Business Efficiency Boots Hearing Care Manufacturing
The franchisor’s problems are also your problems – for example, you could have a serious issue if there was a conflict between the franchisor and a major supplier. Charities Charities are often run by full-time professionals and supported by a network of volunteers, which maybe all over the world, an example of a worldwide charity is UNICEF. There are more than 6,000 registered charities and voluntary organisations in the UK alone; another example of a UK charity is the NSPCC, which helps protect children in the UK against cruelty.
Such are organisations are financed by collections, flag days, donations, bequests and trading activities. Some organisations like the RSPCA even sell goods in stores such as Tesco to raise additional funds. Company sponsorship is also important, providing support such as free-rent accommodation, a minibus or the loan of a manager. The National Lottery also makes awards to charities to help boost them. In addition to charities, charitable trusts operate in both the private and public health and education sectors. These organisations operate as businesses but benefit from some tax advantages
Mutual Organisations Some building societies and mutual life assurance businesses are non-profit making. Examples include the Portman Building Society and Standard Life Assurance Society. These types of businesses have no shareholders and no owners. They operate wholly in the interest of their customers (their members). Any surpluses they make are ploughed back into their business or paid to the organisations members (E2) Boots mission statement and objectives “The Boots Company intends to become the leader in wellbeing products and services in the UK and overseas.
This will be achieved through a major programme of change to a more integrated and focused company supported by the power and values of the Boots brand. Our commitment to managing for value remains unchanged – to maximise the values of the company for shareholders and generate superior long term returns. While vigorously pursuing our commercial interests we will always work to enhance our reputation as well as a managed, ethical and socially responsible company” (E3) Boots are trying to become the leader in wellbeing products and services by being able to identify their customers; they have done this by using the Boots advantage Card.
It’s the largest smartcard loyalty scheme with 14million members; it gives them a unique insight. For Boots, the Advantage card is a major marketing and merchandising initiative to help make better marketing and merchandising decisions and sell to our customers more efficiently. This loyalty scheme has been created solely on the principles of relationship marketing. The way Advantage Card information can be analyse means that we can obtain a better understanding of our customer’s requirements and have an opportunity to establish a meaningful two-way communication with them.
By analysing the information provided through the Advantage Card we can gain meaningful insight into our customers’ shopping behaviour, resulting in more accurate marketing decision making. Our sophisticated database system is considered to be one of the most advanced technological sources of customer information available today The target market for the Advantage Card is female, aged 20-45 have B and CI socio-economic status. This is the core and most valuable market to Boots and fits well the proposition (83% of Boots customers are female).
The card is marketed on an emotional rather than a rational or tactical platform, recognising the importance of our customer’s life stages and the part Boots can play in each of these. Boots effective use of labour means the employing of specialist staff, for instance, should there be sufficient work. There is an increasing tendency to employ people on short term contracts to allow business ‘flexibility’. Effective records management is an integral part of Boots ongoing strategy for creating and maintaining an efficient organisation. Minimum wastage and loss of raw materials calls for detailed control and often calls for computerisation.
At Boots we make full use of our computerised stock control system to analyse flows, minimise delays in ordering and avoid the problem of ‘dead stock’. An internal computerised system for sending and retrieving boxes can be accessed by any authorised member of Boots staff. The system consists of a database which records the ID, contents, ownership and duration of storage for each archive box. Access for retrieval can also be restricted by record owners, if necessary. The benefits of the system primarily lie in the more efficient use of the prime office space, along with the speed and efficiency of access to the records.
The estimated cost savings for outsourcing these records is around i?? 250,000. Overall, this initiative provides cost-effective and well-managed off-site storage for important company records that are easy to access through a secure and reliable service. Human Resources department perform a number of needs and is one of the most significant departments in an organisation. The human resource department is accountable for employing and dismissing employees, for staff training and development, and for dealing with matters relating to industrial relations.
The human Resources department also makes sure that the organisation has the right number of employees and the right quality of employees, they also have to determine techniques to measure and reduce labour turnover. The Intranet in Boots is pivotal, this is a system similar to the Internet, but it is used for sharing information entirely within the organisation. E-mail is also another vital attribute to Boots, E-mail is the best method of communication, and Management can contact all staff immediately by just sending one E-mail.
Boots PLC use E-mail to setup meetings also to send each branch a ‘Boots Newsletter’. The advantages of E-mail are that it is fast and efficient and frees up time for other tasks, and also there is a permanent record of E-mails available on the hard disk. Internal communication is information that is moved from one place to another within an organisation. The internal communication in Boots is aimed to: motivate, encourage teamwork, command, organise people, influence attitudes and encourage performance.
The methods that are used to do this are: telephones, interviews, discussions, staff meetings, lectures, team briefing, face-to-face talk and tonnoys. External communication is communicating with outside people such as suppliers of goods, shareholder, customers and so on. The methods, which are used to do this, are: telephones, fax, e-mail, face-to-face talk and computers… Internal Communication: The way that internal communication contributes to Boots is that it needs to transfer information for e. g. a person needs to be supervised on the tills so it uses a tannoy to call a supervisor.
Another example is a worker needs to improve his/her performance so the manager has a discussion and gives him/her a little lecture. These two examples show what information needs to be transferred and what methods are used to do this. External Communication: Boots PLC also uses External Communication within the business and outside the business. They also use E-mail as a form of communication within the company and they feel they could sue it to communicate with different departments. They could also use Fax which would make it more formal but it would have to be word-processed.
Boots frequently send Fax’s to other branches. ICT has a vital importance in communications in this day and age. By using the Internet, faxes and letters, Boots management very rarely have face-to-face conversations with Head-Management because it is more sufficient and time consuming. ICT is very effective in communicating and is also very important in an organisation. Boots PLC would find it very hard to communicate face to face with each employee; the use of ICT has given businesses more assistance. Customer Services have improved because of ICT, ICT has increased customer satisfaction.
