Organizational Leadership & Behavior

Jeffrey C. Revel

IT Management

April 5,2017

Case Study 4

The Challenges of Local system Design for Multinationals: The Maxfli Sales Force Automation System at BAT

Introduction:

This case focuses on the British American Tobacco (BAT) Company and the challenges the company faces when using a local system design such as MaxFli. MaxFli was a business initiative which was utilized to create a "Sales Force Automation System(SFA)" that could automate the sales process across multiple location. BAT had started the implementation phase of three locations before questioning if MaxFli would be as successful as they once thought. The three locations were:

        1. Chile

        2. Columbia

        3. Central America

MaxFli System

The system was created due to several business and technical issues, those are :

        • Trade Market and Distribution within BAT markets had outgrown its existing technology. As methods had begin you to evolve in the market it began to need new additional systems to support them.

        • Y2K concerns effected the market as well in fear of damage to companies current IT systems

The objective of MaxFli had 4 key strategic elements:

        1. In-store experience for consumers

        2. Partnership with Realtors

        3. Maximizing Marketing cost by analyzing in store promotions

        4. Forecasting Retail Sales

MaxFli IT strategic Priorities:

        • Simple and efficient technology platform

        • Data must be shared between sales, accounting and Marketing

        • Appropriate use of package software

Final form of MaxFli consisted of three main facets : Front -end, Back-office, Reporting engine. In these three facets of MaxFli had several interdependent systems, which are:

        1. Sales Tracking

        2. Inventory

        3. Credit accounts

        4. Competitor information

        5. Merchandising

        6. Outlet classification

Front End of MaxFli

Was an application utilized by field reps in a handheld form. Was used to:

        • Place orders

        • Issue credit

        • Print invoices

        • Track inventory

        • Monitor merchandising

        • Monitor competitor activity

At the end of work day, field representatives will all synchronize their handheld to the data warehouse in the back office system.

Back-Office System

BAT utilized this by having a Customer Relationship management system and using a data warehousing provided by Oracle 8i on HP servers.

Reporting Engine

BAT designed this system to be used all managers at each level of the company.

        • Reported sales and competitor information

        • Outlet classification

        • Promotional material effectiveness

Implementation Phase

Chile implementation

        • ChileTabacos had a large percentage of the cigarette market

        • Took over 15 million in implementation cost for MaxFli

        • GM for ChileTabacos wanted to ensure that the implementation will be Chile based and not a global adoption implementation, while also having final say in decisions

        • Palace is was selected as Project Manager and his vision was focused on a business change project not just an IT one

MaxFli should be seen as a business change program and in order to ensure effectiveness of implementation Palacios had to focus on four major work streams:

        1. Management

        2. Communication

        3. Process/people

        4. Technology

Management

 Dealing with management was difficult at times with Freire wanting to be in control and when he felt that the project was not in his control he decided to table the project for two weeks until he felt that the objectives he had set forth were met. Palacios did manage to explain to Freire that this is a big implementation and that problems will arise and that it is unavoidable.

Communication

Palacios had decided to communicating by "managing upward" which basically means ensuring that management understands what the company is implementing and why they are doing it. Their were a few problems that arose during communication:

        • Geographical distance between design team in London and Developers in Santiago

        • Language barriers between English designers and Spanish developers

Processes and People

Is stated by Palacios, "To capture its full potential MaxFli requires an in depth revision for the current TM&D processes, organizational change, and a strong commitment. Basically ensuring to use his three-phase plane for each process needing to be implemented in the 13 month implementation window assigned. The three phase plane consisted of : awareness, pre system business preparations, and in market implementation.

Implementation plan:

First 2 months

        • development of awareness

        • analysis of business case

        •  selection of the management team

Next 5 months

        • Reviewing and  ensuring that all current organizational processes are effective and ready for implementation

Last 6 months

        • The system implementation had required 6 months itself

Palacios noticed the bad habits that BAT utilized when implementing past systems and he saw that they would lack focus on initial training of the new business processes. Palacios began training before actual implementation of the system to combat this problem that has arose in the past.