Ms. Fields Cookies Case

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INTRODUCTION Mrs. Fields’ Case presents the unique story of the Mrs. Fields’ Cookies Company. The case follows the story of Debbie Fields who created this company and opened up her first store in 1977. With the help of her husband Randy Fields and Debbie’s unique entrepreneurship and personality the company managed to grow from one small store to a large organization that managed international presence throughout the world within a short amount of time. While the company was growing Debbie Fields was faced with a unique problem, how do I keep control of the company and assure the same product quality is achieved in every store without limiting the growth of the company? Sooner than later Debbie Fields accepted the fact that she could not be present in each of her stores and with the help of Randy developed an Information Technology System which let her presence be felt throughout the stores without requiring her physical presence. This system was so advanced that by interpreting a few inputs (such as day of the week, weather, holidays, time of day, demand and left-over’s) it could tell each store manager how many batches of cookies had to be baked every day, at what time the cookies had to be baked and when the cookies needed to be discarded. This system allowed the growth of the company and let Debbie Fields keep the control of her stores, monitor the quality of the products, monitor the efficiency of the operations and gave Debbie the peace of mind she needed in order to delegate some of her responsibility to the managers so they could run independent of her operation. Without a doubt the complexity of this Information Technology system shows that the success of this company can be attributed to implementing a system which was literally years ahead technologically over its competitors. TRANSITION PHASE In 1987, Mrs. Fields Holdings Inc. acquired from

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