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Introduction and company structure
Systems and Services Company or Sysco is actually a
multinational corporation based in America and it is involved in the
distribution and marketing of table-top, small equipment, and food products to
educational and healthcare facilities, restaurants, hospitality businesses, and
to other organisations that offer foodservice. The corporation has its
headquarters in Houston, Texas. Sysco is actually the largest food distributor
in the world and it has over 600,000 clients in different fields. The company
had over 67,000 employees as of 2018. The vision of Sysco is to be most trusted
and valued business partner of customers. Meanwhile, the mission of Sysco to
deliver and market great products to consumer with unparalleled service. When
it comes to the financial objective of the corporation, it is concerned with
obtaining $600-700m in operating income growth by the end of this year. In this
paper, the change of Sysco Corporation towards automated inventory management
will be discussed, or rather recounted as I was the part of team that managed
the change, along with the issues experienced and overcome in the endeavour
Change
Management and role of leadership
It can be noted that role of leadership in change
management is extremely effective. In general, change management is concerned
with taking care of change from the side of people. If people are left behind,
it works little to implement new tools and technologies, design new processes,
and create a new department. In fact, financial success of these specific
changes will be more reliant on how people within the organisation cope with
and embrace the change and how well it contributes to the achievement of organisational
goals. Change management involves techniques, tools, and processes for the
management of people undergoing the change for achieving desired business
outcomes. It can be said that it is systematic management of adoption and
employee engagement when the company changes how work will be performed. Hence,
change management focuses significantly on how employees will adapt to the
change in the most efficient manner. It is both a competency and a process
From the perspective of process, management of change
comprises steps that are followed by a manager on a specific initiative or
project. For the specific transformational effort, change management is the set
of plans and strategy focus on making people move through the change. In
general, its main phases include:
·
Preparation for change
·
Management of change
·
And reinforcement of change
Actually, there are several reasons of employing
effective management of change on both small and large-scale efforts. The main
reasons of employing a change include increased cost resulted because of poor
management and effective management raises the probability of success. When
change is not managed in an efficient manner, productivity decreases on a
larger scale for a longer period of time than it is necessary, managers are not
willing devote the resources or time required for supporting the change, key
stakeholders lose their involvement in meetings, suppliers start to feel the
impact and observe the disruption that is seemingly caused by the change,
customers are influenced negatively by a change that should not have been
visible to them at all, the morale of employees suffers significantly and
divisions between the management and employees start to appear in the company,
stress and confusion increase, and loyal and talented employees leave the firm.
In large corporations, project also suffer because of
unnecessary rework, overrun budgets, and missed deadlines. In addition to it,
in some specific cases, the project is abandoned when large losses are
experienced in terms of finances. All of these results cause significant issues
for an organisation and on the health of corporation, it has an adverse impact.
Each and every issue similar to these can be mitigated and managed properly if
a structured approach towards change is adopted.
Sysco and
Change Management of Sysco Corporation
Change Management and leadership style
In case of Sysco Corporation, as it has been explained
above, the change implemented was concerned with automating inventory
management processes for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of
different processes and functions related to supply chain. Due to this leaders are involved for guiding
about this change in the organization. This change was aimed at ensuring that
customer need were met properly and that costs involved in the management of
supply chain decreased significantly. This was the aim of change and it would
not be wrong to say that this change was quite huge for the corporation because
it had the objective of changing the current supply chain practices and make
them digital. Obviously, since a new system had to be implemented within the
sector, it would have served to change all the processes, practices, and ways
of managing the supply chain
It had been determined by the management that if this
change was not managed in an effective manner, it would result in significant
issues for the corporation, not only in the form of financial losses but also
in the form of decreased efficiency. In addition to it, if this change would
not be managed properly, it would result in the loss of customers because their
needs would not be met for the time being. If the functions of supply chain
stopped, it would prevent the corporation from delivering the products to
customers and meet their needs. Thus, it was more than just important for the
management to ensure that the change was managed properly. Thus, in order to
manage the change in an effective manner, a unique approach was taken by the
senior manager. The change was based on Kotter’s 8-step change model.
Change
Management Strategies and leadership role
As it has been explained, the main change management
strategy developed by senior manager was to base the process of change manager
on Kotter’s 8-step change model
First
Step-Creating Urgency of Sysco Corporation
Change Management and leadership style
The first step taken by the management was to create
urgency within Sysco Corporation. This step was considered important by the
management to ensure that the executives and stakeholders considered it
important to consider the change. In order to create this urgency, meetings
were held by senior management with both executives of the corporation and
stakeholders. In this meeting, examples of other companies had been given that
had already automated the processes of supply chain and how it seemed to
benefit them. In this manner, the senior management was successful in creating
urgency. If examples of other organisations had not been given and if it had
not been determined that this change would cause the corporation to gain
profits and achieve efficiency, it would not have been possible to persuade
both the executives and stakeholders.
Second
Step-Forming Coalition of Sysco Corporation
Change Management and leadership style
Once both the executives and stakeholders had agreed to
implement the change about automating the processes and operations of supply
chain, a coalition had been formed by the senior management. Management knew
and recognised the importance of developing an experienced team that would have
the necessary capabilities and skills for managing and facilitating the change.
Therefore, in order to develop this team, senior management considered themselves
along with senior and competent employees, including me, for ensuring that the
change would be implemented in an efficient manner and it would serve to
contribute to the accomplishment of business objectives. Senior managers
communicated the objectives of change to the team and ensured that they agreed
and also showed interest in pursuing the change. In order to do this, a long
meeting was held in which the team and senior employees were involved. In this
manner, the objectives of change were communicated to the team.
Third
Step-Creating a Vision for Change
In order to ensure that the change would be implemented
in an effective manner and employees would be managed properly, it was
considered necessary by the team to create a vision that reflected the change
properly. Thus, a vision was created that reflected the aim of corporation to
achieve efficiency in the market and meeting the demands of consumers in a more
effective manner.
Fourth
Step-Communicating the Vision
One of the most important steps in the management of any
type of change within an organisation is concerned with communicating the
change with every employee. After all, one the change is implemented, it is
quite normal for organisations and management to experience low
work-efficiency. It further results in employee demotivation and at one point,
employees begin to leave the organisation. All of this is due to their
disapproval with the change. They are unable to cope up with the change and
adapt to it. Thus, it creates problems for the management because not only they
have to experience low work efficiency but they also have to experience
financial losses because of employee turnover. An important reason why
employees do not approve of the change is because the objectives of change are
not communicated effectively to them. They do not know whether the change will
benefit them or not. In their perception, this change is meant to make
processes difficult for them.
In order to evade this problem, the vision and objectives
of change were communicated effectively to employees. Long and interactive
meetings were held by the team and they were aimed at ensuring that employees
understood how the change would benefit them and how it would contribute to the
success of the organisation. This prevented a significant issue for management
within Sysco Corporation
Fifth
Step-Removing Obstacles of Sysco Corporation
Change Management and leadership style
In order to ensure that all obstacles were removed, risk
analysis was conducted by the team at every stage of the change implementation
to ensure that all possible risks were identified, and necessary measures could
be taken by the team for ensuring success. Risk analysis enabled the team to
determine that there was a risk of increasing costs in the implementation of a
supply chain management system. Thus, the team took necessary steps for
adjusting the budget and accommodating the change.
Sixth
Step-Creating Short-Term Wins
The team considered it necessary to segregate the whole
change implementation in a number of small stages for ensuring that it would
remain easier for the team to keep the track of change and it would also serve
to motivation both the team and the employees. As a stage would complete
effectively, senior managers would make sure to provide both extrinsic and
intrinsic rewards to the team and employees. This helped in maintaining the
motivation of team
Seventh
Step-Building the Change of Sysco Corporation
Change Management and leadership style
Once the change had been implemented successful and all
goals had been achieved, the team considered it very important to ensure that
the change was strengthened and it contributed to the efficiency of
corporation. Thus, senior managers created training programmes for employees
who would work in the sector of supply chain and even for employees in
operational management to ensure that they would be able to operate the
software in an efficient manner. This step played an important role in ensuring
the success of change management. If this step had not been taken with care by
senior managers, it would not have been possible for employees to utilise the
system properly and produce the desired results.
Step
Eight-Anchoring the Change
Once the automated system had been implemented and
employees had been trained, some specific performance standards had been set
which needed to be met by employees. If these standards were not met, steps
would be taken by the management and if these steps were consistently met by
employees then they would be rewarded for it. This served to make Sysco
Corporation utilise the automated system to its best and make it contribute to
the achievement of both long-term and short-term goals of the corporation.
Issues of Sysco Corporation Change Management and leadership
style
In the management of
change, leadership style is considered very important because if an inadequate
leadership style is utilised, it causes problems in communicating and
implementing the change. However, in this case, there were no issues associated
with leadership because in Sysco Corporation, a combination of transformational
and democratic leadership styles. It means that communication is established
and focused upon by both leaders and managers. It not only serves to ensure
high employee satisfaction and also makes them open to changes. Therefore,
there were no leadership issues in the implementation of change. However, the
same does not apply for structural issues because the team experienced a number
of structural issues while implementing and managing the change. Still, these
issues were resolved effectively
Since the complexity of the
supply chain and inventory management has increased with the globalization.
Most of the business, previously, was relying on the vast network of suppliers,
distributors, manufacturers, retailers, intermediaries. Initially, the
implementation of the automating system cannot be applied all in sudden. There
was a number of uncertainties that increased the process complexities
The exceptional services
are considered as the norm and changing the structure can make the delay in
services and lead of customer dissatisfaction. The company, on a regular basis,
respond to the external market pressures and face a multitude of inventory
management challenges. The challenges are supposed to be reduced by applying
new strategies on the supply chain. It is important to ensure stock
availability before applying the changes to reduce the risk of inventory
mismanagement and investing too much on the working capital
Altering the system is not
easy for large companies as the number of stock management issues arise that
are longer and less reliable from global suppliers, increase the tracking
issues of inventory along with the problems of the supply chain, and issues in
tracking and optimising the stock across the multiple warehouses. The best
solution to convert a manual system to an automatic system is by using
optimizing software. In order to resolve the issues, inventory optimization
software such as EazyStock was used to create the best process timeline. The
working structure was minimum damaged as it was protected under the time
constraints and protracted lead times. The visibility of items was improved by
using an automated inventory control system. The replacement of an automatic
system with the manual system improved the efficiency of inventory management
practices. The warehouse management system (WMS) and enterprise resource
planning (ERP) provide visibility for each stage of inventory management
The automating system was
beneficial to access real-time data about the warehouse. The accuracy level was
increased that improved operational decisions about the stock and order. Sysco
corporation uses multiple warehouses that can be benefited from investment on
the inventory optimization software
The demand can increase
with suitable services. The system ensures that stock was placed with the new
order and it can utilize the warehouse space much and more efficiently. The
system lacks the dynamic capabilities to support, instead of that, the inventory
management team was responsible to resort the spreadsheets and the process was
labour and time-intensive. Another issue was to update the automating system
with the previous reports. An automated
system is a software-based tool that tracks inventory
Conclusion and Recommendations of Sysco Corporation Change Management and leadership
style
Overall, it can be said that Sysco Corporation was successful in managing the change because senior managers had created a capable team with necessary skills and the team had communicated the change in an effective manner to employees. Moreover, its leaders are extremely concern with the organization and guiding them right path with perfection. This was possible only because change management was based on Kotter’s 8-step change model. Although not many issues were experienced in the management, structural issues were still experienced. A recommendation is that advanced risk analysis techniques should have been adopted by the team as it would have enabled us to prevent structural issues from occurring within Sysco. In addition to it, advanced forecasting techniques should have been utilised for planning the budget as it would have enabled us to not invest extra money in the process.
References of
Sysco Corporation Change Management and leadership style
Bateh, J., Castaneda, M. E. & Farah, J.
E., 2013. Employee resistance to organizational change. International
Journal of Management & Information Systems (IJMIS), 17(2), pp.
113-116.
Cameron, E.
& Green, M., 2019. Making sense of change management: A complete guide
to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. s.l.:Kogan
Page Publishers.
Douglas, A.
& Vora, M. K., 2013. Business excellence through sustainable change management.
The TQM Journal.
Gupta, P.,
2011. Leading innovation change—the Kotter way. International Journal of
Innovation Science, 3(3), pp. 141-150.
Hayes, J.,
2018. The theory and practice of change management. s.l.:Palgrave.
Slack, N.,
Chambers, S. & Johnston, R., 2010. Operations management. s.l.:Pearson
education.
Sysco, 2020.
Sysco Foodie Resources. [Online]
Available at: https://www.sysco.com/
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