Snyders of Hanover had a big issue with storing their data. They were storing all the sales data manually, though they are selling 78 million bags of pretzels, snack chips, and organic snack items each year. And it consumed a lot of time for them to store data.
Firstly, they store the data on a spreadsheet in different departments of the world and then only they send it to the main department where financial analyst checks and store data in a single spreadsheet. Another critical issue was also that, they are only able to prepare the result once a month.
So, the impact of this situation on business performance and management decision making are as follows:
- The way they were collecting the data shows that they were not collecting all the necessary and important data as often as needed. So, it made it difficult to identify and record the changing demands and preferences on a particular product.
- As they were not able to update their cash flow regularly, it made them difficult to predict certain future events. And it made them difficult in long-term strategy development.
- They were only able to estimate gross profit but not the performance of their working capital management.
- They require a lot of manpower and will increase more pressure on Human Resource Management (HRM) department. And increases labor costs too.
Hence, Snyder should implement a system in which digital databases are used, with an integrated system so everyone in the company is connected. And the financial analyst should have a cash forecasting spreadsheet that predicts cash flow for the future.
The analyst should also require daily cash from each department. If these basic functions were implemented into Snyder’s financial department, they would be up to date and will run smoothly