Sunflower Inc Essay

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CASE ANALYSIS 3 – SUNFLOWER INCORPORATED 1. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH WILLIAM’S APPROACH? WHAT TYPES OF CONTROL WERE USED AT SUNFLOWER BY WILLIAMS? Sunflower Incorporated, a large distribution center for snacks and liquor, was in need of standardization due to widely varied profit margins amongst their regional divisions. Loretta Williams, hired from a competing organization, now the new director of pricing and purchasing at Sunflower Incorporated, received great latitude in the coordinating of her job and encouraged to establish whatever rules and procedures necessary to accomplish the task. The needs for information technology and market control were the two areas that William’s felt required her attention . For standardization across the regions to occur, each regional financial executive was to notify her of any change in local prices greater than 3 percent and all contracts of local purchases greater than $5000 were to be cleared by her office. Williams’ supervisor, Peter Langly, was notified and input invited. Williams refused Langly’s suggestions of a personal approach with regional executives and postponement of procedural implementation until after the peak holiday season. She felt trips to meet with regional executives to discuss purchasing and pricing changes would be too expensive and time consuming. In addition, she believed the procedural change was needed now. Messages were sent out the next day. Only a handful of regional managers responded and was happy to cooperate. However, no notification was ever sent to Williams about local price or purchase changes. Whether or not this was resentment to the newly hired director of pricing and purchasing is not evident. Williams’ refusal to understand current company structure in part led to her failure of being able to implement any procedures. Any consideration of Langly’s suggestions may have helped

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