Tesco Sales Department: Problem Identification and Solutions

This report offers a comprehensive analysis of Tesco's sales department, focusing on identifying key problems and proposing strategic solutions. The analysis begins with an executive summary outlining the core issues, followed by an introduction that provides an overview of Tesco's organizational structure, its business case, and the challenges it faces, including competition, e-commerce development, and customer service issues. A literature review explores Tesco's business strategy, its position within the retail industry, and an external environment analysis. The report then delves into an organizational analysis, examining Tesco's strategic management process and proposing a new structure that emphasizes e-commerce development and third-party involvement in CRM. The report concludes with a discussion of monitoring and evaluation, offering actionable recommendations to enhance Tesco's sales performance and overall market position.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Strategic Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Executive summary
The purpose of this assignment is to identify problem in the sales department of Tesco as
a staff member and provide a solution for the same. In order to analyze the issue PEST analysis
of the UK based on the organisation is carried out to understand the gap in the process, it has
been identified that unlike other organisations in the same industry TESCO is not utilizing
technology to grow and expand the channel of business, which is in turn hindering the sale.
Furthermore the CRM as well as the communication strategy of the company is also not in sync
with the other competitors. The company is in a maturity stage of the industry.

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Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Overview of the organisation.................................................................................................3
1.2 Business Case........................................................................................................................6
2. Literature Review......................................................................................................................10
2.1 Tesco business strategy........................................................................................................10
2.2 Position of the industry in which Tesco operates................................................................12
2.3 External environment analysis of Tesco..............................................................................12
3 Organisational Analysis..............................................................................................................14
3.1 Strategic management process of the company...................................................................14
3.2Proposed new structure.........................................................................................................15
E-commerce development.....................................................................................................15
Third party involvement in CRM..........................................................................................16
3.3 Monitoring...........................................................................................................................16
4 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................17
Reference List................................................................................................................................18

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1. Introduction
A business organisation like Tesco uses strategic management models and theories to make
decisions and formulate policies of the company. Based on the nature and the size of the business
organisations the higher management or the owners make their policies and decisions. The
values and principles of Tesco are also the driving force of the strategic management decisions
that are taken by the authorities. The management of Tesco follow the concepts of strategic
management in order to be successful and the measurement of the success is based on achieving
the goals and objectives of the company (Brown and Bessant 2013). The decisions and policies
that are formulated by the authorities running the business are focused on the objectives as well
as the principles based on which the business functions of Tesco.
1.1 Overview of the organisation
TESCO is a multinational company that was established in the year 1919; the
organisation has its headquarters situated in UK and is also listed in the London Stock Exchange.
TESCO is one of the leading names in the retail industry and over the years the company has
gained goodwill not only among the customers but also among the other stakeholders as well.In
2017, the company had revenue of £55,917 million .TESCO operates in more than 12 countries
and has around 6,809 stores around the world.The organisation is focused on providing the
customers with the best possible products and the best services not only that TESCO is one of
the prominent employers in the home country (Tescoplc.com 2018).

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Challenges in the organization
The company has been facing serious competition from the rivals in the market and has
not being able to stay in the league of the top retailers in the world and the following are some of
the reasons why TESCO has been failing in the industry (Butler 2015).
The company has recognized the potential of E-commerce platform after most of the
competitors, there has been several innovations in the retail industry that has provided hints for
the management to take the platform seriously and to develop distribution and logistics to reform
and improve the e-commerce platform (Wood 2014). The company launched the mobile
application and improves the layout of the website after many competitors had already
undertaken the strategy (Wood 2014).
The company has been facing issues in the promotional aspect of marketing as well.
There is a perception among the people that the low price of the products may be a reflection of
low quality as well (Butler 2017).
There is intense competition in the international as well as in the local market.
Companies like Amazon who have not operated in this industry have taken the route of
innovation and is posing serious threat to the company with the help of their innovative
technology.
The marketing strategy of the company is flawed in terms of recognizing the target
customer. The target market of the company is wide and is not particular therefore the company
has a wide range of service format as well. This in turn also increases the direct competition as
well (Butler 2015).

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The company has gone through a number of controversies in the past which has impacted
on the goodwill and reputation.
How are the challenging facing Tesco being met?
There has been a change in the leadership of the organisation, fresh new perspectives and
innovations in the process of business are being incorporated in the business. The company has
improved the marketing strategies and has been planning on a rebranding the stores. In 2015,
Matt Davis was appointed as the Tesco’s new UK and Ireland chief (Butler 2015).
He focused on improving the service in the stores. He had plans on improving the scope
of big stores that were facing setbacks due to competition. He also wanted to diversify the
services and bring cafe culture in the stores, something that the online stores cannot replicate
(Butler 2015).
. In order to deal with the controversies the company is using PR and other
communication process in order to apologies and reach out to the customers (Butler 2015).

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1.2 Business Case
Customers reported to face problems with the delivery system in the company: In early
2017, the company had faced a major feedback and controversy form the customers regarding
their delivery system meltdown. The customers used their social networking site in order to
complain and state the issue which causes the company to see a setback of 10 percent of orders
(Butler, 2017). Some had complained there was order’s missing from the list where others stated
that that their orders had been cancelled without notification. It was confirmed in an official
statement by one of TESCO’s spokesperson that the company was experiencing a Technological
issue in the home delivery service. They had also apologized for the same (Butler, 2017). This
had impacted their sales to a certain extent. Therefore the company should invest in
technological development as well as logistics associated with the e-commerce platform. This
will also help the company be at par with the other competitors as the target market of the
company has moved to online shopping more than shopping physically (Chapman, 2017).
Quality of the products: Another reported problem from the people is regarding the quality of
the products. As the company deals with both perishable and non-perishable items they have to
focus on the rapid refreshment of the perishable goods as the shelf-life of these products are low.
The recent incident was reported during the Christmas of 2017, where the people had taken to
the social media platform to complain about how the meat was rotten and they had to take other
means last moment to get food on Christmas Eve (Badshah 2017). The demand for Turkey meat
is high during the Christmas and therefore it should have been the duty of the managers who
check the quality of the products when they arrive at the store must pay careful attention to the
perishable items.

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The major competition of the non-food items are the online organisations: the company has
been losing their clients in the non-food product category owing to the growing presence of the
online competition in the market (Ruddick 2014). Online products buying is easy for the
customers as they do not have to waste time on travelling to the store and stand in the long queue
for payments etc. There are a lot of added advantages in the process of online shopping from the
perspective of the buyer. This is a major threat of substitute for a company that operates in the
brick and mortar retail industry (Ruddick 2014). There has been a consistent rise in the value of
internet sales as a proportion of total retail sales from 2.7% in January 2007 to 17.1% in January
2018.The record of more than £1 billion is during 2014 (Rhodes and Brien 2018). This is further
eroding the sales of the company. The big stores that are operating under the company have started to
show a downward fall of sales. The service mix of these stores have reduced due to the shift in the
consumer behaviour which has shifted towards online shopping as mentioned in the above discussion
(Butler 2015).
Intensity in competition: The retail industry is crowded and the competitive advantage strategy of
pricing has suffered in the past years. Global players like Aldi and Ldli are having been observed to
provide the lowest prices of the products. This is also been on the major sales issue in the company.
Customers prefer the price offered by these organisations over TESCO (Wood, 2014).
Identification of the problem
This is a major disadvantage as it has the target market of the company is tech
savvy and uses technology to communicate and carry out transactions almost every day. With the
help of technology the company can also reach out to the customers better and understand their
perspective of the brand. In the sales department technology should be used to improve the e-
commerce platform and improve the logistics behind the business model. Strategic management

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attention to the e-commerce and making the process more customer-friendly and effective will
help the organisation to improve the sales in the department. The company should work in the
distribution and logistics in order to improve the delivery time as grocery items are also
perishable in nature, if the time taken in the transportation is long there are chances of these
items to become bad. In this case the company will fail to live up to the claims of the business of
providing high quality product to the customer (Wood, 2014). Another issue in the sales
department that has been identified is the communication process, communication with the end
customer; both the physical and the e-commerce platform require people who can solve
problems as well as our understanding towards the customers and their problem. This in turn is
going to improve the sales in the long-run (Chapman, 2017).
The company has to maintain a through TQM (total quality management) approach in the
business function in order to deal with the quality issues not only in the products but also in the
efficiency of the services provided by the company. One of the major objectives of the company
that has been observed is to provide the customers with the best quality product. And complains
that has been made above impacts the goodwill and creditability of the company. Furthermore,
this has a negative impact on the sales (Butler 2015).
The marketing strategies of the company have failed to perform in the competitive
market and the organisation is losing its foothold in the leading market. Therefore it can be said
that the issue is with the marketing mix, the company has to evolve and employee strategies in
order to maintain the competitive advantage and make the brand more likeable for the customers
(Butler 2015)
Solution of the problem

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The company should invest in the research and development of the technology associated
with e-commerce. In the process of growth and expansion the company just focuses mainly on
the motor and brick stores and in various types of formats, this will help the company to reduce
that cost of establishing a physical store as well as confusing the customers with a large number
of formats of the store (Yu et al.(2014) The company can improve the website and segment it
according to the physical format as well. In this way the products will be arranged and will
showcase the customers according to their preference (Butler 2017) The technology upgrade will
help the company to understand the gap in the distribution and logistics which is one of the
major concerns of the customers. TESCO can take service from third party organisation to look
after the technology aspect of the e-commerce platform. Apart from that the company should
also include technology in Customer Relationship Management (Wang et al. 2015). It is one of
the major aspects of success of a business as the process of communication and feedback is rapid
and almost on real time basis the company has the opportunity to connect and create valuable
relations with the customers in order to transform a customer to a loyal customer.
Furthermore, according to Yu et al.(2014) technology is one of the most progressive
aspects that impact any organization. Over the years technology has revolutionized the retail
industry with respect to supply chain, CRM, distribution and logistics. Tesco can incorporate
technology in the process of TQM in order to improve the quality of the products as well.
From administration, finance to operations technology is used in order to ensure the
business functions operate in a seamless fashion Yu et al. (2014). There are GPS system and
Radio technology used by the companies in the retail business to track the delivery system
(Wang et al. 2015). CRM software is used in order to maintain a valuable relationship with the
customers in the long run and also to create leads. Technologies are used in the stores in order to

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facilitate the process of selecting and buying the goods. There are also other numbers of usage of
technology in the retail industry and the horizon is only on the rising trend. Companies use the
services of third party organisation to incorporate technology in the business function.
Therefore the expectation of the customers of the company is also high from an
organisation that claims to be catering to the needs and requirements of the customers. The
supply chain of the organisation is strong therefore the company has a good opportunity and
scope of aligning the e-commerce platform with this supply chain.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Tesco business strategy
Like any other business organisation the higher management of Tesco operates under the
strategic management decisions taken by the company. According to Hill et al. (2014), Strategic
management is a large scope in academic and there have been a number of theories and models
relating to various aspect of decision making process of the business unit. Strategies are plans
that are devised by the company in order to meet their vision and fulfil the purpose of the
company.
According to Gabor and Mahoney (2013), the concept of macro and micro environment is
essential in a business organisation as it determines the factors the impact the business. The
internal business environment are the ones which are under the control of the authority of the
company on the other hand the external business environment are not under the control of the
company therefore the organization should use the internal environmental factors to combat the

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threats and use the opportunities that come across in the external business environment. There
are a number of frameworks that are used SWOT, TWOS etc are based on these concepts (Bull
et al. 2016). Tesco incorporates these concepts in order to reach a conclusion before taking any
decisions.
As the operations of the business are considered the company has evolved with the
changing dynamics in the industry to keep up with the competition. The organisation strives to
make arrangements and provides better services to the customers at all time. The organisation
has recently started working on their e-commerce platform as well.
Following a business model is an essential part of strategic management, TESCO is an
organisation the follows the model of Triple bottom line in the operations of the business. The
concept implies that the company does not only focus on the financial objective of the business
but also gives equal importance to the society as well as the environment. The company issues
their CSR report along with the Annual financial report (Tescoplc.com 2018).
TESCO has a wide range of products for the customers to choose from, when the
organisation was founded it only focused on grocery products but gradually the management
decided to diversify the products range and services and started to offer goods like: books,
telecommunications, apparels, furniture, toys, software, electronics, financial services petrol etc
(Tescoplc.com 2018). The current market share of the company as of 5thMay 2018 is 240.70p.
The organisation value the importance of the employees and respect their contribution towards
the success of the company there is a code of conduct that has to followed by the employees as
well.