The Garden Depot

Overviews

The Garden Depot is a family-owned flower company that is located in Barrie, Ontario. It currently is operating a 12,000 square-foot retail store that also contains maintenance and landscaping divisions. Murray King is the president of the company and prefers a very hands-off approach to business. He has also recently hired his son-in-law Derek Sinclair to be the landscaping supervisor, and he has been performing poorly. The company is receiving many complaints about Derek and office manager Janice Bowman is left to clean up his mistakes. It is crucial that the company creates a solution for the sub-optimal landscaping division.

Problems

The first problem at the Garden Depot is that the customers haven’t been billed the proper amounts due to an inaccuracy in the job slips. There have been multiple missing materials from several job slips, and those losses are putting the company in a poor financial position. Derek Sinclair is responsible for filling out the slips, and when he was confronted with his inefficient work, he thought that it wasn’t a big deal. After further discussing the matter he had promised to make all of the slips correctly, but he then left the office before the landscapers even arrived at the depot. This problem has caused losses to the Garden Depots net income, and it may alter the way that they run the business.

The second problem is that Garden Depot has difficulty with customer service. Customers are complaining because of inaccurate invoice quotes, calls being ignored, and not receiving updates on landscaping jobs that they had previously paid for. Currently, it is Mr. Sinclair’s responsibility to deal with customers and handle customer concerns over the phone. He has no experience or knowledge in landscaping which has led him to ignore the phones entirely. The complaints are now distracting Ms. Bowman from her job because she is receiving much too many. 

The final problem is that the president is disconnected from the company. Murray King is unaware of the blatant issues happening within his business, and he is mainly uninvolved in day-to-day company activities. Mr. King was asked multiple questions by Ms. Bowman about necessary company activities that he couldn’t answer. This shows Mr. King’s lack of attention to detail and inability to diagnose crucial problems within his own business. He is also ignorant of the multitude of mistakes made in the landscaping division and has even described Mr. Sinclair as a superb employee. Mr. King has also delegated most responsibility to the supervisors to even more lessen his workload.

Causes

The Garden Depots inaccurate job slips are caused because of a lack of fit between people and task. Derek Sinclair can create proper job slips and has yet to complete the task accurately. This is because Derek Sinclair has no experience or knowledge in landscaping, which has led to continuous failure. The company also currently doesn’t have any system of punishing workers who are not correctly completing their tasks, which allows Mr. Sinclair to keep his job. Acknowledging Mr. Sinclair’s inexperience can help the company operate more efficiently and efficiently .in the future.

            The Garden Depots customer service is so poor because of lack of fit between people and task. Derek Sinclair cannot connect with customers and fix their needs. Mr. Sinclair doesn’t have the skills necessary for the job requirement, which is leading to their customers become even more irate. There is no human resources division within the depot which can provide professional customer service, and make customers happy. Communication with customers is crucial to operate a successful business, and the Garden depot has disappointed its customers. Quality customer service can create more customers, as well as create a friendly and open atmosphere around the business. The company should be looking for solutions with a very high sense of urgency.

            Lastly, the Garden Depot has a disconnected manager because of a lack of fit between people and organization. Mr. King has no incited to what is happening within his business and is unaware of its problems. He is isolated in his office, and his hands-off approach to business is making him distant from the company. The company doesn’t have anybody who Mrs. Bowman can contact about the problems occurring in the landscaping division causing problems to remain unfixed. Mr. King also has almost no connection with his employees because he works entirely from his office and cannot see the deficiencies that are occurring. A well-involved president can aid the company can eliminate problems and keep the business operating smoothly.

Goals

1.    The first goal is The Depot should increase customer satisfaction

2.    The second goal would be to improve accuracy of job slips and to manage inventory better

3.    The final goal should be to enhance the landscaping department efficiently

Actions/alternatives

            A good option would be to hire someone to help Murray King to come up with a plan to run the business. Since Murray King isn’t involved in the operation of the company, so there should be someone who will be there to answer the questions that were being asked. This way the questions are answered and Murray King wouldn’t have to deal with these issues. This way there would also be someone who can help Murray King make an important decision and plan for significant. This task should be added to Dave Sampson’s job description, and he has a good relationship with Murray King and all the Division managers. This would help with improving job slips and inventory management.