Best Food Corporation

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Q1. Problems –

* Customer database was not updated and clerks would need to look up customer information in files. These clerks also filled manual order forms.

* The sales/service manager stored the information about private orders and transportation channels on a local spreadsheet. People dependent on this information had to call the service manager to get the details.

* Customer service spent more time on late orders and customer problems, the order writing clerks spent 20 minutes to reference/edit the order and enter details in the computer.

* The distribution process is not streamlined and centralized. This results in duplicate effort, errors and manual labor makes the process time consuming.

* Due to the maintenance of individual logs and status files, there is no uniform flow of information across the different departments involved in making the delivery. Also the scattered and delayed update of information makes it difficult to prioritize orders and the process of order generation is manual and thus is likely to result in a First –In- First- Out (FIFO) process.

* The minimal process that was in place was not always followed; the sales persons could contact the order-writing clerks to overwrite the system.

* There was no closing loop in the process, the sales person had no way to verify if their orders were entered in the computers and no one could confidently say what the status of the order was on a given day.

* The drawbacks of the process had a huge impact on the customer. The sales person did not have access to information regarding the orders and thus they could not inform the customer of any changes in the delivery schedule, updates on the progress of the order and any other queries.

* The lag in the update of the pricing changes into the system could lead to quotations with incorrect pricing.

* The above mentioned problems are very serious in nature mainly because they are impacting the customer...