Managing in a Diverse and Changing World, Essay Example

Part 1

• “Managing Globally, Nestlé’s Global Food Empire” (Jones & George, 7^th, 192-193).
• The name of the company is Nestle.
• The company provides food products and services “Nestle is the world’s largest food company. In 2009 its sales increased by 4% and it enjoyed recorded profits of over $100 billion Globally, it had 190,000 employees and 500 factories in 80 countries .It makes and sells over 8,000 food products, including such popular brands as Kit-Kat chocolate bars, Taster’s Choice coffee, Carnation Instant milk, and Stouffer’s Foods.” (Jones & George, 7^th, 192).
• The name of the manager featured in the profile is Peter Brabeck-Latmathe he is CEO.
• Challenges facing the manager- “CEO Peter Brackeck-Latmathe, who has been in charge since 1997, is responsible for Nestlé’s improving global performance, has faced, and managed many global challenges” i.e.:

1. Entry into new marketing- to increase sales, “Brabeck worked to increase Nestlé’s revenue and profits by entering new attractive national markets in both developed and emerging nations”. “He was particularly anxious to enter emerging markets such as those in eastern Europe, India, and Asia to take advantage of the enormous numbers of potential new customers in these regions” (Jones & George, 7^th,193). The whole entry process was a challenge due to managerial issues and monetary costs associated.
2. Cost of managing its global operations

All expansions are associated with cost. “As you can imagine, with over 500 factories, the cost of organizing Nestlé’s global activities were enormous”. (Jones & George, 7^th Ed., 193). “Under Brabeck, Nestle spent $18 billion to acquire U.S. companies Ralston Purina, Dreyers’s Ice cream, and Chef America”.

Development of New Products for Customers

Developing and customizing products to suite the taste of customers is not an easy task and it is as well associated with costs and the need for invention, interventions and innovations. “Brabeck’s intension was not only to develop these food brands in the United States, but also to customize their products to suite the tastes of customers in countries around the world.”  “His goal was to capitalize on a prime source of its competitive advantage: superior innovation” (Jones & George, 7^th Ed., 193).

• Why the manager faced the challenges
  1. The company’s products specifically meant for Europe, India, the Asian markets. The reason why the company expands the marketing in Europe, India, and Asian is that local residents can accept Nestle culture. From the competition structure perspective, if the target country’s market competition structure of free competition. Whether affected by local food company’s competition, there was the cost of transportation of raw materials.

1. Problems to do with managing the distribution of products of the company were a must occurrence because of the layoffs. “Brabeck benchmarked its operating costs to those of other competitors such as kraft Foods and Unilever and found that nestle costs were significantly higher than theirs. Brabeck cut the workforce by 20%, closed 150 factories, and reduced operating costs by over 12%” (Jones & George, 7^th, 193).How reasonable management product transportation and sales. For this reason, it is difficult to select which company to close. Once again, the layoffs contributed so much in reducing the work force availability. “Nestle was also using advanced IT both to reduce the number of its global suppliers and to negotiate more favorable supply contract with them-moves that significantly cut purchasing costs”.
2. Some new products usually for consumers are very new, representative have not heard and tried. At the same time according to various domestic and international brands, how to enter the market and international market, according to consumer’s taste of new products, prices, and packing cannot ignore. Usually some products also have fixed consumer groups, according to different people. How to get the recognition of the product to consumers is an obvious problem. Obtaining back the amount of money spent on the product would take a long time.

• The most relevant managerial task that the manager had to perform to address the challenges is planning. “Planning is the choice of appropriate organizational goals and the best action. Planning helps in achieving specific goals”. (Jones & George, 7th Ed., 8). Whether one develops a plan work or plan form, the plan is according to the needs of society. A person is able to organize own ability, through the planning, execution and check determine the organizations in a certain period of time goal, effective use of the organization’s human, material and financial resources, coordinate arranged activities of the organization to obtain the best economic and social benefits. Brabeck want to expand Nestle’s range of products. Therefore, he planned for several actions that bored fruits as:

1. He designed Nestle’s new streamlined operation structure. He found that the cost of managing its global operation is high; therefore, he witfully closed 150 factories.
2. Brabeck wanted to have new product entrants into the market. “He planned for the expanded Nestlé’s range of products, and offered them to new and existing customers” (Jones & George, 7th Ed.,).
3. Bracbeck saw the possibility to cut off labor costs and even invest more into IT to cut costs. His second aim was to “find lower-cost ways to make and sell products”. He planned on “cutting the workforce by 20% and closing 150 factories. This plan eventually bore fruits as there was a reduced operating cost of over 12%” (Jones & George, 7^th, 193).
4. Bracbeck aimed at speeding up Nestles product innovation. Thereby he planned on “leveraging its expertise across its food business to create more attractive food products that would increase its global market share” (Jones & George, 7th Ed.,).
5. Bracbeck discovered that many customers in the world demanded for more nutritious food products. Therefore, “Bracbeck adopted what he called an organic approach to developing Nestles products”. This plans were so successful as they lead the company towards being the “world’s leading nutrition, health, and wellness food company that made consumer health and safety its prime concern”

• “The global environment is a set of forces and conditions in the world outside an organization’s boundary that affect how it operates and shape its behavior” (Jones & George, 7^th, 179).The manager has great knowledge about the global environment. He knows that in interacting with people from foreign cultures and intercultural competent understands culture-specific concepts in perception, thinking, feeling and acting. He therefore invents a way of creating diverse food to meet the requirements on every individual. He further goes ahead to the production of organic food, which serves the most sensitive group of persons. Persons who are sensitive with nutrition, health and fitness have no reason of not consuming Nestles products.  The manager is a real marketer. He knows the opportunities and threats. The opportunities are expansion of global marketing. He has studied the market carefully to a SWOT analysis (Nestle Purina PetCare Company SWOT Analysis). He knows the company’s strength or rather Superiority, which is the well-known brand image. The money invested to develop new production technology to expand the Superiority. The weakness of the company comprise of the high rate of spending. He works towards solving the problem. Bracbeck identifies the opportunity of developing new products, and there he takes action, drives up Nestles performance and offers the products to new customers. Moreover, the threats are the factories cost as compared to the lower costs and investments of competitor companies. He saved money by closed factories. In other words, Bracbeck identified all the loopholes on the betterment of the Nestle Company. The whole management process is a challenge. The challenge needs special approach in a witty manner and without offending anyone or affecting any process. A manager surely determines the financial position, development and progress of a business, and the future of the business.
• Management is not a simple task, as it may appear fro a third party point of view. If I were the manager, first, I would survey the global environment, which greatly influences the company’s products. The underlying reason on whether there is a high performance or not is dependant on the market knowledge. Suppliers come in second. When the suppliers are selling the resources, a Company has a great reliance with them. Reliable suppliers could demand low-cost and high-quality source. Second, distributors also need consideration.  The other thing I would consider in my product line is the culture. Culture enables the company to determine the understanding of the tdistributor’s position. We consider distributors and suppliers, and at the same time. We also need to consider our competitors. If the competitors are doing better than us, then I carry out investigations of their success. On the other hand, if our company is doing great, then it would be better to upgrade further the performing sector.

The other point of special consideration is the employees and customer satisfaction.  An annual or biannual survey would release best results. Identifying my customers, what they expect from the Nestle product would be the core factor. Through such results, it would be easy to identify loopholes that need sealing. I would make sure to be a leader, not a ruler who suppresses the employees.

Part 2:

After becoming CEO in 1997, Brabeck-Letmathe began stressing internal growth. He took a more conservative approach than his predecessor did to improving business. Over the next couple of years, he slashed costs of products. This was because of the increased efficiency in the manufacturing operations. He got rid of businesses that had little potentiality for profit growth, and focused investment on fast-growing fields. Brabeck-Letmathe ensured higher efficiency in all of the company’s manufacturing facilities worldwide. By the end of 2000, Nestlé accrued $3.2 billion in net profits and had cash reserves of $3.8 billion. In addition, the company’s market capitalization tripled by 2001 to close to $100 billion. Market analysts recognized this growth as a significant achievement because food prices had been flat or falling worldwide, causing major brands such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg to struggle.

With a significant increase in market capitalization providing a financial safety cushion, Brabeck-Letmathe purchased the Ralston Purina pet-food company in January 2001 for $10.3 billion. Six months later, he guided the company into purchasing Chef America for $2.6 billion. Chef America was the leading maker of frozen snacks in the United States, and Brabeck-Letmathe saw the purchase as a way to enhance further Nestlé’s sales and earnings growth. Nestlé also purchased Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream in a complex deal for approximately $2.6 billion in stock. At the same time, he continued to streamline the company by selling or spinning off less-profitable commodity businesses, such as Nestlé’s European frozen food, tomato-processing, and Italian-meats businesses. Brabeck-Letmathe managed to meet consistently the publicly of Nestlé stated internal growth target of 4 percent a year.

I have learnt that project management and organizational management work is extremely important, plans to make superior to better grasp of our work, on the one hand, facilitate superior leadership in order to better guide our work to carry out, on the other hand to make decision-making more scientific and more reasonable strategic decision according to provide the basis. In the process of planning, comprehensive review, we used to do work and arrange we are going to do work. After completion of the plan by the superior review, it is a somewhat important between the superior and the subordinate communication means, make superior managers more comprehensive, more accurately grasp our work content, quickly find that we work direction and the method of correctly or not, so as to better guide our work. Superior managers will departments plan summary, not only to master each department job situation, and will departments work summary, set into the organization’s direction. It is superior to the whole organization manager’s macroeconomic regulation, control, and organizational development direction to make strategic decision based on one. If even the basic basis is lack, so our management team to make decision may scientific and reasonable. Any one-sector work plan and the lack of rigorous will influence the whole decision.

Project management for our job has high efficiency to complete various tasks. Throughout our plan to carry out the work in process there is ensuring that we all work in the right direction. The plan is for our work arrangements, is also our effective carry out all work guide, an effective plan in our work in process, will lead us in the right way, moving in the right direction, by the appropriate speed effectively to push all the work can be accomplished. Because of the plan, our work will have established personnel, according to the established content and the implementation of the solution, given the time range successfully complete. Plan completed in the work, the work of the inspection, feedback, and the summary is still play a strong role. Any a job has a start, implementation, at the end of the process, in the work the end of the day, to work summarized (CA-Nestle-USA-Youth By: PR Newswire, 2).

Now most of the management authority will management be for planning, organizing, leading, controlling the four most important basic functions. Will plan existed in the first place, it is not only a the beginning of management job, but also on behalf of the management activities of the weight. In almost any a organization management books, will plan as a chapter important content in the lecture. No matter which level of management or in which the managers of the need to make a plan that mean the plan in the management. The official plan work usually brings higher performance, higher rate of return on assets, and other positive financial results. In our actual reality, to our country management, small to our real life plans are nowhere not play an important role. Arrange work task, plan work process, determine the completion time.

The whole paper has taught me about plan management; plan also is to list our job content, implementation scheme, responsible, and completion time. Plan to work the main responsible persons shall be fully all company management personnel, is a supervisor above, the higher the level, the macroscopic plan content. Only  understand the significance of the project management, begin to pay attention to project management work, will plan management work start;Is the only way to really make high quality plan, give full play to the role of the plan should play. Strengthen the project management work of the organization management.

Organizational management is planning to carry out effectively the basic conditions. First to build plan management organizational structure, by top managers personally stresses, equipped with relevant personnel supporting system, will plan management work as a major project pay special attention to be solved.Secondly, the plan work as index, the task given, each department must abide by. Finally, gradually establish and perfect project management system, with the system to fixed planning long-term development, the establishment of project management of long-term mechanism.

Work cited

CA-Nestle-USA-Youth By: PR Newswire. PR Nestle USA Launches Search For Our Nation’s Future Leaders.   Newswire US. 10/04/2012.

Nestle Purina PetCare Company Swot Analysis.  Nestle Purina Pet Care Company SWOT Analysis. Apr 2012, p1-6. 6p.