being made on time. This app could address the root cause of many of the complains currently being received. 
Point 5) Isobel, the HR manager, was concerned that the computer skills required to be able to work such a computerised system might be beyond some of the existing staff. She added that, as many of the senior managers in the Sales Department were old, they might not be comfortable with the new computerised delivery system. As a consequence, the company would have to consider either appointing a new manager, with the computer skills to work such a system, or implementing a comprehensive new training program. She thought that there might be some resistance if a new system were put in place, and that employee satisfaction might drop off as a result of it. 
Point 6) Rob, the Logistic manager, said we need to be careful with the implementation of this type of change because it might provoke so much resistance among the employees that they might not be motivated to get behind it. 
Point 7) Adam, the Finance manager, said that his department should oversee the development of the IT investment business case and that the CIO should only be involved in its implementation. A Finance-led investigation of the business case would be more effective in the questioning and analysis of the imperatives of making an IT investment, designed to improve not only financial performance but also customer service -- both of which would create added value for our shareholders. He wanted the finance staff to use their number-crunching skills to lead the technologists and the marketing staff in the analysis of any IT investment opportunities. 
Point 8) James disagreed with Adam’s suggestion to give the responsibility of developing the business case to the Finance department. He could not comprehend how a Finance-led 
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business case development -- where the Finance department took leadership over all other functions, including both the IT department and Sales and Marketing department, to develop the case for adopting an IT system -- would be more likely to result in improved performance and customer service. 
Point 9) James felt that Adam’s approach would take the company back in time to when IT was seen as nothing more than a support function. The collaborative vision of Sales and Marketing and the IT department should lead in the development of the case for new IT investments. He said that the company needed to diversify the portfolio of its services also. He saw an opportunity for the company to have smart shopping which took customer experience to another level by incorporating IT technologies. His view was that, when the market sees us as a growing organisation which provides more solutions to its clients, it will be satisfied again. 
At the end of the meeting, you are convinced that it would not be possible to analyse the requirements for computerised on-line delivery system, without meeting with key users and stakeholders of Swinny’s supermarket. Upon your request, Ms Rogers agrees for you to conduct interviews with the key stakeholders and potential users of the system. 

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