Reference no: EM132563842

John and Mark a Missile and sister duo own a small dry cleaning business. NeJoWe Cleaners! Provides several services to its customers: dry cleaning of clothes and household linen, laundry, ironing, repair work and clothing alterations. While business is growing, a number of issues are emerging for the young entrepreneurs:

A. There is a city-wide water shortage and water lock-off therefore, the laundry side of their business is growing as clients now find it difficult to wash all laundry at home;

B. Paper work has grown exponentially with the growth in business; while the locations are connected by email, all processes are still paper based; the accounting system in particular is a nightmare when taxes are to be paid, involving many hours and sleepless nights, and

C. Deliveries to each shop are made three times a day, because of road works and an influx of more affordable cars, time spent on the road is now eating into the time available to complete main office activities; consequently delivery times are unpredictable and customer delight has been sliding downwards at 1 % per month for the last 5 months, this has been attributed to a 5% increase in completed jobs being delivered to the wrong location and the inability to maintain the 96% same day delivery target.

All is not bad news, they now have the opportunity to buy out and rebrand a competitor's location. John see the opportunity to control performance across the various outlets with the use of the customer and job handling IT solution that would come with the purchase. He feels that eliminating the crushing paperwork along with budgetary controls will bring the problems under control. Mark is of the opinion that all they have to do is to employ more drivers, change the delivery times, and abandon their same day service, she believes that introducing computers will adversely affect the staff productivity and retention.

1. Identification and analysis of two (2) control problems, you consider major and an evaluation of the two opposing (different) solutions proposed by John and Mark.