Organizational Leadership & Behavior

...

Technology

BAT previous years just gave focus on basic sale rep activities but with MaxFli the company wanted to be able to provide valuable sales and marketing information to management at all levels. This would help the managers make real time business decisions with data provided rather then instinct

MaxFli officially Up and Running in Chile

In November of 1990 MaxFli had been implemented and was up and running. The implementation was on schedule while only being 2% over budget. It was considered successful by 2001 and all levels of the organization was utilizing the system.

Colombia Implementation

After the success of the Chile implementation, BAT had then focused its sites on Colombia in May of 2000. Colombia had decided that its business resembles a lot of Chile business processes and chose to adapt the implementation MaxFli used in Chile, while also brining along several managers from Chile to Colombia. Although Colombia is similar to Chile in its business processes , one major difference between the two is that Colombia only has 25% of its market share.

Obstacles

• Perception of MaxFli was necessarily needed

Reliability and performance of handheld devices

• Leveraged BATs Colombia Relationship with HP for leasing agreement for handhelds

• Had a lot of problems but they were all manageable

Colombia vision

Vision for Colombia was to focus on information that would help the company produce and target premium brands to the respective consumers that can and will afford them. They had a multiphase roll out system in place to ensure smooth transition to new system.

Project Team

• Senior TM&D Manager Patricio Imbert

• IT personnel

• System Administrator Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Implementation Plan: the implementation was completed on time but 11% over budget.

July 1999

• Sent several members on project team to Chile for a week to become familiar with the MaxFli system

• Returned home and IT project team began to work on program

• Chile sent two personnel on monthly 2-day visits to Colombia throughout the process

May 2000

• MaxFli system had been completed and was now active

• Only basic sale force features were accessible due to BAT wanting to take the business system along slow in order to ensure a smooth transition

January 2001

• The more advance modules have been made accessible but has caused others to question the value of the system due to not being able to access these more advance features until 8 months later

• Trade marketing system was created locally in Colombia named AMiT due to MaxFli not having the ability to manage individual promotions or other trade marketing activities

Central America Implementation

The next implementation would be in Central America, which is considered to be a more unique then the other two locations chosen, those are:

• Organizational Structure

• Market Conditions

• IT capabilities

• Business Processes

BATCA is considered to be in a cluster market which means the six countries in Central America all operate as a single unit. This help BATCA centralize their production and have effective operations scale.

Market in Central America

With its unique market conditions and the company having to treat all six countries as a single unit become a problem for BATCA. The reason being is due to differences between the 6 countries:

• Competitive Environment

• Taxes

• Regulations

• Currency

• Market share

• Business Strategy

Obstacles

One major obstacles that MaxFli faced with its implementation was its sale of non-tobacco products which was considered an important source of revenue. The committee had decided not to add non-tobacco products to MaxFli so that the system would not be too complex, but this would cause BATCA to decreaseT in revenue from lost match sales. Another was that the implementation struggled and was over budget.

3 Technical issues that were neglected by, Ciberion, system created to develop ,market, and sell the MaxFli system to BAT end markets and external companies in the consumer food industry.

1. MaxFli Training frustrations

2. Problems occurring with Jornada Handhelds

3. Suggested order functionality- giving a sales person an accurate , up to date order history for each outlet

Initial response

The system was considered to be a failure amongst employees. They were feeling as if they gave up an automated system that was fine, for a newer system that did not have the functions that were promoted to them.

Final Response

Although it was the most difficult of the three implementations so far , it was also the most critical for the true success of the MaxFli. It showed the extent of how far the system can go with an example of the ability to handle servers across 6 countries simultaneously.

Conclusion/ Recommendation

In my opinion I believe that the approach that the company took from going from a usually decentralized approach to a centralized approach