Balogne is a sugar milling company

Balogne is an Australian sugar milling operation. It recently hired a new manager, Ms. Erica, who needs an analysis of the company’s success. She has been given access to reports from 2014 and 2015, along with the requisite review. The paper will clarify the sugar milling company’s business processes as well as why business processes are essential in management. The paper will also use the findings from 2014 and 2015 to recommend decisions that Ms. Erica may like to consider. Finally, the paper would look into 2.0 web technology and how it can be beneficial to the Balogne Business.

Table of Contents

Company Overview4

Business Process Modelling4

Software Assistance in Business Management7

Spreadsheet7

Web 2.0 and Collaborations in the Market9

Internal Communication10

External Communication10

References 12

Company Overview

Balogne Pty ltd is a sugar milling company founded in 1965 by a sugar cane farmer named Louis Hape. He stopped farming and started processing sugar cane from the local farmers. This company has flourished through the years to become a major supplier in the Australian market and abroad. This company produces raw, white sugar, brown sugar, icing sugar, caster sugar, sugar cubes, treacle and golden syrup. Sugar cane is collected from local farmers every morning after which it is brought in to the company for milling. The sugar undergoes further processing in the refinery. The finished product is distributed in Australia. The mill workers keep tabs on farmers and distributors while the sales and marketing team keep data records on sales.

Business Process Modelling

Business process modeling is an analytical presentation of the business activities. It is a vivid description of how work gets done in a company. It represents the steps, participants and the decision logic in processes. Equipping Ms. Erica with the business processes will help her maintain consistency in the normal daily activities while ensuring that the overall strategy of the organization is maintained. Organizations that thrive are ones that ensure the process models and rules are followed. Instead of relying on employees to remember every tiny detail, the process model can be given to every user. Businesses processes assist the manager make excellent decisions. It will help Ms Erica to communicate her ideas clearly and fast. According to Knobloch-Westerwick (2012), a clear picture of the business processes will help the manger re-engineer them to increase performance. Also, it aids to change these procedures to take advantage of new opportunities in the market or deal with challenges.

Having a clear picture of the business processes help in increasing efficiency in the organization because the teams have a clear idea of what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Also, it is a good tool for training recruits through a thoroughly documented process model. In Balogne Pty Company a new employee hired to collect sugar canes in the morning only needs to view the process model to know that he or she is expected to go to the farms in the morning and load the canes onto the rollers. Documentation also allows new processes to be made formal.

The business processes model help managers to ensure that there is efficiency when carrying out activities in the company. Giving Ms. Erica the business model for Balogne Pty Company will help her analyze the processes and identify any room for further optimization. It will also help her make improvements to reduce process cycle time and make sure resources are utilized properly. Lastly, it has been identified that businesses with business models have an additional advantage through frequently improving business processes and efficiency of operations.

Balogne ltd is a profit led business which provides sugar as an end product to the users. Sugar processing undergoes several processes before being distributed as shown below in the business process model.

Collect harvested sugar

Millcrush the canes into juice

Juice clarification

Crystallization of concentrated Juice the crystals dried to raw sugar

Transportation to the refinery

Refinery

Refinery

Raw sugar

Sugar Crystals washed and dissolved to form syrup

Purification using phosphoric acid and lime

Filtering through cloth

Syrup passed through decolorizing column centrifuge process to extract fluid

Remains tumble dried to form sugardistribution

Further processed to form golden syrup and treacle

Distribution

Software Assistance in Business Management

Decision making is a vital component in achieving the company’s goals and objectives. Decisions are made based on ample knowledge and sound reasoning capability. The quality of decisions and their implementation is what will lead the business to ultimate success. Decision making starts with identifying a problem then weighing the options and lastly, by solving the problem. Software that helps in making decisions in a company is known as decision-making software. This software aids the decision-making process by problem exploitation and formulation, identification of alternative options and structuring of references (Faraji & Faraji, 2014). Spreadsheets store data and provide ways of managing and processing the data making it useful to an end user. Excel organizes statistical data in a way to aid decision-making processes.

Spreadsheet

Software tools like Microsoft Excel measure performance. Microsoft excel is the most used analytical software in businesses today. It allows the user to manipulate and analyze data for decision making. The manager can visualize and analyze data to gauge how the company is currently performing so that problems can be highlighted. The manager could also use excel to calculate effects on the business in case they make changes. This software has additional formulas that the manager can use to manipulate the data in different scenarios. Microsoft excel is easy and effective in organizing large chunks of data. It allows the user to summarize findings into graphs hence enhancing the quality of decisions. The software can be used to manipulate date to discover trends and patterns in the business. The software enhances the ability to work with large amounts of data because it has powerful filtering and sorting tools combined with tables and graphs to make decisions in minutes. The Software brings data together from different locations For instance Ms Erica gets data from 2014 and 2015.

The software is used in finance and accounting due to speeding the rate of processes. Decisions need to be made on time hence when data is provided the manager can quickly mitigate a situation before it affects the organization. Balogne ltd deals with processing and distribution of sugar. Spreadsheets could help Ms. Erica manage the sales force by listing the distributers and sale targets. These spreadsheets can also help her make future decisions based on past results.

Software such as oracle and QuickBooks can be used to manage payroll and in provide employee information. When this data is entered into Microsoft excel, it allows the manager to summarize expenses and offer information on how the workforce is spread out. It helps Ms Erica to determine whether she needs more employees, reduce the number or reassign employees.

The spreadsheets and graphs made ready for Ms. Erica show that the company impressively increased productivity in 2015. However, she has to figure out how to increase earnings in treacle, white sugar and sugar cubes which recorded reduced earnings from 2014. Golden syrup is doing well in the market having recorded a 51% increase in earnings.

Raw sugar=15.8, white sugar=-21.3,brown sugar=2.6, icing sugar= 13.6 caster sugar=7.9, sugar cubes =-13.9, golden syrup=51.2, treacle=-4.01

Figure 2: Percentage growth or loss in earnings 2014 to 2015.

Figure 3: 2014 and 2015 yearly earnings

Web 2.0 and Collaborations in the Market

Web 2.0 applications are websites that allow users to edit, contribute and collaborate site content (Cowling 2014). The traditional version of web 2.0 is the wide world web that only allowed users to view or download content on a website. This technology is important to businesses as it increases knowledge sharing, reduces costs of doing business, increases innovation and improves marketing. Web 2.0 can be delivered using technologies like adobe flash, Microsoft silver light and JavaScript. Businesses can use web 2.0 technologies to make visible their practices and products. The advantages of web 2.0 technologies include user friendliness, feedback, easy of use and provide real time discussions. Web 2.0 technologies allow web editing without special knowledge. Examples of web 2.0 technologies are social media sites and wikis.

Internal Communication

Web 2.0 helps in internal communications by improving interactivity between employees at a lower cost. They encourage idea sharing thus deepening the organization’s pool of knowledge. Employees can get information from experts real time without having to travel therefore it saves money and time. Externally, this technology brings all the players together creating a bond with customers and suppliers and other networks. The ease of interaction with consumers gives the company ways of improving the product to suite customers’ needs by co-creating the product using certain specifications. Enterprises that use this technology have reported a measurable increase in revenue. Furthermore, better ties with suppliers result in more gains. Lastly, there is ease of communication with business partners hence reduced travel costs.

Balogne Company will begin to employ generation Y employees who are love change, input and workplace democracy (Dayan, 2002). The company can embrace wikis and internal blogs. These will create a relaxed environment without erasing the corporate feel of it. Increased internal communications will increase the employees’ morale and enlarge the company’s knowledge pool. Moreover, it will ensure that out of office employees collaborate and contribute to creating a sense of community. A blog can coordinate the functions of the mill and the refinery. For instance when raw sugar is packed to be transported to the refinery, a notification to the refinery could be proper so that they can be ready when the shipment arrives. Also, internal blogs and wikis will reduce the email overload and cut down on communication costs.

External Communication

Externally, Balogne Pty Company can use external blogs. This blog can be created by the IT team and should have an open and individual tone. It should have a heavy company branding so that the customers can know the owners. The blog should contain corporate information, product news, and subtle advertising so as not to piss off potential customers (Cowling 2014). Use of a blog will improve the company’s profile and image, improve consumer’s feedback and open up new business opportunities. However, this open user ability could lead to problems with security, content and knowledge management systems. Nevertheless, numbers have shown that web 2.0 technologies bring more benefits than challenges.

References

Cowling, W 2014, ‘business processes model,’ Journal of business organization and planning, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 4-5.

Dayan, D and Katz, E 2012 business events: web 2.0 and blended business operations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Faraji, S and Faraji, 2014, ‘American Society for Training and Development. ’ Journal of up to date technologies, vol. 6, no.7, pp 8.

Knobloch‐Westerwick, S 2012, ‘Building dynamic Web 2.0 websites with Ruby on Rails: Create database-driven dynamic websites with this open-source web application framework. Journal of business Communication,’ vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 628-642.

Dickson, D and Katrina, E 2002 Next generation Excel: Modeling in Excel for analysts and MBAs (for MS Windows and Mac OS). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.