Lesley Stower Fine Foods Case Response PDF

Preview

Summary

Repose to case assignment,...

Description

Case Summery LSFF was founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1990. The chief reason for its establishment was that the owner Leslie Stowe was dissatisfied with the city’s offering specialty foods. The company started of by offering premium catering, classes, and speciality grocery products. In the early 2000s, with the new crackers Raincoast Crisps product and its immediate success began a 10 year run of growth for the company. After the initial offering of the cracker the company transitioned from a food service into a production company with the crackers being its main emphasis. LSFF needs exceeded its production capacity in 2010 and moved into a medium size plant. Currently the Raincoast Crisps are sold in 4,000 stores within North America. With the constent growth of the company for over a decade, LSFF has come up with a new decision strategy and need to choose a new ERP system. The company had met with eight request for proposals and met with five of them. Two of them stood out and the decision was to be made between which was more suitable to the company. It was going to be either Barnes and Co. – Sage ERP X3 or The Underwood Group – Microsoft Dynamics NAV. The two proposals that are being considered are greatly different in price. Barnes and Co. is $51,600 for implementation and $20,630 for software licence. The Underwood Group is $116,200 to implement and $25,973.40 in software licence. In order for Lesley Stowe Fine Food’s (LSFF) to continue having success they must choose an ERP system that best meets the companies needs of the present and the future and make a decision with support from her team within the immediate future. Current Issues At present management is pressured with time constraints due to LSFF’s increasing growth at a rate that they can not currently handle. Management is being spread too thin resulting in ineffective communication between managers, as opposed to excellent communication LSFF had when it was a small business. This is not being helped by having managers spend eight to ten hours compiling monthly. The current software as a service ERP system was not sufficient enough to comprehend LSFF’s tasks. This was compounded by the fact that the vendors offered inadequate support resulting in manual files instead. Recommendation – Based on a cost analysis we would choose Barnes and Co. as the new ERP. It is also justified in being the right choice for this company as it is ideally suited with its ease of use and specified towards companies of the same size as LSFF. Also, a negative for The Underwood Group was not following the proposal template set out which shows they do not follow instructions well enough or do not consider our needs as priority.

What we learned from the case ● That a company’s growth can exceed its current ERP system and will require an expansion. ● The expansion should occur sooner rather than after it becomes a necessity. ● Not all companies are able to follow a proposal list of requirements and would rather fill in any missing details with a presentation. ● How much time and productivity is wasted due to an inefficient ERP system. ● Importance of being able to outline the risks of growth for the future, which is minimize the urgency and issue of finding a new system immediately. This causes stress not only on the management but on the company as well....