Schweppes Company Analysis

Schweppes Company Analysis According to the case, Cadbury Schweppes are focusing on acquisition strategy in order to complement its portfolio of chocolate, soft drinks, sugar confectionary (candy) and gum. Since its first acquisition on gum businesses which is Hollywood, Cadbury went on to bid Adams another gum business. This is because Cadbury sees that chewing gum as a very attractive category to be included into their confectionary strategy. By acquiring Adams, they will have big chances of becoming leading company in the confectionary industries. Thus, Cadbury had implemented several strategies to bid Adams from Pfizer which may lead to the sustainable competitive advantage to the company itself. The following are several strategies that Cadbury had used to bid and acquire Adams into its confectionary business. Cadbury had created a dedicated M A team, which is under Stitzers strategy group, at corporate headquarters to replace autonomous and dispersed work by local businesses. Besides that, Cadbury Schweppes brought in nearly 100 managers from divisions around the world to Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City for a two week workshop to refine the model and build commitment to the deal and the planned synergy numbers. Thirdly, Cadbury Schweppes had indentified the top tier of Adams management and began making determinations as to who they would like to keep in the event of successful acquisitions. Next strategy is the mantra Best person, right to take the most qualified candidate to match the job that best suited him or her. They also assumed the merger as the potentially transformative event. Cadbury Schweppes had developed an exhaustive integration plan in the event of a successful bid for Adams. A steering committee would be set up with integration management team, and enable teams to achieve the full potential of the merger. Each of this strategies will be evaluated with 4 variables which are value added, rare, hard to imitate, and not easily substitutable. Any of these strategies which had fulfilled all of the four criteria will lead to the sustainable competitive advantage in order to bid Adams successfully from other potential bidders like Nestle, Wrigley, Kraft, Pepsico, Mars, Hershey and Pharma companies. According to the case, Cadbury is estimated ranked as the fifth in the line of potential bidders which is behind Nestle, Kraft, Mars and Hersheys. The first strategy is creating a dedicated merger and acquisition team to replace autonomous and dispersed work by local businesses. We evaluated it as rare because not many companies would spend so many times and human capital to build a comprehensive business model of Adams and also human resources just to make one acquisitions. Besides that, there is a added value behind the team, whereby a team of talented people were gathered to make a strategic business model to bid Adams as they could see the future of Adams which can make Cadbury a leading confectionary company in the industry. It is also rather hard to imitate because the strategy of mergers and acquisitions were planned by whole department rather than just 5 people unit. This 5 people unit team is non-substitutable, as Cadbury is the first company with the team that already begun a comprehensive of Adams model of businesses which include detailed information about marketing and sales, list of potential cost and revenue syne rgies for each of 50 countries and etc. This strategy had proven how well that Cadbury analyzed on Adams before they make decisions to acquire a company. Moreover, Cadbury Schweppes brought in nearly 100 managers from divisions around the world to Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City for a two week workshop to refine the model and build commitment to the deal and the planned synergy numbers. We do not see this as rare because according to the case, competitors would have higher cost. This strategy has value creations because it has brought in the value of team work and stimulates closer relationship between managers from division of around the world. It is rather hard to imitate by many of the companies because, such strategy may require a very large cost by having two week workshop the synergy numbers that they planned in this strategy are easy to substitute because in the case, Stitzer claimed that the synergies were not large enough to support the price necessary to win the deal. Third strategy whom Cadbury Schweppes had indentified the top tier of Adams management and began making determinations as to who they would like to keep in the event of successful acquisitions. This strategy has value creation because, before Cadbury identified and analyzed their organizational culture and its top management team whether it is suitable with Cadburys corporate culture to make a successful joint business in future or not. Furthermore, this strategy is considered as rare as it will help increase possibility of becoming the preferred purchaser for Adams as well Pfizer who is currently the CEO of Adams. It is also not easy to imitate by competitors, as not many top executives can win the chance to know Adams detailed corporate information as what Cadburys do. This strategy would be difficult to substitute by other competitors. For example Nestle, as they do not have much information about Adam especially regarding their corporate culture whether it would culturally fit wi th them or not, although they have large capitals to bid Adams over Cadbury. The fourth strategy with the mantra Best person, right job which means human resources will take the best qualified candidate to match the job that best suited him or her. Added value created by having the most qualified and talented employee to produce the best quality job for the company. Besides that, it is rare, because every company is unsure that it had any of their employees who could lead the large American divisions if Adams is successfully acquired. It is also hard to substitute as many managers did not have the experience to run an integrated business on a global scale. However, the mantra or slogan that Cadbury carry with them are easily imitated by others as every company have the same objectives to employ the best employee in order to help the company to achieve the utmost results as well as to improve productivity. They assume the merger as the potentially transformative event. This strategy has value added element where it is an opportunity to centralize, transform practices and create more shared services. Besides that, it is also rare that only Stitzer believed that this kind of acquisition may motivate others to accept changes towards better improvement. Furthermore, acquisition on Adams is something new on both cultural and social on the company itself. With such strategy in mind of every executives is hard and difficult to adapt my every organizations, as not everyone especially the senior executives will accept new changes or new cultural when a company are merged and have to change their rules and organizations which has caused this strategy hard to imitate. However, Cadburys senior managers foresee the merger and acquisition as an opportunity to restructure a new business model for Cadbury towards achieving leading confectionary company. There is very less substitute as Cadbury who wil l have a very motivating thinking towards accepting new changes which help the company to achieve sustainable advantage. Cadbury Schweppes had developed an exhaustive integration plan in the event of a successful bid for Adams. Such plan is rare because, within 90 days, all validation and planning of the synergies has to be complete and new synergy projects that needed to Beat the Model to be identified and mapped out. In addition, the plan is quite hard to imitate, as all the bidding preparation are required to work out within a short time and period whereby there is no other teams or competitors that could work out a successful integration plan in such a short period. Furthermore, we find out that it is quite hard to find another similar merger that could implement an integration will all the detailed work plan as well as synergy projects to be done within 60 days. Within the first 90 days monthly, all the monthly status report about merger integration and applicable synergies will begin in each department of the company itself, which indicated that the Cadbury has added value in terms of building st rategic plan to acquire Adams compared to other competitors. A steering committee would be set up with integration management team and enabler teams to achieve the full potential of the merger. This strategy contains regional value capture teams as well as functional value capture teams which are important to drive the company towards achieving sustainable competitive advantage. This is also rare because it is necessary to prepare huge amount of human resources to manage several teams in carrying out the integration plan. Furthermore, it is not easily imitated by competitors as not many companies would have interest to focus and spend time to organize a huge number of human capital to implement an integration plan just on the acquisition strategy which the company that acquired are not 100 percent would bring profits for the company itself. Besides that, Adams will also find hard to find other bidders like Cadbury whom had been making deep analysis and study about the corporate detailed information and there are some business similarities betw een Cadbury and Adams. In conclusion, out of so many strategies that Cadbury had implemented, only some of the strategies can lead to sustainable competitive advantage as they had fulfilled 4 criteria, namely added value, rare, hard to imitate and hard to substitute. The strategies are: (1) creating dedicated merger and acquisition team to replace autonomous and dispersed work by local businesses; (2) indentifying the top tier of Adams management and begin making determinations as to who they would like to keep in the event of successful acquisitions; (3) assume the merger as the potentially transformative event; (4) developed an exhaustive integration plan in the event of a successful bid for Adams; and (5) setting up steering committee with integration management team, and enabler teams to achieve the full potential of the merger

Implementing Change

Implementing change in a department of organization can be difficult. Management must have a plan before implementing the change. The manager’s role and responsibility in implementing change within a department is very important. The manager’s role is to assess the change that needs to take place, come up with a plan to implement a change, implement the change, and evaluate the change in a timely order. To have a successful implementation of a new process, the manager must be involved in each step. The manager must keep the staff involved and let the staff know why the change is taking place and how it will affect the work process. The manager faces many challenges such as meeting the organizations goals and working with staff members who might resist the change. This paper will focus on the manager’s role and responsibility in implementing change, the way a manager should successfully handle staff resistance to change and define each step of the change process such as assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. When there is a change in the work process within the department, the manager’s role and responsibility is to make sure the implementation of the changes takes place smoothly with the help of the staff. According to Sullivan & Decker (2009), the manager must be able to communicate openly and honestly with the staff, support the staff if they are resisting the change, emphasize the positive outcomes from initiating change, find solutions to problems that are obstacles to change and accept the constancy of change. The manager must be able to identify the change, collect and analyze data, develop a plan, help the staff prepare for the change, prepare to handle resistance, provide feedback, and evaluate effectiveness of the change. The manager should involve the staff in the implementation of the new work process. According to Knoer (2011), communication is one of the most important tools that a leader must utilize to successfully implement. If the manager does not involve the staff, the staff might think their input is not important or their employment will be affected. This can lead to resistance from staff and have a negative affect in the department. The staff can give managers their input on what areas should be focused on and raise concerns that management might look over. By having the staff involved the manager can prevent them from resisting the change or have a better understanding of why the staff might be resisting and work on ways to lower the staff resistance. With change comes resistance. According to Fiedler (2010), resistance is considered to possibly have positive and/or negative impact on a change, and to be exerted by internal or external environments. The department manager must be able to successfully handle resistance from staff members. Some reasons why a staff member might resist the change is because he or she might not trust the manager, have a fear of failure, believe the change is unnecessary, staff may think if a certain change did not work in the past it will fail again, and the number one reason is the staff member might think he or she will lose their job. Resistance can also come in the form of poor work habits, not showing up to work on time, calling in sick, and lack of interest in the change. The department manager can manage resistance by talking to staff members who are opposed to the change. By talking to the staff, the manager will understand the staff’s concerns and clarify any misunderstanding. The manager must be willing to listen to the staff’s ideas but explain to the staff why the change needs to take place and the positive changes the implementation will bring to the department. The manager must keep open communication, support, and maintain trust of the resisting staff. A manager can be successful with resisting staff if he or she is flexible, confident, realistic, staying focused on the big picture, by combining ideas, energizing the resistors with interests, and solves problems. The change process should be taken in steps of assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The first step assessing the change requires collecting and analyzing important data. Assessing the department will help the manager learn what changes are needed, how to improve the quality of work, stay ahead of the competition, and how to approach the implementation. The plan is the second step and involves gathering the resources needed to implement the change. According to Lombardi & Schermerhorn, â€Å"planning is the process of setting performance objectives and determining what actions should be taken to accomplish them† (p. 7). By having a plan management can prevents mistakes and accidents from happening, without a plan the new change can become a chaos. Employees will be doing what they think is right and this can cause many problems between the staff and management. When management has a plan employees know what is expected of them and know how to achieve the depart ments goals. The next step is to implement the change, where the plan is put into action. The manager has to make sure the staff has the resources needed for the change. If the staff needs to be trained they should receive all trainings before the implementation of the change. This can help the manager keep employees focused and energized. The last step is the evaluation of the change. In this step the manager will evaluate the new step after a set amount of time. The evaluation allows the manger to see how the change has affected the department, whether the change is working, and meeting the goals required in the plan. When implementing change, the manager must knows his or her roles, responsibilities, and how to approach the staff. The manager should not decide what changes needs to take place without assessing the departments needs. The manager must take into consideration how the new change will affect the employees work process, productivity of the department, the morale of the department. Employees concerns should be taken into consideration as well as the expectation of resistance from some employees. At each phase of the change the manager must refer to the plan and must be able to evaluate the change in a timely manner. Implementing change can be difficult but if the manager follows the change process they will be successful.

Business: Management and Different Stakeholders

You have been asked to produce an article on two contrasting businesses covering purpose, ownership, organisational structure, trategic planning and how businesses interact with their environments. Task 1 (Pl ,P3, P4) submtsston date: w,'C 7/10/13 Business organisations exist for many different purposes and have a range of aims and objectives. Privately owned businesses usually aim to make a profit for the owner(s); publicly owned organisations work to deliver services and there are many businesses employ staff and use other resources and are important to the economy ofa region.As part of your duties you and three colleagues have been asked to produce a presentation to local Chamber of Commerce. You and your team members have been asked to research and compare one Public Sector Organisation and one Private Sector Organisation and produce a short PowerPoint presentation of the above of no more 10 minutes duration and of 8 to 12 slides. Covering the following areas: a) (Pl) Describe th e type of business (what does the business/organisation do? b) (Pl) Describe the purpose and ownership (including liability for any business debts) of each business. c) (P3) Describe how two businesses are organised d) (P4) Explain how their style of organisation helps them to fulfil their purpose. note you will need to hand in a copy of the powerpoint and notes at the end of the presentation and answer questions from your tutor) Task 2 (p2) Submission date: wc 11/11/13 All organisations have groups or individuals who are said to be stakeholders in the business.This means that they have an interest in the actions, performance or plans of the business. For example, a decision to move location affects staff, suppliers, neighbours and customers, all of whom are stakeholders. Produce an article for the paper covering the following: a) (P2) Describe the different stakeholders of each of he selected contrasting organisations. b) (P2) Describe how each one influences the purpose of each of the organisations. ) (MI) Explain the points of view of different stakeholders seeking to influence the aims and objectives of these two contrasting organisations. d) (Dl) Evaluate the influence different stakeholders exert in one of your chosen businesses.

Amazon Kindle And Its Innovativeness Free Essay Example, 1750 words

Amazon Kindle The following parts of the paper will focus on the product innovation strategies and programmes behind the development of Amazon Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader designed by the multinational electronic commerce company Amazon. com. This device enables users to browse, read, and download digital books, magazines, and newspapers on wireless connectivity (Amazon. co. uk). An E Ink electronic paper display is used in this hardware device and this feature minimises the power usage to a large extent. This innovation has greatly assisted the Amazon. com to stimulate its business activities by offering improved shopping facilities to users. The company’s reports show that different user friendly features of this device have attracted a large number of new customers to Amazon. com Amazon Kindle: A Substantial Innovation Evidently, this product development process comes under substantial innovation. Substantial innovation assists a firm to bring dramatic changes in its business performance by exploring potential business opportunities that are likely to lead the industry with a competitive advantage over rivals. As experts point out, â€Å"substantial innovations are mid-level in significance both to customers who benefit from them and to the sponsoring company that believes they will significantly help the firm grow and create new wealth† (Tucker, 2008). We will write a custom essay sample on Amazon Kindle And Its Innovativeness or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Although this type of innovation does not fall under the category of breakthroughs, it enables organisations to meet or exceed its goals for growing business, increasing market share, and lowering cost of operations. Under this type, substantial improvements in a firm’s existing product lines or services greatly aid the firm to achieve customer loyalty. It is expected that there would a considerable increase in the sales revenues of Amazon. com with the introduction of this new e-book reader. In the view of Epps (as cited in Shaer, 2011), the Amazon. com would sell between 3 and 5 million Amazon Kindle Fire (a version of Kindle) units before the end of 2011. Many other marketing experts strongly support this opinion by pointing to the fact that this device possesses a variety of competitive advantages over its competitive substitutes. It is widely expected that the newly designed hardware device would raise challenges to iPad, a tablet comput er of Apple Inc, because the Fire is about half the size of the iPad and it is sold at less than half the price of the iPad. The Amazon. com charges a price of $199 for the Kindle Fire whereas the cheapest iPad is sold for $499 (Yahoo Finance, 2011).