Business Process Re-engineering at Waitrose

Introduction

To manage the business and maintain the growth and sustainability, the organizations are using the different tools and techniques. The consideration of different approaches focusing on the market analysis is helpful for the companies to meet the standards in operations and safety the needs of the customers (Nuseir, and Madanat, 2017). The report will provide information related to Business Process Re-engineering and the quality management system of the Waitrose. The critical analysis of existing approaches of Waitrose will help to gain the knowledge related to issues that the company has faced and tactical actions that have taken for achieving sustainable business excellence.

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

This is a business management strategy that focuses on the analysis and design of the workflow of the business within an organization. The implementation of BPR is helping organizations to fundamentally rethink about improvement in the operations to encourage the services for customers and minimize the cost of the functions. In addition to this, the consideration of BPR is allowing organizations to radically restructure the design of the operations to achieve the maximum output and recreation of the process to transform the business (Doumeingts, and Browne, 2016). Waitrose is the leading supermarket brand from the UK and selling the groceries as part of Britain's largest employee-owned retailer. The organization is having more than 338 shops in the UK and exporting products to 52 countries (About Waitrose, 2020). For managing the business professionally and adopting the changes to meet the actual needs of the customers, the organization is using the BPR techniques. By applying these techniques, the management is analyzing the competitive pressure within the industry, labour-cost, new technologies and developing innovative ideas for promoting the sales. The analysis and identification of changes conducting the market research and focusing on the forecasting reports of the market are having a positive impact on BPR planning and implementation.

The major components of the BPR approach involve risk management, operational improvement, implementation of new design and control over the actions (Bhaskar, 2018). According to the analysis, the management of Waitrose is applying the PDCA approach for continues improvement. Following are the PDCA approach of Waitrose that helping for business process reengineering:

Plan: By using the BPR approach, the management of Waitrose is planning the new actions for sales promotion and offering of the new products in the retail market. The process of planning based on the opportunity in the market along with consideration of policies of the competitors. The analysis of market condition like the demand for any product in target customers is an opportunity for the company (Susanto, Leu, and Chen, 2019). The research team of Waitrose is collecting the data and planning the new actions.

Do: This is the second step of the process where management of company aligns the changes with the existing business culture and values. The communication of changes with the core team and the development of goals is helping the management to set the parameters and apply the strategic changes. Waitrose management is focusing on customer services and learning from experience to meet the goals using the continues improvement model.

Check: To analyze the outcome, the Waitrose management is conducting the formal and informal assessment for task implemented for crafting improvement in the sales of new product (Hashem, 2019). The checking and monitoring of the plan are helping the management to identify the potential threats and issues that might influence the outcome.

Act: By analyzing all the aspects of marketing, design and conditions of the market, the Waitrose management is implementing the strategy for introducing the new products. The staff members act like the plan and KPI’s that stated by the management for achieving the goals and objectives (AbdEllatif, Farhan, and Shehata, 2018). This kind of approach is helping the organization to encourage performance and craft improvement in the sustainable business process.

Apart from this, the BPR approaches of managing the business professionally are involving the consideration of elements such as planning and knowledge of the end-to-end process. According to an analysis of BPR operations of the Waitrose, the management is conducting the process-based analysis of the market. For example, the management is collecting regular feedback from the customer and analyzing the common problems in offering and delivery of the items. This kind of evidence-based functions for improving the business operations is allowing Waitrose management to reduce the variation, maintain the customer relationship and offer more customer-centric services (Park et al., 2017). Apart from this, the lean principles of managing improvement and maintain sustainability are also used by the management of Waitrose. According to the analysis, the lean principle of Waitrose BPR includes the following:

Define value: For maintaining sales, Waitrose management needs to understand the needs of the target customers. The business process reengineering is allowing the organization to make emphasis on the culture and value of the customers and adding into products (Vaez-Alaei, Baboli, and Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, 2018). The consideration of value is attracting customers and helping to increase sustainability.

Map value stream: Value streaming is an essential tool for managing business functions. Waitrose is identifying the diversity and social standards of people. This gives knowledge related to variation in needs of the customers. The mapping of values is good for Waitrose to distribution and minimizing waste.

Create flow: The demand and supply of goods and services using the lean principle is helping Waitrose to define the smooth flow of the logistics and distribution of products and services. The prior analysis of transportation, customer points and issues that influencing the competitors business (Qu et al., 2019). The understanding of these factors is helping Waitrose management to add value to the delivery services.

Establish pull: The pull strategy of BPR is used for eliminating the waste. By using this lean principle, the Waitrose management is planning the operations in a manner in which services team try to eliminate the operations that are creating financial pressure and increasing the waste. This kind of approach is helping in minimizing the cost and supporting organization to increase the profit.

Pursuit perfection: To gain a competitive advantage, the Waitrose is applying this strategy and encouraging operational effectiveness. By offering training to the staff and focusing on the values, the management is delivering the services with perfection. For example, the management is minimizing lead time and working on the scope of rebuilding using the technology and applying the automation technologies for warehousing and inventory of the products and services (Bhaskar, 2018). Moreover, the implementation of online approaches for order processing and payment is also supporting Waitrose to meet the standards of retail business.

Quality management systems

The Quality Management System (QMS) is defined as a formalized process that involves documentation, responsibilities and procedure for achieving quality objectives. The leading organizations are using the QMS for directing and meeting the customer requirements that improve the effectiveness and efficiency level based on continuous improvement. According to the analysis of QMS approaches of Waitrose, the management is defining, improvising and controlling the processes related to the quality of the products and services. The ISO 9000 QMS is majorly used by the organization for managing the quality aspects related to the development and delivery of the food products (Borkovskaya, Degaev, and Burkova, 2018). These kinds of quality standards are helping the organization to increase the internal processes using the quality measures and maintaining control over the services. The concept of QMS at Waitrose workplace is involving the recognition of requirements, including the license to trade, customer requirements, marketing approaches and ethics that need to be followed for meeting the proposed standards. The key characteristics of quality for a supermarket organization involve the cleaning of the store, condition of the goods and services, the behaviour of the staff according to the culture and values of the target customer.

For the manufacturing and services organization, different dimensions for quality management are used. As per the analysis, the manufacturing organization like Waitrose is using the dimensions like durability, performance, safety, reliability and features of the products and services. Moreover, the responsiveness and accessibility and connivance is allowing Waitrose management to attract and retain the customers. For determining the quality, the company is using the PDCA cycle that supporting management to plan the actions, implementation of the plan, checking and controlling and improvement in the quality sector (Bacoup et al., 2018). Apart from this, the Waitrose is applying the Pareto analysis for managing the quality. This is a statistical technique for decision making that allowed the organization to improve the quality. By using this technique, the organization is collecting the data from the stakeholders for services and quality standards for offering the services and products. The consideration of errors and potential causes, the expert team is calculating the cumulative count percentage for each case and planning the actions for increasing the sustainability in business.

Continues improvement in sales, the quality of the products and services are having a significant impact. According to the analysis, the implementation of ISO 9000 is allowing Waitrose management to focus on the customer needs such as price, availability and additional value in products and services. The engagement of people is essential for a retail organization to improve sales and maintain the growth in the highly competitive market. For that, Waitrose is applying the online business process to maintain the relationship and offering the facility to the customers to buy the products as per their connivances (Westgard, and Westgard, 2017). In addition to this, the ISO 9000 QMS is helping company to manage the resources professional manner and make the optimum utilization to eliminate the extra cost and increase the profit. By using these principles, the management is improvising the performance in the market and gaining a competitive advantage. Apart from this, the leading authority of the retail industry of the UK is monitoring the work of Waitrose to identify the quality management aspects and offering the certificates that helping the organization to increase sustainability.

The corrective action report is having a positive impact on the certain scope of the issues and issues that influence the quality of the Waitrose products and services (Bravi, Murmura, and Santos, 2019). Now, the major benefits that the organization is having through the implementation of these quality standards are including the lowering the cost, preventing mistakes related to lack of implementation of policies and ethical approaches. Moreover, the quality standards are supporting the organization to make continuous improvement in the training of the staff by focusing on the global standards and setting the organization-wide directions. Apart from this, the management is collecting the feedback from the customers and staff members related to improvement in the quality aspects and sustainability (Voloshina, and Dunchenko, 2017). For the improvement and maintaining the quality in products and services, the Waitrose management is using a systematic process that involves the design and building the layout, deploying the equipment and technology, controlling and measuring of the operations against the KPI’s and review and improvement. This kind of approach is having an industrial influence on the business of the company as Waitrose has earned a positive brand value in the UK and international market based on the quality products and services (Zimon, 2016). The regular audits of departments and manufacturing operations, as well as delivery points, is helping the organization to craft improvement in the quality of the products and services. However, the issues related to lack of communication and intervention of the quality approach at the workplace are affecting the consumer behaviour and multitude of the unique system that have a positive impact on the sustainability of the Waitrose and supporting the management to gain the competitive advantage. Moreover, the organization is using the documented approach for managing the quality operations and using the flowcharts for controlling the production, administrative and sales operations using the quality standards.

Recommendations

To improve the BPR, it is recommended to the management of the Waitrose to refocus on the values of company and customer needs. The implementation of technical tools like social media for engaging the customers through offering of the loyalty reward points will be beneficial for the company to achieve business objectives. The consideration of tools like automation in the warehouse management will help the organization to encourage the supply chain functions and minimize the cost of the production and delivery of the food items. The minimization of lead time will be also helpful for Waitrose management to gain a competitive advantage. Apart from this, for the improvement in the QMS, it is recommended to increase communication among the departments. The regular monitoring and screening of the report will help the organization to keep the record of performance and identify the opportunities and take the prior actions to eliminate the causes of defect. The analysis of gap by the invention of the quality issues considering the feedback of the customers will be helpful for the Waitrose management to craft improvement in the quality aspects of the products and services. Moreover, it is also recommended to the management to apply the Six Sigma approaches for increasing the quality measures through regular monitoring and controlling the aspects focusing on the ISO 9001 standardization.

CONCLUSION

From the study, it has been carried out that sustainability and planning of the actions by focusing on the current approaches of the industry is having a significant impact on the sales and profitability of the organization. The report has provided a critical analysis of existing Business Process Re-engineering approaches of Waitrose and evaluated the outcome from the strategy. Moreover, the report has identified the impact of Quality Management Systems (QMS) used by the organization to maintain the effectiveness and efficiency in the operations. The management is doing well for applying the approaches and maintaining continuous improvement.

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