Challenges of the organization –
Restoration Affiliates is a
collection of remodeling and restoration individuals and businesses. To beat the national competitions, dozens of
restoration businesses came together to provide an alternative. To serve a large
client, the resources required could be supplied by big businesses. So, RA was
formed to serve such large clients where any numbers of resources and equipment
would be required. But such an attempt had failed in the past due to over promise and
under deliver. And due to lack of trust among stakeholders. RA does not know
how to establish a protocol to make sure that each member is contributing
equally. If in one location multiple service providers are providing
restoration services, how to split works between them so no one feels deprived. How
to incentivize referral? And the final question was how big they got to be to
compete against the big restoration businesses.
RA has rudimentary technology. In
their line of work, rates, collaborations these
should be facilitated by technology, but they do not have anything that sort.
Build a value chain of the organization’s activities and
identify the strongest and weakest link.
The restoration companies depend on insurance companies or
building managers for the job. They get the called when a flood emergency or fire
emergency happens and the building needs restoration. They need equipment along
with manual labor to complete restoration. Dehumidifier, air movers are the
type of equipment they need.
These are the Inbound
logistics, things like a dehumidifier, air mover and other instruments they
might need for the jobs.
They use these instruments to restore sites damaged by
flood or fire, which is the operations.
With the help of instruments and manual labor, they restore the
sites and customers in this case renters can move back in, that is part of Outbound logistics.
For marketing and
sales, RA has built a network with building managers, insurance companies
and third-party administrators. RA has provided an 800 number where callers can
talk to a human being 24 by 7. So, whenever anyone has any restoration
emergency they can call the number to reach the RA.
The RA provides any kind of restoration service, they moved to pure restoration business as it is like
an annuity.
In Secondary
activities, RA’s firm infrastructure is how the business is run(Ketchen
& Short, 2012). Which is mainly based on referral. But more importantly,
they provide 24 by 7 on-call support to customers who need help.
RA formed a bigger organization with dozens of restoration businesses
to have access to a bigger human
resource pool so that they can move the human resource pool when required for a
bigger job.
While RA does not have very sophisticated technology but
they are working on developing apps which would help them in business.
RA has probably its strength in
marketing and sales. While their competitors are not there for customers 24 by
7 or they do not have human over the phone to take calls. RA has addressed those
with a human over phone and the customers can call anytime with an emergency.
The weakness is technology, where
they do not have any scalable communication or tracking mechanism for all the
businesses.
SWOT Analysis –
The 3 strengths RA has are –
1.
Their Go – giver mentality is a great strength
as if all businesses work towards finding new clients and referring them to
whoever is available in the network, everyone in can flourish.
2.
Because of their size and presence in geography,
they can reach to many more clients
3.
Their customer service is a strength. Being
present all the time to help a customer and taking calls to make customers lives
better, every bit adds up to great customer experience.
3 weaknesses are –
1. Role
of administrator, when RA scales up, how will they distribute work, whether the
decision will remain with the board, these are still open questions. If RA
cannot make decisions in a decentralized way, the bureaucracy will slow them
down.
2. Communication
– RA needs to have an IT system to track, maintain jobs and communicate
internally, otherwise scaling up or even tracking current jobs would be
difficult.
3. RA
has many members and setting up standards Is difficult but necessary. For a
restoration job RA should have the same standard throughout the USA.
3 Opportunities –
1.
With great customer service and geographic
presence RA can provide great restoration experience to many more clients.
2.
The restoration industry is fragmented and size and
scale mean more business. IF RA can figure out a way to scale up their
operation seamlessly, they can add more small businesses and add more clients.
3.
RA can leverage technology, which they are yet
to use extensively. RA can develop a system to contact them using APP, accept
the work, track progress and then finally invoicing and payment in the same
platform to make everyone’s life better.
3 threats for RA –
1.
Big restoration companies like Belfor who has
acquired other restoration businesses and now have presence coast to coast.
2.
Lack of administration – RA is not really
decentralized, if they depend on board for distribution of work or referral fee
and all those things, they will find it difficult to grow and might crumble
eventually.
3.
Lack of communication – they do not have any
centralized communication system to communicate the group about an available
job or to track the job. This is a big drawback especially when they are
competing against big companies.
Other than these there are issues
such as increasing minimum wage or required health benefit and raising the economy
has made it difficult to find a worker ( Cleanlink, 2015).
Based on the analysis I can conclude
that the most important strategic challenge is integrating all small
organizations and make them decentralized so that they know how to distribute
work. If everyone does not contribute or refer new clients, RA would find it
difficult to grow. But if each small business finds work and refers to any
small unit that is idle and so on, due to their size and shared resources, RA
has a huge potential. But to implement that, they would need an IT system, so
that anyone can upload any available job and based on availability the job
would get assigned. Once payment is cleared for the work, the unit that had
uploaded the job would get a bonus. In the same system, the customer rating
will get tracked and which team is referring to how many jobs and which team is
completing how many jobs – al such information would be maintained.
References –
Ketchen, D & Short, J. (2012). Strategic
Management: Evaluation and Execution. This book is licensed under
a Creative
Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license. Retrieved
from: http://jsmith.cis.byuh.edu/books/strategic-management-evaluation-and-execution
Cleanlink ( January, 2015. Top Five Challenges for Contract
Cleaning Companies in 2015. Retrieved from https://www.cleanlink.com/news/article/Top-Five-Challenges-for-Contract-Cleaning-Companies-in-2015--17915
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