Nestle and the All-For-One

2. What type of business and systems strategy did Nestle adopt? Was this strategy appropriate for Nestle business model?

Nestle adopted a multinational business strategy and model. This is the correct business model for this corporation. Nestle is a world brand and is the largest food and beverage company in the world. This is the kind of company that this a multinational strategy is designed around. They have operate across government and cultural lines requiring an understanding of local traditions and cultures in order to operate efficiently. The multinational strategy allows for the sales and marketing to be customized however it centralizes the internal business and reporting practices to ensure consistency to allow fair comparisons across business units.

3. What management, organization, and technology challenges did Nestle have to deal with to standardize it’s business processes and systems?

Nestle had to deal with many of the usual problems when trying to make a massive change. Senior management often doesn’t see the benefit and are not willing promoters of the change which the employees can sense. Often senior management is reluctant to change because they don’t see the benefit because the inertia that has to be overcome in making change. Nestle had to deal with identifying undocumented practices, the antiquated software and records over multiple systems as well as that data that was being kept. These are all massive things to overcome. Nestle also ran into the typical problem of not enough budget to try make all these changes in the timeframe estimated.

4. What strategies did Nestle management use to deal with these challenges? How successful were these strategies? Explain your answer.

Nestle management set these goals and as critical to their future success as they saw their large customers such as walmart demanding certain IT requirements from their supply chain. Because of that they focused on it in the boardroom and hired the right consultants to make it work. The book notes that the goals were consistently readjusted downward because of budget concerns but identified successes and continuing efforts towards further centralization of the IT resources.