Instructions: Please read the following case entitled ‘Best Buy Has the Blues (Shirts)’.  After reading this case, you should prepare an analysis following the guidelines I have provided. The purpose of this assignment is for you to demonstrate that you can apply the concepts, principles, and theories presented in the course readings. Your analysis must employ only the facts presented in the case description below. You must resist the temptation to introduce facts not in evidence in the case description by searching the internet for updated information. The company’s present situation is not necessarily the ideal solution that could be derived from a careful analysis of the facts as presented here. This assignment is worth 80 points.  Please post your completed case analysis under the ‘Assignments’ tab.Best Buy Has the Blues (Shirts)Down the hall from the CEO’s office at Best Buy headquarters in Minneapolis, MN, there is a row of hospital beds, each containing the effigy of an ailing or deceased American retailer. Bedside charts reveal dire financial results. A nearby sign reads, “This is where companies go when their strategies get sick.”As CEO of Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, from 2002 to 2009, Brad Anderson saw his job as keeping the company in good health strategically, and keeping Best Buy’s strategy up and functioning. Anderson regularly prescribed doses of customer focus or, more precisely, focus on the customers’ experience at Best Buy. “In our world,” says Anderson, “the way you win the game isn’t the price of the TV, which is about the same for all retailers, but the experience you give customers once they are in your stores.” For Anderson, this principle led quite naturally to the corollary that success in retailing depends on the people who are most responsible for the customer’s in-store experience, “those line-level employees who interact with our customers each and every day.”This two-fold principle was at the heart of one of the first important innovations that Anderson, then the right-hand man to founder and CEO Richard Schulze, implemented at Best Buy. In 1989, the company stopped paying commissions to its sales staff and put them on salary instead. The move did not go over well with the big suppliers who expected a retailer’s salespeople to push their premium products, but customers appreciated the break from high-pressure sales tactics, and revenues at Best Buy jumped by 25% a year in the early 1990s.The same principle motivated one of the first moves that Anderson made after he became CEO in 2002. Four months after his promotion, he bought a Minneapolis start-up firm that specialized in installing and repairing personal computers. Within a year, he had opened Geek Squad “precincts” in more than 20 Best Buy stores, and by 2005 there was a Geek Squad presence in every store in the chain. Whether working at the customer’s home, in a Best Buy outlet, over the phone, or online, the Geeks constitute a first line of defense against the technological frustrations that can sap the value out of an electronics purchase and the goodwill out of a customer experience. Anderson was confident from the beginning that the technical-services market would continue to grow, but perhaps more importantly, he realized that competitors like Walmart and Costco would never offer the kind of customer services that Best Buy could offer through the Geek Squad. On sales of $1 billion, the Geek Squad now generates about $280 million in annual profit.By far, however, Anderson’s most ambitious strategic gambit has been the “customer-centricity”, or just plain “centricity”, initiative. The keys to centricity are demographics and segmentation. From store to store, the most valuable customers—the ones whose patronage is most lucrative—don’t necessarily belong to the same group of people. At one outlet, for example, the most profitable customers might be affluent tech enthusiasts; elsewhere, they may find suburban mothers, price-conscious family guys, or youthful gadget fiends. Beginning in 2003, Anderson started “centrizing” Best Buy stores by realigning them to cater to their most profitable segment or segments. A given location, for instance, may be geared toward young gadget fiends, while another might be geared toward suburban mothers. The store serving the first segment will have a broad range of videogames and special stations for trying out accessories, while the store serving the second segment will have a staff of personal shopping assistants to help a mother find the right digital camera for recording family activities. If a store caters to affluent tech enthusiasts, as about 40% of them do, there will be a home theater expert on hand.Centrized stores require specialized employees, and employees are also crucial to the success of the centricity concept because it relies on personnel who are empowered to develop the most effective in-store interactions with customers. Personal shopping assistants and home theater experts may get weeks of training, and most line-level jobs call not only for evaluating the success of the centrized experience, but also for recommending enhancements to it. “The closer you get to the customer,” says Anderson, “the better your ability to see what the needs of the business are. . . . A person in a blue shirt in a store [a Best Buy associate] probably has the best insight as to what your needs are . . . I could take you through anything we do today . . . and all of it came from some individual, usually a misunderstood and angry individual, who was sitting there saying, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ and was having trouble being heard.”Under Anderson, Best Buy has also implemented various other strategies to overcome the limitations inherent in being a retailer of commodity products at low prices and low profit margins. For one thing, the company has begun developing relationships with small high-tech start-ups in order to prime the flow of new products into the market. That’s how Best Buy got a three-month jump on competitors with Slingbox, a device that lets users channel TV programming from their homes to their PCs. Best Buy has also introduced its own branded products, including an Insignia line of PCs, TVs, and DVD players. The results in established product categories have been uneven so far, but Best Buy believes that developing its own product lines will not only allow it to compete on price with competitors like Walmart and Dell, but also help it build relationships with start-ups specializing in cutting-edge categories.More importantly, perhaps, Best Buy has reengineered its supply chain, or the flow of products from suppliers to end users. It was always very good at getting high volumes of products out of factories and onto its shelves, but in keeping with the priorities of customer-centricity, it is now focusing on the components of the process most closely related to the task of meeting the needs of customer segments. All stores carry products for every customer-centric segment, but as discussed above, centrized stores focus on the needs of just one or two segments. To meet shifts or peculiarities in store-level demand, for example, frontline employees may be empowered to override inventory management plans and stock higher inventories of certain products. As a result, suppliers must be continuously responsive to signals that come directly from stores, and agile enough to reconfigure shipments and all of the information flows related to them.Before Brad Anderson stepped down in June 2009, he expressed his faith in the effectiveness of customer-centricity to support the company’s latest, and most critical, strategic initiative. “Our customer-centric business model,” he explained, “gives us the confidence to be able to grow outside the United States. We know that we must do three seemingly simple things to succeed: gain deep insights into our customers’ priorities and lifestyles; figure out how we can encourage and nurture our employee ingenuity on behalf of our customers; and then, offer solutions that will result in great experiences for our customers.” So far, Anderson’s bet on centricity appears to be paying off. “We’re still figuring out how customer-centricity works in China,” reports Bob Willett, CEO of Best Buy International, but after just one year, Best Buy’s four-story, 87,000 square foot Shanghai store was already among the top-ten revenue-generating outlets in a 1,300-store global chain.In a sign of volatile times, Best Buy announced in November 2008, when fourth-quarter sales threatened to decline from 5% to a whopping 15%, that it expected revenues for fiscal 2009 (which ended in February 2009) to fall short of projections. When the smoke had cleared, sales had gone up 4%, in keeping with the company’s original projections, thanks in part to another Brad Anderson gamble that had paid off: although comparable-store sales (sales in stores that have been open for at least a year) had declined 6.8%, the losses were offset by revenues from 138 new stores that had been opened in the preceding 12 months. “While the environment continues to be as challenging as we expected,” said Anderson, “consumers are being drawn to brands that they trust, and they are responding to our customer-centric model. In this light, we believe that the market-share gains we’ve made will be sustained.”Assignment: Due to your expertise in strategic management, you have been hired by Brad Anderson to evaluate Best Buy’s current strategy and make a recommendation as to which generic competitive strategy Best Buy should adopt. You should also recommend a strategy or strategy that will help the company better compete in the home goods retailing industry, which is now in the maturity stage of the product life cycle.

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 Planning for change may initially seem like a contradictory phrase—if change is a part of the unknown, how can social work administrators plan for it? Even if administrators do not have a crystal ball to see the future, they can take proactive steps to help prepare their organizations to respond to changes that occur inside and outside the organization. In addition, social work administrators must develop a strategic plan that communicates the organization’s long-term vision. Community stakeholders are essential in strategic planning because they can assist with developing this vision. These stakeholders can also work in partnership with the organization to implement the strategic plan to achieve the selected goals and milestones. 

 

 

What does a leader do when things do not go as planned? How can a leader help to restore or improve an organization’s operations when a situation stalls or interferes with its functions? Although taking a proactive approach to planning is desired, change may occur suddenly and unexpectedly causing immediate consequences. A skilled leader must be able to assess a situation in order to prioritize the steps necessary to stabilize the organization. This process must focus on a short-term strategy to address immediate concerns and include strategic decisions that will affect the long-term sustainability of the organization.

For this Discussion, you address the Southeast Planning Group (SPG) case study in the Social Work Case Studies: Concentration Year text.

 

Post an analysis of the change that took place in the SPG. Furthermore, suggest one strategy that might improve the organizational climate and return the organization to optimal functioning. Provide support for your suggested strategy, explaining why it would be effective.

Support your post with specific references to the resources. Be sure to provide full APA citations for your references.

 

 

Working With Organizations: The Southeast Planning Group

The Southeast Planning Group (SPG) is an organization that was created in 2000 to facilitate the Office of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care planning process. The key elements of the approach were strategic planning, data collection systems, and an inclusive process that involved clients and service providers. The fundamental components of the system are 1) outreach, intake, and assessment; 2) emergency shelter; 3) transitional housing; and 4) permanent housing and permanent supportive housing. The outreach, intake, and assessment component identifies an individual’s or family’s needs in order to connect them with the appropriate resources. Emergency shelter provides a safe alternative to living on the streets. Transitional housing provides supportive services such as recovery services and life skills training to help clients develop the skills necessary for permanent housing. The final component, permanent housing, works with clients to obtain long-term affordable housing.

SPG works with the local government; service providers; the faith, academic, and business communities; homeless and formerly homeless individuals; and concerned citizens in the designated service area. During the first 5 years of its existence, SPG was staffed by one part-time and four full-time staff members and oversight was provided by a 21-member board. SPG’s founding director was well respected and liked in the community. She was noted for her ability to bring stakeholders together across sectors and focus on the single mission of ending homelessness.

After serving 5 years as the executive director, she abruptly resigned amidst rumors that she was forced out by the board. Although she had been effective in bringing people together, there were concerns that the goals and objectives had not been met, and there was a lack of confidence in her ability to grow the organization. Approximately one month after her resignation, a new executive director was hired.

One of the new director’s first priorities was to reconfigure the structure of the organization in order to increase efficiency. As a result of the restructuring, two positions were eliminated. The people who were let go had been with the organization since it was created, and similar to the previous director, they had strong ties to the community. Once the community and SPG’s partners learned about the changes, there was suspicion about the new leadership and the direction they wanted to take the organization. Stakeholders were split in their views of the changes—some agreed that they were necessary in order to advance the goals of the organization, while others felt the new leadership was “taking over” with a hidden agenda to promote its own self-interest.

I worked with the group as an evaluation consultant to assess the SPG partnership during this period of transition. In order to assess how these changes were perceived by the stakeholders, I conducted key informant interviews with various stakeholders, both internal and external to the organization. The partners shared many insights about how the month without consistent leadership contributed to the uncertainty about SPG’s purpose and strategy, and it was generally agreed that the leadership transition was not handled well. The results from the evaluation were used to help SPG identify strategies to improve communication with stakeholders and utilize the director’s leadership role to build upon the organization’s past successes while preparing for future growth.

(Plummer 51-52)

 

 

 

References (use 3 or more)

Lauffer, A. (2011). Understanding your social agency (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Sage.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Sage.

Finley, D. S., Rogers, G., Napier, M., & Wyatt, J. (2011). From needs-based segmentation to program realignment: Transformation of YWCA of Calgary. Administration in Social Work, 35(3), 299–323.

Plummer, S.-B., Makris, S., & Brocksen, S. M. (Eds.). (2014b). Social work case studies: Concentration year. Baltimore, MD: Laureate International Universities Publishing [Vital Source e-reader].

“Social Work Supervision, Leadership, and Administration: The Southeast Planning Group” (pp. 85–86)