Business Strategy
The company that has been chosen for this research paper is Home Depot. The Home Depot is a retail outlet that sells products and services related to home improvement and construction. The main office of the company is in Vinings, Georgia, USA. Home Depot has somewhere around 2141 stores or big box format stores all over United States, UK, China, Canada and Mxico. The company has somewhere around 209,300 people working for them. Home Depot was established in the year 1978 by Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Ron Brill and Pat Farrah. The mission statement of Home Depot is that You can do it. We can help. The mission statement has helped the company to grow and develop itself and has also helped it to come this long way that is from where it started out to be a single home improvement retail outlet. (The Home Depot, 2009)
Business Strategy
Strategy can be defined as a set of decisions and actions that are used by the management of a company to formulate and implement strategies that will provide a fit between the organization and its environment to achieve the stated goals and objectives that have been set. It has been said that most of the companies like Home Depot can gain from the strategic management which is based upon intuition and decision making of the managers within the company. Managers from all the levels of the hierarchy contribute their intuition and judgment into strategic management process.
Control
Control can be defined as the management function of the company which is concerned with monitoring the employees activities, keeping the organization on track towards its goals and making correction where ever needed. And evaluation can be defined as merit or a measure against which the performance of the company is measured.
In todays time quality control has become one of the biggest issues faced managers in each and every organization including Home Depot. The time needed to resupply merchandise in stores, the length of time the customers must wait in checkout lines and the number of steps to process are all park of quality control and quality control plays a major role in the success of the organization. (David, 2006)
Control Systems
To exert effective control for the organization the management of Home Depot must integrate quality control with strategic planning. If control simply monitors internal activities, it may not help the organization to achieve its strategic goals. The link between strategies to control is important because strategy reflects change in the problems and opportunities that appear in the external environment.
In the following figure we will see the relationship between organizational control and strategic planning. It must be remembered by the managers of Home Depot that uncontrollable events lead to creation of new strategic plans which in return lead to new standards of performance activities and feedback systems. Thus it is important that the control is flexible so that it adapts with change. (David, 2006)
Functional Control Systems
Communication communication plays an important role in Home Depot. Managers gather important information from both inside and outside of the organization and then they distribute appropriate information to others who need it. Communication skills are considered to be very important part of every managerial activity. If there is a breakdown in communication it can cause a great deal of problems for the manager, what is going to happen is that the goals that have been set will not be achieved in the given time period and the employees will not be motivated towards working, which will decrease their efficiency which in return will decrease the performance of the company.
Dysfunctional Control Systems
Poor Performance in the past few years, Home Depots performance has declined due to the heavy handed management. This has decreased the sales of the company by 20 million and had to lay off several thousand of its employees and had to close down somewhere around 54 of its outlets.
Developing Evaluating Control Systems
Developing Control Systems
Based on organizational control, a control system which is well designed basically consists of four steps. These steps are illustrated in the following figure.
Establishing Standards of Performance it is important for the mangers to define certain goals when they are setting the organizations overall strategic plan. The goals need to be specific so that they provide a standard against which performance can be compare with the organizational activities.
Measure Actual Performance Home Depot needs to develop a quantitative measurement of performance which can be conducted on a daily, weekly and or monthly basis.
Compare Performance to Standards managers of Home Depot need to take time to read reports or take a tour of the plant and which will help the managers to compare actual performance of the employees and the organization with that to the standards that have been set by the organization.
Feedback corrective action should follow changes in the work activities so that performance can come back to their acceptable standards. In a traditional top-down control approach, mangers may exercise their formal authority to make necessary changes within an organization. With the feedback that is available to the managers can help them to encourage employees to perform better, able to help them with restructuring the production process of the organization or even terminate employees who are performing poorly at their jobs.
Evaluating Control Systems
Customer satisfaction customer satisfaction is the rating done by the customer regarding the companys performance. For example, delivery of Home Depots products to the customers, it becomes a necessity for the managers of the company to find out that how the customers define delivery. In could mean products being delivered before their actual time, delivery done on time or the completeness of the order so on and so forth.
Costs and benefits For example, IT runs the plant that is producing somewhere around 2000 sofa a day, as IT gains experience producing sofas its methods would improve and the workers will learn shortcuts, the flow of materials will become smooth and the procurement of costs will decrease and it will provide benefits to the company and so on and so forth.
The design, planning and implementation processes the evaluation and the monitoring of the processes related to designing, planning and implementation can be done through three techniques and they are flow diagrams, processes charts and simulation models. Flow diagrams, process charts and simulation models are considered to be a means to an end. (Daft, 2008)
Quality Management
Total quality management is based on continuous improvement of the organization operations, based on team work, reducing the cost of production and as well as customer satisfaction, which is the most important in TQM. The need of TQM in the company would be that its ability to improve its products and are able fulfill the demands that are made by the customers for their products and to provide complete satisfaction to the customers. And it becomes essential for the company to participate in quality control that it makes sure that there is a change in the corporate culture , total quality not only engages the participation of all employees but it also targets the company for zero defects when it is producing. (Kaplan Norton, 2006)
The strategic role that is needed to be applied by the manufacturing companies would be quality control programs, because it will help the company achieve its set target and satisfy their customers as well as it employees inevitably.
Techniques
Knowledge Management The organizational structure of Home Depot is based on knowledge management, i.e., the managers of the company believe the organization to be organic rather than mechanistic. In this case the horizontal structures dominate the company as in the companies that are contemporary empowered. Here the tasks are redefined very frequently so that they are able to the needs of both the employees and the organization. Here decision making is de-centralized and informal authority is based on expertise of the employee rather than the hierarchy. The tasks are shares, i.e. Home Depot works on a team based system. The benefits of the system would be-
The employees would be empowered
There will be flexibility and speed
Innovation
Integration
Quality Circles can be defined as a group of employees from all the department of Home Depot who meet up regularly so that they are able to discuss and take out solutions and solve problems that affect their common work activities. The key idea over here is that employees who know their job know it better than anyone else and that is why they can make recommendations for improved performance. The quality circle group does not focus on personal gripes but on the overall problems that affect the performance of the Home Depot. (Kaplan Norton, 2006)
Empowerment is considered necessary, the employees of the Home Depot are motivated to perform better. It is necessary to motivate the employees so that the organizations productivity can increase. When management of Home Depot distribute jobs activities it is believed that the employees are empowered, but empowerment is not just simple distribution of work activities but it also helps by giving the employees authority, training and resources to make their own decisions but with limited premises. Through these kinds of actions, the employees gain confidence and power and it helps them to grow and develop and it also strengthens the position of the organization as well.
Benchmarking can be defined as a process which continuously measures the products and services against the most strongest and the toughest competitors of Home Depot that are considered to be leaders of the industry. Benchmarking can become a success only when an analysis is conducted by the organization, it basically starts with the mission and the vision statement of the organization, its important for the organization needs to view its procedures and determine which areas need the most improvement and which do not. The second step for the organization in benchmarking would be that it must carefully select competitors worth of copying. Once a strong and a compatible program has been founded and analyzed by the organization the benchmarking organization then can devise a strategy for implementing a new programming and becoming as worthy as the leading organization in the industry. (Kaplan Norton, 2006)
Outsourcing can be defined when the organization gets the preferred staff member like a top executive with a high quality level in the particular task area.
Reduced Cycle Time are the steps which are taken to complete the organizations process. The simplification of work cycles includes dropping the barriers between work steps and among departments and the removal of those steps which are completely worthless to the institution and the process, this is what that enables the TQM to succeed.
Continuous improvement is the implementing of small improvements throughout Home Depot but in an ongoing basis. In a successful total quality improvement program all the employees of the organization learn that they need to make changes in their own job activities in a continuous manner. The basic thing in this process is that to improve things little by little at a time but all the time. (Kaplan Norton, 2006)
Conclusion
What I have learned from this is that control is a system process through which individuals can regulate their day to-day activities and as well as their organizational tasks to meet standards of performance. It basically helps an individual to become more flexible and adapt to change when it is taking place whether it is happing in the personal or professional life. It also helps to increase an individuals productivity and performances it makes them more efficient.
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