HRM495 Assignment One: Collecting Information

Assignment One: Collecting Information

Vintage Bakeries

Introduction and Purpose of the Paper

An organization consists of people selected to assist it to achieve a certain mission and objective. Organizations expect the efforts of their workers to be geared towards enabling the firm to grow, be profitable, and be successful. Through the design of an organization, we can view the best structure of the organization. Designing the organization better assists it in knowing the kind of people it requires to help push it forward. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the organizational mission and purpose of Vintage Bakery its historical structure, key organizational structure, how it responds to risk, and the analysis of risk and how it responds to both its external and internal environment.

Name of the Organization

The name of the organization is Vintage Bakery. Vintage bakeries is an events cake maker found in Columbia SC in the midlands region that focuses on the production and retailing of birthday cakes, wedding cakes, graduation, and military cakes. Other cakes that are retailed in the company include party cakes, cupcakes and the petit fours. Each cake comes in a unique design carefully chosen by the client (Vintage Bakeries, n.d).

Organizational Purpose

The mission and vision of the company should be able to communicate the products that the company is offering; what the customers want and it should be geared towards the creation of a sense of focus towards a particular cause by the organization (Pilgrim & Schub, 2018). The mission of this organization is, ‘‘Continued service to the customers through the fantastic decoration of cakes with dedication and responsiveness ( Vintage Bakery, 2020) " ( The main operational goals of the company are as follows: Working with the customers in the selection of their designs for the betterment of their overall satisfaction. Delivering cakes on time using a wide variety of delivery tools available to the customers. Some of the delivery tools that have been put in place by the company include vans and motorcycles. The bakery has designated representatives that deliver straight to homes of the customers and in their business premises. .. Williamson, the founder of the Vintage Bakery believes that continuous training of the employees and inspiring them to be highly creative in cake decorating can spur them to come up with better customer centric products that all the clients will like (VintageBakeries.com, n.d). In making sure that a startup business is successful, it is also important to create valuable networks as the founder can relate from her story. She was able to coordinate with the successful gifted cake decorator who assisted her in setting up the business (VintageBakeries.com,n.d). Vintage Bakery measures success by , is measured by looking at the financial success of the company, the profitability, the number of positive feedbacks from customers, and the number of cakes sold daily (Trierweiller et al., 2012). However, sometimes in the bakery do recognize that figures alone are not a sufficient measure of the success of the company. Vintage Bakery employers recognize the value of our employees by duly rewarding them for the good work they have done and ensured that they are properly motivated.

Organizational Passage

Historical Development

Vintage Bakery was established in 2005. It was started by Vicky Williamson, a current member of the Columbia Bridal Associates and ICES The company in located in the Columbia SC Midlands region. This bakery was formed out of the need to have a locally based bakery that would cover an array of diverse needs of the customers. Her passion, experience, and an army of five dedicated individuals ensured that the company took off and became successful with remarkable speed. What they had most was not even the money but the zeal and zest to succeed and become the best.

The response of the Company to Risk

In the organization, there are several instances where the safety of the workers is at stake or the risk that our cakes are not safe enough for our customers. Since cakes are perishable products, the fact that our cakes could get spoiled is a problem for us and we always endeavor to ensure that this does not happen as often as possible. We have grouped our risk exposure into three categories: the high-risk framework, the low risk, and the medium risk categories. We continuously train our employees on safety procedures. For our cakes, we ensure that they do not have any aflatoxins that are detrimental to the health of the individuals (Girerd, Ohannessian & Hanon, 2019). Sometimes we ensure that the customers select their quantities of salt and other ingredients as they order their cakes. This is a risk reduction strategy that ensures that; for instance, not too much salt is put in patients' cakes suffering from conditions such as hypertension (Girerd, Ohannessian & Hanon, 2019).

Approaches to External Environment

The organization participates in the corporate engagement of the provision of free foods to certain communities and schools especially to children who lack snacks while at school. The firm participates in the existing food expos and wine tasting events in the District of Columbia. This helps in networking and ensuring that the relationship of the company with other outside stakeholders is good.

Emphasis on Results

Each day, our sales team must present a report to the organization on the number of sales done per year. Our marketing team must also present their results to the company daily. We often encourage our workers to work extremely hard and ensure that they meet their Key Performance Indicators. We often tell them, that without results the company cannot exist because it would mean that we have lost our profitability.

Internal Environment

The company recognizes that coordination is a vital part of the business which enables it to successfully coordinate between the different functions and to ensure that the work is done at an optimal level. The goals and the budget are not so much made from a democratic perspective but it is made from an authoritative position and then it is shared by the employees of the organization (Kamola, n.d.). We have few departments in the organization and because of that; it has become quite easy for us to coordinate and share the functions. One part of the organization affects the performance of other parts of the company. For example, we do not submit the budgets as a separate departmental budget but we ensure that the budget requests are amalgamated into one (Kamola, n.d.).

The major products produced by the company are cakes for special occasions. Because of our creativity, the firm has a talented staff that ensures that all the occasion cakes, wedding, birthday, military, graduation cakes are designed and produced with precision and delight to the satisfaction of the customers.

What prevents the company from achieving high-performance results is the fact that we have quite a few numbers of employees and sometimes during peak seasons, we find out that we have little capacity to produce. The organization is working on a framework that ensures the hiring of some workers on a contract basis so that they can help the firm during the peak periods.

External Environment

Cakes are sold to a wide variety of people. However, the major clients for the organization are the young people from the ages of 15 years to 30 years. The firm has realized that it is this group of people that celebrates occasions more than other groups. The future clients that the company anticipates to capture are those who are located in far-off districts who will order for their cakes through several online channels and we will endeavor to deliver products straight to their doors steps.

Without the speed and delivery of wheat flour, eggs, and sugar we wouldn't be able to meet our goals. The suppliers of wheat flour, eggs, and sugar are our major suppliers with whom we have to maintain a healthy working relationship.

In Columbia SC Midlands region, there are three major cake bakeries, the Crimson bakers, the delight bakers, and the Wonder food bakers. These bakers not only depend on cakes but they also bake bread and other products. Their combined net sales in the past year were $1.5 million. The industry is growing up it is expected that the demand for cakes in the region t will shoot up by 15% in the next financial year due to the increase in the occasions and the spending habits of the people.

The regulation that will impact the business is the need to put in place regulations that limit the number of food additives and chemicals that one can put in the food particles especially gluten. This is because the government is streamlining food production to ensure that only safe food products are sold to customers. Whilst we welcome this regulation, we realize that it might put a financial strain on our ability to change the production processes and the production capacity to ensure that fewer additives are put in the cakes and only focus is on the healthy food components.

We believe that the new baking ovens that are automatic and the creation of applications that will enable the customers to order for their cakes from the comfort of their homes will revolutionize the company and help it generate more revenue.

Structural Dimensions

Accounting activities and information technology are performed by specialists in accounting specifically the CPAS and the I.T professionals who help in revamping the I.T systems of the company (Trierweiller et al., 2012).

The cake making processes of the company is the primary specific process that we do. The process is detailed because it involves the following: There is the selection of unique ingredients such as chocolate, cocoa, natural sugar, milk, eggs, salts, vanilla, emulsifiers, and the baking soda (bakepedia.com, 2020). The detailed production process includes: mixing of the ingredients, scaling them down so that they occupy the correct measurements, cooling off of these ingredients, and packaging.

The firm uses employee handbooks as a self-help resource to the employees containing the specific organizational rules and responsibilities that they must follow. All the employees upon signing the contract are given a copy of the job description and the employee handbook so that he knows exactly what his role, responsibilities, and duties in the organization will be.

Contextual Factors

The company was able to acquire two large refrigeration facilities and a baking oven that made us able to produce cakes at a faster rate. Apart from this, there are no other significant changes that have occurred in the firm for the past 4 years of existence.

As of now, the firm is yet to be transformed into a corporation. We operate as a sole trader. The founder holds 100% of all the shares in the company. In this arrangement, all the profits of the company are shared with one person and the founder also bears all the losses alone. This ownership has benefitted the firm in the decision making aspect, where it is easy to make decisions without too many consultations with other parties (Openlean.edu, 2020).

The company is yet to expand to other regions. As a result, we currently have only 15 full-time employees who are stationed at our Columbia station. However, plans for expansions still exist.

The goods and services that this organization provides that support its mission and vision is a carefully structured cake baking and packaging strategy which ensures that all the cakes produced by the company retain their freshness and unique taste. The company has a customer service department that is open 24 hours that amicably handles all types of customer complaints and returns. The department even offers the customers news and information concerning the new cake recipes that the company is trying out.

References

bakepedia.com. (2020). Cakes | Baking Processes | BAKERpedia. Retrieved 13 October 2020,

from https://bakerpedia.com/processes/cakes/

Girerd, X., Ohannessian, R., & Hanon, O. (2019). Self-screening of excessive salt consumption

and the risk of hypertension in a population of bakery employees in France: PREDIC-HTA-Bakery study. Archives Of Cardiovascular Diseases Supplements, 11(3), e350. doi: 10.1016/j.acvdsp.2019.05.046

Kamola, R. Type of Coordination: Internal, External, Vertical & Horizontal Coordination.

Retrieved 13 October 2020, from https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/management/coordination/type-of- coordination/31960

Openlean.edu. (2020). Different types of business. Retrieved 13 October 2020, from

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/money-business/business-strategy-studies/different- types- business/content-section-4Vintage Bakery, (n.d). Vintage Bakery Home page

Retrieved from: https://vintagebakery.com/

Trierweiller, A., Peixe, B., Tezza, R., do Valle Pereira, V., Pacheco Jr, W., Bornia, A., & de

Andrade, D. (2012). Measuring organizational effectiveness in information and communication technology companies using item response theory. Work, 41, 2795-2802. doi: 10.3233/wor-2012-0526-2795