HC 1062: Menulog Company: Decision Making and Problem Solving - Research Design Assessment Answers

Research Assignment Help

Group Project:

Form groups of 3

Identify a company.

Identify a management problem. (Note: not a market research nature).

Specify research questions which address the management problem/decision.

Design a research program.

Carry out the research.

Sourcing both secondary and primary data

Analyse the findings.

Identify alternatives and make recommendations to improve the performance of the organisation

Prepare a persuasive report showing how the management problem/decision should be managed.

Prepare and deliver a persuasive presentation of the key points in your report.

Each group will also make a 10 minute presentation of their research and findings in week 10 or 11 and there would be an additional 5 minutes for questions and answers.

PART 1

Introduction

Menulog is one of leading online food ordering service accumulating company, functional in Sydney, Australia. The company has tied up with around more than 5000 restaurants all over the country. It partners with recognized international and national companies like KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Eagle Boys, Dominos and Red Rooster (Robb, 2015). Customers can deal with Menulog through digital mode using a device like iPhone, website, and social media, thereby making use of cloud computing for managing information and data system. It has been estimated that through Menulog around 34 million meal orders are being received and then to its respective restaurants on the bi-weekly or monthly basis (Robb, 2015). Besides Australia, the company has also expanded its empire in New Zealand with around 500 restaurants as partners. It provides Australia’s most wide variety of cuisine along with types of restaurant option to suggest the nearest user’s location and will deliver to the respective address. The process of order transfer from customer to the selected restaurant is communicated electronically through Menulog web portal (MenuLog, 2016).

Managerial problem of Menulog

Recently the company has to merge with another largest online food takeaway service company named ‘Just Eat’. After merging, they created a common name for both of them Menulog Group Ltd. They shared their respective partner restaurants for their regular group. The company has also provided an option for subcontracted delivery for the restaurants without any delivery services of their own. With various positive aspects observed there also exists certain problems after the merger strategy (Bailey, 2015). The problem include:

• Responsibility is sharing among employees.
• Lack of transformational leadership style that generates frustration among employees.
• Delay in delivery owing to the absence of proper delegation and responsibility sharing among employees.

These issues faced by the management of Menulog after the merger process had affected overall business operation. This is indicative of problem for the employees to work under a new demographic atmosphere with new colleagues and supervisor. This as a result also affect the employee retention of the company, and the management has to face a serious problem while conducting the business operation (Bailey, 2015). The solution thus remains with framing effective leadership strategy to maintain work continuity and proper organizational behavior to minimize conflict among the employees themselves.

PART 2

Alternatives and Recommendations to improve the performance of Organisation

Menulog is Australia’s largest online Food Ordering platform. It consists of 7500+ restaurants around Australia. Consequently, Menulog is getting in partnership with another companies, it is getting difficult for the employees in getting along with each other. As they get in new working environment, it gets difficult for them to cooperate with new working conditions and staff. Therefore, seminars, parties and meetings are recommended so that staff get to know each other well and develop a relationship among them which will help them in a working environment. Also, the number of people ordering takeaway online and number of restaurants realising they have to be able to home deliver it to them (Dyer, 2015). Delay in deliveries is one of the major problems as some restaurants make bunch of orders and then go on a multiple-delivery run to save fuel, and this requires less staff. To improve deliveries, more staff should be hired so that food can reach to the customers on time. Moreover, Menulog doesn’t provide much information about the restaurants. Therefore, sometimes customers end up with ordering food from bad restaurants. One of the great recommendations could be selecting a good company to get tied up with. Company should cherry pick the best things in the company it is planning to get hooked on (Dan, 2015). It doesn’t promise the privacy of a customer. Anyone can get access to other customer’s information. It must have a customer’s information security system so that it doesn’t leak out any important information of them. Another drawback is staff can’t add more food items to the customer’s order once the payment is being processed through the Menulog. Eventually, that really annoys the customers. This needs to be fixed. There should be some amendments in its system.

Research Design

In order to come up with the best way to analyze the challenges of the merger of the two companies a quantitative research design is going to be adopted. That will include coming up with an online survey questionnaire that will be emailed to all the employees of the two companies. The questionnaire will be an open ended questionnaire and hence will not limit the respondents on the type of responses they will be providing. The survey questions will be rating various departments on a scale of one out of ten. The areas of survey will include the human resource section that deals with the relations of the employees. Further questions will be directed on service delivery and level of consumer satisfaction on delivery of service (Baumgartner, 2010).

The Research

The research conducted on an online survey revealed various challenges. 65% of the employees revealed that their jobs and responsibilities were not well defined hence creating a lot of confusion especially those employees joining Menulog Company Ltd from Just Eat Company. That also indicated that there was lack of transformational leadership something that contributed to the frustration of the employees (Beverly, 2013). 54% of the online survey also indicate that the newly formed merger had no specified mission and vision as most of the employees would not state the mission and vision of the company (Cohe & Babey, 2012). 73% of the consumers interrogated also revealed that they also experienced delays of their orders. That was attributed to lack of proper defined roles at work place after the merger. 61% of the employees also revealed that they were not satisfied by the working conditions especially after most of them were transferred to the headquarters of the company. 23% of the employees also revealed that they needed salary increment.