Team organization
The Tim Horton Company represents an organization based on the principles of business sustainability. The company’s hierarchy is identified by its logical structure and the efficient system of responsibilities delegation, as well as a sound information management strategy. Though the company lacks experience, it has a strong mission statement and a unique vision, which makes its chances for succeeding in the global market rather high.
When it comes to discussing the unique approaches adopted by Tim Horton Company in terms of its organization and team management, the fact that the firm has a separate department for addressing the competition issues should be mentioned. Seeing that the company must survive in the realm of an increasingly high competition, with such rivals as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts by its side, the introduction of a department dealing with the competition issues and allowing for raising the company’s chances for surpassing the rivals appears to be rather sound.
As far as the cooperation between the teams is concerned, the large amount of departments begs the question whether the communication between them may be efficient enough. Consequently, the fact that Tim Horton adopts the concept of information sharing in its data management strategy must be brought up. The organization has an informational research team, which shows that Tim Horton takes the concept of information acquisition and the following processing very seriously. Making this information available to every single department within the company is the next reasonable step that will have to be undertaken in order to sustain the cooperation between different teams and its members within the company (Ladley, 2010).
Problems experienced
Among the key issues that have been experienced in the course of the project, improving the competitiveness rates of the firm was obviously the main concern. Indeed, for a company that is somehow related to food industry, gaining a solid reputation and becoming a leader in the market is an extremely complicated task, mostly because the specified niche has already been taken by other nonetheless successful and efficient organizations (Williams, 2012). No matter how efficient the services of a company may be, it will need an extremely powerful promotion campaign in order to be able to at least coexist with such corporate titans as Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks, not to mention the fact that surpassing the aforementioned organizations does not seem possible at all.
To make the process of Tim Horton’s integration into the global market even more difficult, the issues regarding the pricing for a range of resources required for the company’s operation, including the cost of labor, used to be a major obstacle for the company. Though the problem has been dealt with by redefining Tim Horton’s pricing policy, the issue may possibly emerge in the future unless the firm will find a way to become a leading expert in the realm of the food industry. Therefore, the organization has been suffering a range of admittedly complicated and complex issues, particularly the ones related to its low competitiveness rates.
Solutions
The solution to the problems specified above appeared to be, in fact, quite simple. It was crucial to reconsider the policy of the company and to evaluate the chances for its expansion into the world market, particularly, the areas, where the competition rates would be quite low.
As a result, the reconsideration of such geographical locations as the countries of Asia, Africa and Middle East opened a plethora of opportunities for the Tim Horton Company. While admittedly presupposing that a range of issues related to the enhancement of the logistics processes, particularly, the transportation of the products, should be revisited, the specified decision worked extremely well for the project. With the relocation of the market and the reconsideration of the target audience, the Tim Horton Company managed to retain high competitiveness rates and gain the financial resources needed to enter the global market (Bunte, 2009).
The solution chosen for the Tim Horton Company seems not only completely adequate, but also quite successful, given the fact that the company’s prospects are quite luminous. It was a wise decision not to strive for surpassing the specified competitors, but to search for a way to match their revenues and become a decent competitor.
The solution used to address the problem may lead to a few insignificant complexities, including the financial issues with the market research in the target countries. One of the key advantages of the solution is that it allows for developing the principles leading to the entrepreneurial sustainability within the organization. By adopting the strategy of expansion into the African, Asian and Middle East markets, the company will be able to gain a unique experience and shape its mission and vision, as well as become more diverse and promote cross-cultural communication (Plunkett, 2009).
It is worth mentioning that the solution adopted for addressing the competition issue seems to have provided additional options for handling the concern regarding the increasing costs. By redesigning the corporate policies in logistics and changing the target market, Tim Horton has found a way to cut a range of costs related to transportation by reconsidering the geographical location of the company’s operations.
Improvements
As a result of the aforementioned actions, the project was improved quite a few notches. The reconsideration of the strategy adopted at the company helped analyze the current leadership approach and detect its flaws, therefore, setting the premises for revamping the image of the company and introducing it into the global market.
It would be wrong to claim that the measures undertaken led to the triumph immediately; quite on the contrary, it took quite a while to define the avenues for addressing such issues as the promotion strategies that should be utilized in the Asian, African and Middle East states with a reference to the local culture and the realities that the residents of the above-mentioned states could relate to. However, the reassessment of the geographical location of the company’s economic advances, as well as the replenishment of the company’s financial resources, was a welcome change in pace for the project.
Among the obvious improvements, the introduction of a better and a more reasonable team structure should be listed. It goes without saying that for a company, which enters the global market and, therefore, must coordinate the actions taken in different departments, a well thought out team organization structure is vital. The approach chosen by Tim Horton seems impeccable in that it incorporates a revision of the corporate values, including the organizational behavior issues and the leadership strategy, and an integration of an improved information management approach. It seems that the incorporation of the latest technological advances into the operation of the firm’s departments is the next logical step for the Tim Horton Company to take.
Reference List
Bunte, F. (2009). The food economy: Global issues and challenges. The Netherlands, NL: Wageningen Academic Publishing.
Ladley, J. (2010). Making enterprise information management (EIM) work for business: A guide to understanding information as an asset. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Plunkett, J. W. (2009). Plunkett’s Food Industry Almanac 2009: The only comprehensive guide to food companies and trends. Houston, TX: Plunkett Research, Ltd.
Williams, J. (2012). Competition and efficiency in international food supply chains: Improving food security. New York, NY: Routledge.