Question

Snyders of Hanover, which sells about 80 million bags of pretzels, snack chips, and organic snack items each year, had its financial department use spreadsheets and manual processes for much of its data gathering and reporting. Hanover’s financial analyst would spend the entire final week of every month collecting spreadsheets from the heads of more than 50 departments worldwide. She would then consolidate and re-enter all the data into another spreadsheet, which would serve as the company’s monthly profit-and-loss statement. If a department needed to update its data after submitting the spreadsheet to the main office, the analyst had to return the original spreadsheet, then wait for the department to re-submit its data before finally submitting the updated data in the consolidated document.

Copy the following questions and respond by writing, at a minimum, one or two well-developed paragraphs for each question. Be sure to cite the text to support your responses by integrating evidence through quotations, paraphrases, or summaries.

How does this situation impact business performance?

How does this situation impact management decision making?

Answer 1

How does this situation impact business performance?

Manually entering the data and processing of it in such a big organization like Snyders it is a cause of concern. The modern world believes that collection of data and taking meaningful information out of it can certainly provide the companies with a competitive advantage in the market. Snyders which as fifty departments spread worldwide must be getting a huge amount of data and the requirement of it to be consolidated to get out a meaningful information for the company is a tough task.

Handling such quantum of data in manual form and then processing it without errors would require time and patience. The company's today loose and gain market share in a day and to have an edge in the market they keep themselves up to date.

The business performance of Snyders will definitely be hampered due to such operation because the data will take time to reach the analyst from different departments located in different countries; someone may send it on due date and someone may send it three days after the due date but the analyst has to wait. It is also a possibility that the data received from different departments may have errors or omissions which again need to be corrected and sent to the analyst, these all will delay the processing of data and by the time the results are produced by the analyst the company may be in a disadvantageous position.

If management of the company is getting late information it can't decide immediately on the changes or the strategies which needs to be undertaken and thus opportunities may be missed resulting in negatively affecting the business performance.

How does this situation impact management decision making?

This situation impact management decision making in the following ways:

• The delay in collection of data may result in the delay in decision making as decision-making is a rational process and it is based on the data provided by different departments in a company.
• The format of reporting of departments situated in different countries may be different and thus when they are consolidated it may not provide a clear picture.
• The decision making process may be faulty as the data which reaches the management is consolidated one and this is a possibility that management may not see the clear picture.

For e.g. A department situated in one country may be making good profit while some other department in different country may be at loss but since the data is consolidated the losses may not be visible to management as another department in some other country is making good profit. This will look balanced and management may not see have the clear picture which will prove to be problematic for the sustainability of the company.