Dltr

Organic Moo, Inc., a U.S. market leader in organic milk and related dairy products, is experiencing sharp growing pains. They have been very successful in advertising and building a band name, Moolicious. Organic Moo’s sales have tripled during the past five years. However, new local competitors, offering fast delivery from local production centers and lower prices, are challenging Organic Moo for retail shelf space with a bevy of new products. Organic Moo needs to justify its share of shelf space to grocers and is seeking additional shelf space for its new organic dairy products such as frozen desserts and organic salad dressings. Organic dairy products have a very short shelf life measured in days, and it must be moved very quickly.

Organic Moo’s corporate headquarters is in Charlottesville, Virginia. Corporate has a central IBM mainframe computer that maintains most of the major business databases. All production takes place in processing plants that are located in Pennsylvania, Vermont, Georgia, Indiana, Utah, Oregon, and California. Each processing plant has its own IBM AS/400 minicomputer, which is connected to the corporate mainframe. Customer credit verification is maintained at corporate headquarters, where customer master files are maintained and order verification or rejection is determined. Once processed centrally, order data are then fed to the appropriate local processing plant AS/400.

Organic Moo has 20 sales regions, each with approximately 30 sales representatives and a regional sales manager. Most salespersons live long distances from their assigned regional office and visit them infrequently. Organic Moo has a 14-person marketing group at corporate headquarters. Each salesperson is able to store and retrieve data for assigned customer accounts using a terminal in the regional office linked to the corporate mainframe. Reports for individual salespeople (printouts of orders, rejection notices, customer account inquiries, etc.) and for sales...