Marks & Spencer: An Analysis of Operational Management Challenges

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Marks & Spencer's operational management, focusing on its retail functioning across food and textile sectors. It identifies challenges faced by the company, particularly in the UK and Europe, including the need to balance tradition with changing fashion trends. The report examines transformation processes, the 4Vs (volume, variety, variation, and visibility), performance objectives (speed, flexibility, cost, dependability, and quality), and the company's strategies. It also explores issues like poor customer service, misunderstandings in the delivery system, and long waiting times, proposing solutions to improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. The report highlights the importance of adapting to market changes, improving marketing segmentation, and leveraging technology, such as HR solutions, to enhance employee productivity and overall business performance. Furthermore, it analyzes the supply chain, performance management, and service quality, and provides examples of how Marks & Spencer addresses operational problems.

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Nature of transformation process.......................................................................................................3
Analysis of Problems and rectifying action.......................................................................................4
Example Poor Customer Service Quality..............................................................................................6
Example Misunderstanding of delivery system.....................................................................................7
Example Long Waiting Time in Service Queue.......................................................................................9
Example of Poor service Environment................................................................................................10
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................11
References...........................................................................................................................................13
Appendixes..........................................................................................................................................16

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Introduction
The report brings out the discussion on operation management of Marks and spencer. This
report marks the retail functioning of the company in the market in each sector including food
and textile. Apart from the famous and efficient retail supermarket company, the company
faces impending problems in UK as well as Europe. It is difficult to find a strategy through
which it can add value and establish a relationship between a long lasting uniqueness of
tradition and the changing and trending fashion (Wilson, 2015). During the report, the
discussion points are not only limited to operational management but also covers the
discussion on transformation processes, 4Vs, performance and current objectives such as
speed, flexibility, cost, dependability, and quality because they are important while
identifying the service problem. The company uses the general strategies and the challenges
faced by the company. The opinion of Marks and spencer holds the business strategies and
different market plans to survive in the dynamic business environment. There is a need to
change the marketing segmentation processes through which existing target market can be
served in an efficient and effective manner (Bernal, and Alesón, 2015).
Marks and spencer is the leading British retail organisation that have more than 885 stores in
nearly 40 countries in the world which has 600 domestic and 285 international stores. The
company has its large cloth-retailing store in the UK and provides an upmarket food retailer.
The franchising partners in more than 30 countries support the international retail business.
The objective of company is to improve the retail performance by focusing on the core and
potential customers, ensuring the quality of the product with trending styles and value,
improving the availability, range depth, launching the brand new campaign, increasing
accountability by strengthening the management team. The company has actively participated
in acquiring the per una business that can accrue to the marks and spencer (Cheng, Kuang,
Shi, and Dong, 2018).

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The modern diversified application has strived to deliver a solution to HR problems. With the
increasing rich domain expertise in retail and Information technology, the other company
such as TCS with Marks and spencers to engage and deploy features of HR. Currently, all the
HR functionalities are integrated with a convenient and user friendly features. Moreover, the
employees can now easily manage the relevant HR information with their personal data. In
addition to this, the company has also changes the way training is provided in marks and
spencer. The strategy is to manage and take HR department more than the administrative
level. In order to make the team more productive, proactive team will lead to work in a
strategic manner to extend the training priorities. Another way of encouraging growth in the
production and performance of workers is the motivation with the high competence level
(Latukha, 2015).
The below discussion brings pout the problems faced by Marks and Spencer operational
management of the company with the consideration of maintaining the current performance
of the organisation. Managing the operations is about producing goods and services. The
operational features of the organisations enables to arrange the resources that are devoted to
the production and delivery. The transformation model undertakes the management of raw
material, processing through work in progress, and availing the finished goods to the
customers. The process involves selling, advices to the customers (if online then reviews
from other customers and if offline the employees and staff), capacity and managing the
inventory control.
Nature of transformation process
The franchise operation services can provide a five support services such as relationships,
brand management, merchandise, systems and operations. The company establishes a direct
relationship between the manager at the marks and spencer`s London office that can provide
a commercial and operational guidance to update the latest retailing. Clear guidance is given

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on how Marks and spencers ensures to maximise value among the other world`s best brands.
Information and practical advices helps to ensure that franchised partners always have the
right position of the goods. The system also gets the benefit from the world`s other advance
system for managing the each aspect of the fast moving consumer goods retail stores by
accessing the support of the IT team. The UK retail centre, which is one of the largest
operational retail store. It is reported that the company aims to conduct a four year
transformation process in 2009 such as low spend tactical purchasing teams to the high
performing strategic sourcing team in 2012.
Analysis of Problems and rectifying action
There are several problems associated with the supermarket industry especially when it is in
regards to poor customer services of Marks & Spencer. Internet has created greater
competition because it provides easy shopping, compare prices and fetches fashion in the
world. Fashion and footwear are brought to online platform. The switch from high street is to
benefit the likes of Asos as well as dozen of smaller brands. Moreover, the concept of variety
depends on the range of product demand raised by customers as the taste and preferences of
the customers differs from person to person. With the introduction of innovation in the
requirements of the customers, there is a need of variation in the product. The best series of
Marks and spencer gives a clear picture of the performance objectives, although they were
deviated from their path due to unavailability of adequate resources.
Too many shops and poor customer quality- M&S has closed every third of total 300 street
stores that can sell the full range of clothing and food. M&S have collected motley array of
stores. Lack of investment in small outlets that has left the stores shabby and led to poor
customer service. To rectify the problem, the company can create exciting spaces in the
outlets such as bringing coffee shops and other services. As customer involvement is
necessary, variety dimension consider the two building contractors where one offers the

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prefabricated homes that are chosen from the online site or the catalogue. The second offers
the customised homes that display homes, which are built that a person can walk through
means the retail store. Transportation cost is the most suitable example of variety dimension
as the fare and services keep changing. The driver for transporting the goods can chose the
route to the destination. Businesses can be a factor into their operations, which have become
market leaders (Wilson, 2015).
Poor service quality to customers- Fashion faux pas is one of the reason that the M&S chain
is struggling to maintain the appeals for every day, it lead to heavy competition. Women who
are middle-aged and old aged now a days also . To resolve this problem, the company has to
consider variation dimension, especially When the retail stores are identified, it is divided in
other seven business units which has represented a defined area of merchandise such as
men`s wear, women`s wear, food, home, beauty, child`s wear and lingerie. This dimension
deals with the change in demand for the output with the changing time (Warren, 2017).
Marks and spencer mainly faces the variation in the food department because the preferences
of customers differs from person to person and even country to country. Marks and spencer
can use the local resources to produce the food items that can encounter higher utilisation of
resources by lowering the unit cost (Warren, 2017). In order to achieve the order winning
criteria, the company should be flexible in the market; it should have the ability to change the
operation in some or the other way to adopt the changes into account a new situation. In
respect to flexibility in production, Per Una and Autograph are very flexible brands because
new products have to be updated in the trending market as a competitive power. Per Una is
being supplied by outsourcing to keep the flexibility in production as customisation and
flexibility in price (Marks and spencers, 2018).
Misunderstanding of service concept and delivery system- Although the company is
committed to deliver sustainable value to its shareholders and enhance it every day by high

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quality, clothing, and home appliances. It is an expensive deed as far as bumper growth is
considered. M&S is lagging from rivals such as Aldi and Lidl. The culture of the business is
also being criticized which is bureaucratic. To resolve the problems, Marks & Spencer keep a
number of products that depend on needs of the customers, this is what the concept of volume
means, and products should not remain and run out of stock especially when there is high
demand (Lee, and Lambert, 2016).
Example Poor Customer Service Quality
Location and layout plays an important role in serving the customers. Marks and spencer has
restored the visual merchandising and window displaying to provide assistance for a better
job for showcasing the products. The other fashion brands named Autograph, North Coast,
Indigo, Per Una, Blue Harbour, Cellezione and the other core Marks and Spencer wear for
both man and women. These brands have dedicated shop-to-shop area where in-store
environment communicates different brand values (M&S Careers, 2018).
Especially in food department, the company has refreshed the shelving with wood effect
shelves edges, which look less like a supermarket and more as a specialist. The in-store
environment is a mix of both functional and fixed position type of layout where general
merchandise and food department operates in functional layout type for the merchandise and
fixed position layout for restaurants (Lee, and Lambert, 2016).
In 2004, the company marked to change the strategy and embarked to infuse the product-
centric approach with considering the cultural background of the customers (Wood, and
Butler, 2018). This strategy drives to remain, reflect the wider choice, and move the UK
business towards another new economy. M&S necessarily suffer from poor service when
they could not demand more. The company can be regularly rated poor in clothing sector and

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treat its employees as commodities especially during the recession times in the economy
(Jaafar, Zaman, Adtrudin, Hasan, and Salleh, 2016).
A third action that is considered as poor customer service is that the company do not deliver
better services. Poor services can lead to lack of manners in the employees while talking to
customers, rude and disgraceful behaviour, long waiting in the lines for getting the bills, lack
of follow-up services after the customer services. The poor services also accounts when the
company is unresponsive to technology and having unreliable processes and still it is not
customer-oriented. The company did not deliver what it promises to deliver (Jaafar, Zaman,
Adtrudin, Hasan, and Salleh, 2016).
Example Misunderstanding of delivery system
The efficient performance of most business rely heavily on effective supply strategies. It is
one of the US leading department store. The supply chain of Marks and spencer consists of
different elements that can coordinate and work to facilitate the movement of goods.
Customer is the most important element of the supply chain because he is the one who create
demand by placing orders. Further, the customer establishes a relation to a company who can
fulfil the needs of the customers (Toms, and Zhang, 2016). Performance management is a
measuring process, which involves both the employee and supervisor that identify the
common goals which are linked to goals and objectives of the organisation (Turker, and
Altuntas, 2014). The company strive to improve the services by employing abled workers
who can work fully of their capacity.
The service quality is considered as judgment at the global level that relates to superiority of
services. The company cannot avoid that it is important to consider the impact of service on
the business performances, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and its profitability. In
regards to when company serves its services, customers compare its prior expectation of

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service that how other companies in this sector serve its customer. The HR department of
Marks and spencer has been transformed, the role of administrative department has become
more active in the organisation especially while catering customers with respect and polite
behaviour. Moreover, through effective efficient HR workforce, the company is enabled to
deliver new operational improvements to the sourcing and supply chain during the operation.
With the use of IT in improving the buying margin, stock commitment, and supply chain
efficiency. The supply chain is highly developed and overcommitted (Wood, and Butler,
2018). Nevertheless, combination of the workforce (HR) and IT (information technology)
assisted the company to improve the supply chain (Fernie, 2014).
Intense competition has forced that company to engage customers’ preferences at its priority.
It is important to win the trust of customers. Some of the operations of the Marks and spencer
are totally visible especially in front office environment such as billing of items, arranging
the goods in the selves, and assisting the customers in finding the appropriate product among
a range of different products (Fernie, 2014). The visibility refers to the transparency concerns
related to customer trust. This dimension provides an information of how internal working is
exposed to the working of the customers. Many other operations are not very visible such as
control, capacity, control, and supply chain management. It can be derived that the company
has a mix sense of the high and low visibility operations (Turker, and Altuntas, 2014).
Sometimes there exist a difference between the customers’ expectations and their perception
of service quality, which the customer render while shopping the apparels from the speciality
stores. It is important to know that to manage the lead times to control the volume.
Sometimes, the demand for clothing, homes appliances, and food products keep fluctuating,
which could not help the managers to control the demand so the quantity cannot exceed or
remain under, produced. The company is able to fulfil the demand as per the time constraints.
Over production in the food department can lead to wastage of resources. The company also

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provides wide variety and range of products of all the other brands too with different price
ranges in its retail store (Cameron, 2018).
Example Long Waiting Time in Service Queue
Apart from the cost concerns, the second factor considers a time delay in serving customers
especially the distance between customer request for a product and then the time until it
receives the product and services. The sub-brands such as Perfect and classic collection
focuses on the store products that are based on sales volume. Moreover, Per Una follows a
update of speed in the market and also the strategy which can cut the month`s transportation
to week time (Theinsightpartner, 2017).
Moreover, step production planning will send material list requirement to the purchasing
department to purchase the raw material. After receiving the requisitions of purchase list, the
department sends purchased orders that quote quality and delivery date of goods to suppliers.
On this stage, a price negotiation is carried out. When supplier deliver raw material to the
warehouses after going through and checking whether the quality and specification is meet or
not. After receiving the production plan, the production department strive to schedule the
activities of actual production by collecting the raw material from warehouse (Jaafar et al.,
2016).
Ultimately, the aim of this factor of current performance is providing the customers with
highest possible reduced price especially to achieve cost objective. Per Una suppliers are
generally belongs to Hong Kong, which can bring lower cost benefit. Producing under an
affordable and reasonable cost, which is an important factor for Per Una, but it is more
important for Perfect and Classic collection where products ranges in less consideration on
low cost production (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, 2018).

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Per Una assists to carry the products to customers within a week rather than a month, both
Autograph and per Una products offered their products in selected store, which decreases the
availability to customers. Whereas, the pacific and classic collection strategies can be
different because it remains flexible in volume and delivery adjustments in availing longer
time for the products in their outlet (Pulakos, 2018). Quality is related to great standards that
are consistently delivered. At the macro level, it focuses on brand perception and store
experience. Moreover, at the garment level, the weight of fabric, its durability, care, style,
value, and fit gives a value addition to the functioning of clothing and style. They generally
demonstrate value at the opening price points (Rezaei, Fahim, and Tavasszy, 2014).
Example of Poor service Environment
The customer orders for the product, which has the attributes and traits. After receiving the
order, the company makes the production plan and decide the material requirements. Delivery
date decides as required by deadline of customer requirements and raw material availability
(Krishnaswamy, 2017).
As a part of retail store operations, the business have become very complicated. The company
has become inward looking where competition is increasing. Competitors have allowed
influencing the heartland. Company offers too many lines that exist within the product
offering. There exist a lack of confidence in the marks & spencer because women wear do
not keep pace in the trending market. The supply chain of the company is slow,
overcommitted and there exist a duplication in supply base. The company’s internal
management does not have a strong relationship especially when the team lack the traits of
leadership and people go out of base (Davies, 2013).
After the production, the goods are tested for the quality purposes but the bad quality is
ignored. They will transfer and shift the goods from warehouse department for shipping.

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Ultimately, after receiving the finished goods from the production departments. Moreover,
customers specify delivery dates and place, according to which the customers receive goods,
but sometimes it leads to improper invoices. Without efficient partners, the execution,
awareness and engagement among retailer, distributor, warehousing, transporter and initial
suppliers can lead to form a environment where every part of supply chain function well and
satisfy the customers (Ho et al., 2015).
Conclusion
The main goal of Marks and spencer`s supply chain is to maximise the profit by catering its
customer with highest efficient services. Therefore, it is being seen in the report that the
company is suffering from poor customer services due to delaying services because of
queuing, poor customer service environment, misunderstanding of delivery system. It is being
observed that supply chain decisions of marks and spencers is influenced by strategic,
operational, and tactical objectives of the company. The company is trying to achieve a
strategic suitability and efficient customer services by creating a balance between efficiency
and responsiveness. Moreover, the fluctuating logistics and cross-functional drivers affect the
balancing with the increasing competition. While practising the HR functions, marks and
spencer`s vision of restoring HR without using the functions of IT has hampered by complex
and customised system. It is recommended that, there is a need to transform the Human
capital management system. Supporting the key business goals can improve the user`s
experience to which the critical behaviour of the staff. In addition to this, the complex,
obsolete, and highly customised HR system prevented from adding the new features in the
products and enhancement in the supply chain. The dynamic HR centre was only the way that
can realise the vision of excellent talent management.
As far as the transformation processing model is concerned, the nature of processing and the
input transforming the resources such as goods that should be sold to customers. The input

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transforming process of resources involves staff, billing machines at the retail store and
facilities such as computers. To differentiate the processing from the transformation process,
the company can use the concept of 4 V`s operations such as volume, variation, variety, and
visibility to improve the service quality. The company follows the design layout such as
product and service process type. The company follows both product processing type when it
undertakes the transformation process and services when it gives the right of franchisees to
conduct the transactions to serve the customers. Service shop generally considers professional
services, service shops, and mass services.

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Appendixes
New support model

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(Source: Davies, 2013)