Implementation Plan

Initiative changes can cause a lot of worry in organizations and for pretty good reasons, according to a survey by Towers Watson, only 25 percent of these initiative changes make it over a long time. This is a mysterious number considering the fact that these moves ranges from mergers to restructurings all the way to business pivots. The stakes are always high every time (Roberto & Levesque, 2014).

While some organizations might choose to keep activities the way they are, change is crucial every now and then especially if the organization that would wish to keep its doors open for a brighter future. Still, even though most of the organizational efforts do fail, a considerable number of them flourish. Like everything else in a business, organizations are much likely to have their change initiatives turn out as they hope provided that they have a right approach (Hughes, 2012).

But what does a right approach look like, well, it will definitely differ from one organization to another since every organization operates uniquely and has its own particular needs. It’s not a secret that organizational initiative change is difficult to get right and when implemented in a brash manner becomes a way of setting the organization up for a failure. But when done correctly, the organization ends up becoming more efficient and effective, one that is better to work for from the employee’s point of view and providing more value to its customers and stakeholders (Senge,et al.,2012).

There is a reason, however, why many of the organizations change initiatives fail: it’s incredibly tricky to initiate. For these changes to thrive, organizations need to be very sure of what they are doing and have a detailed plan that clearly outlines the way to achieve its goals (Senge,et al 2013).

To get more insights on the idea of implementing initiative changes and their impacts on the progress of different organizations, I centered my research on Cedar Park Fish and Chips restaurant. An organization located at Cedar park Shopping Center 1 Swordfish avenue which is a fish and chips shop and that has been recently relied on by many to give great and creditable services guess because of its crucial steps in initiating changes from its older way of operations. I was privileged to interview Cathy Hemings who is the owner of this organization (Davenport & Stoddard, 2014).

Cedar Park Fish and Chips restaurant having a noticeable improvement over the past years, my main aim was to know the reason behind this considerable progress in its operations and success in general, the reason behind introducing the change initiative, the reason why the change initiative was required, the approaches involved in implementing the change initiative , the problems which were identified as a result of the change initiative and lastly to know how the change initiative turned out successful (Stebbins, et al., 2012).

In response to my enquiry, this organization had been using the older system of hard-writing and cash register until they implemented an initiative change to adopt the Distributed Point of Sale (D POS) software which is a computerized system to replace the hard-writing and cash register old system (Stanleigh, 2013).

The Distributed Point of Sale (D POS) system

Point of sale system primarily is a combination of two components, the hardware and the software that manages business activities in an organization. Point of sale system starts to carry out various activities since computers start to store, examine, capture sales and purchase information management. Many benefits can be realized as a result of using a point of sale system because it helps save time and eliminate data repetition as well as increasing efficiency. This system also manages inventory and give detailed analyzed reports leading to improved customer relationship management services (Todnem, 2012).

According to Cathy Hemings, several reasons led to introduction of this superb initiative change in Cedar Park Fish and Chips restaurant.

The traditional way of conducting business activities had totally changed in the 21st century after web and mobile oriented point of sale systems revolutionized the lives of peoples and businesses. The first POS system had been installed in 1970s in a stationary shop and which included a computer, a bar code scanner and a printer for receipt. To keep in phase, this organization adopted this new trend (Kash, et al., 2014).

Many fish and chips shops in this town had not realized this new trend in managing their business activities. In order to gain and sustain a competitive edge over these shops Cedar Park Fish and Chips restaurant implemented this superb initiative change (Piercy, 2012).

Customers usually receive more enlightening itemized receipts with a point of sale system, Contrally to many cash registers which can only print the date and the amount of the sale, but with these point of sale devices since the inventory control system is tied they can provide much detailed information, such as description of the items, the list price and also the sale price. This would improve the customers’ perspective towards the business as services would be faster and more accurate (Bausch & Ault, 2012).

Point of sale devices would reduce on user errors. Clicking a wrong key is risky when ringing a sale, but point of sale software has built in checkers to make sure that the entered information is accurate. Using this software would reduce the mistakes made on daily bases by the staff and affect the overall organization productivity and profits (Fullan, 2013).

With POS system it is easy to look up past transactions and give information on activities carried out by each staff in a snap which would take hours of laborious work to be able to find the same using a cash register. This would help identify staff members who have been making mistakes and take necessary actions like training them (Kundra, 2013). 

Unlike the cash registers this system includes a general inventory management system where the store managers can track the sales and reorder directly when products stock gets low. This is an easier way of stock taking and ordering (Shin, et al., 2013).

The Point of Sale systems usually help simplify the process of accounting. Unlike the cash registers where the accountants have to go through hundreds of receipts, in this system the financial personnel will simply use built in reports or even create their own. This easy access to reports would make the business activities more interactive.

Reasons Behind Adoption of D POS Software

Reasons as to why the D POS system change initiative was required

According to Cathy Hemings, several reasons prompted the need for the D POS system change initiative from the older cash register system. These reasons were but not limited to:

The use of the older cash register system was introducing many mistakes. Eventually, customers could be charged wrong amounts of money which resulted to the business loosing on the profits it was expected to make (Roberto & Levesque, 2014).

A lot of time would be spent by the manager trying to find mistakes and then fixing them. This was approximately 6 hours in a week but under the Point of Sale system , first of all the number of mistakes likely to be made by the staff would be minimized as well as simplifying the way to fix them in case they occur(Kundra, 2013). 

With the older cash registers system, it was difficult to specifically be able to get to know specifically the employees making mistakes. This made it hard for the manager to know those who required more training or punishment. With this initiative change this could be easy since any of the employee’s activities could be easily tracked (Stanleigh, 2013).

According to Cathy Hemings, this change initiative was not a one day undertake. Several steps were involved before fully implementing it as outlined below:

Research was severely carried out on the computerized systems beforehand and the type of businesses they would comfortably fit, their long term impacts on such businesses and how they enhanced the performance of such businesses. Finally this great research settled on the D POS system which suited the fast food, fish and chips shop industry at large(Hughes, 2012).

The owners sacrificed time and took part in online conferences purposely to learn more about this system and how it would be used specifically in this organization. These conferences brought insights on how the organization menu would be integrated according to the business operations.

The list of the organization operations was then transferred into the system accordingly to ensure that they were all engrossed to meet the organizations daily activities (Hughes, 2012).

The developers of this system went ahead and trained the owner on the usage of this new system after which the owner went on to train the entire organization on how the system will be used.

According to Cathy Hemings, two main problems were identified with this new system. Firstly, some employees would slightly take a long period of time to be able to learn and adapt to this new system completely.

Secondly, a lot of time was spent in modifying the items to better suit the organization menu. This is because changes are inevitable in any business environment and these changes appeared they necessitated integration into the system (Shin, et al., 2013). 

According to Cathy Hemings, this new system has been very successful because of the following reasons.

It has saved owners time in finding mistakes and fixing them to a level of a maximum of 10 minutes a week.

Business procedures can now be completed in a more systematic manner.

Fewer mistakes can now be made by the employees on the customer orders.

As a result of the integration of EFTPOS, there are no mistakes observable on the EFTPOS machine

Customers are able to receive their orders in a timely manner and complains about waiting time is now history.

Employees making mistakes can now be easily traced and be given further training all courtesy of D POS initiative change (Shin, et al., 2013). 

Conclusion

As it can be seen from the case of Cedar Park Fish and Chips, there are many reasons why organizations should consider ditching the old fashioned way of carrying out business activities and embrace change initiatives. Provided that these initiatives are undertaken as required, they can lower the cost of doing business while increasing productivity and that can be good for the bottom line.

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