Introduction to Westlake Lanes
Westlake Lanes was founded by Dane Sugar, the maternal grandfather of Shelby Givens. It is located in Raleigh in North Carolina. In 2008, Dane died. After his death, the bowling alley is facing losses because of high costs and low sales. In early 2009, the Westlake Lanes was solely relying on the highest limits of loans for its business operations. In order to resolve such operational issues and smooth functioning, it was necessary to hire someone competent for handling this situation strategically.
After Dane died, someone had to take the responsibility to run the business. The board members decided to offer the job as general manager to Shirley Smith who was an old employee. She had worked in the supervision of Dane for a long time period. She knew all the pros and cons of various situations but unfortunately she lacked the required experience and managerial skills. She was not able to do much for the bowling alley.
Shelby Givens was asked to step in as the general manager of Westlake Lanes. She was approached by one of the existing members. She was an MBA graduate so her uncle asked her to identify the problems and give some suitable solutions. She has been working for it since past 9 months. She is trying her level best to bring the company back into profitability once again. Westlake was profitable for the first two years, but still they were not being able to pay back the loans which they took from the board members.
Westlake Lanes was facing some huge problems which gradually affected their business operations. Their business went into a critical stage because of these issues. Shelby Givens was hired by the board members, so she can give some wise solutions for a profitable and successful business once again. She told the board members that she would need at least one year to do so. She had to encounter three major issues when she was appointed as the general manager of Westlake Lanes bowling alley. The most important and crucial problem was that there was no more profitability any more. The business was facing a downfall and declining revenue since 2004. When she joined, the revenue had decreased more than forty percent and the costs had been increased like maintenance, employee health insurance and utilities(Collis and Hussey).
She was also facing another issue of proper job descriptions and employee morale. When Dane died, nobody tried to look at the business operations. All the employees were just trying to keep the business operational, but no one focused on how and what they were supposed to do. Due to lack of proper planning and guidance, everybody was doing tasks according to their own convenience and will. This caused an over lapping in duties. This gave the employees an opportunity of getting free time to do what they felt like doing. Ultimately, none of the employees was doing their job effectively and efficiently. This was one of the reasons for their declined sales(Louise).
Another issue which Shelby faced was important to her personally. It was about her job security. She could be in danger if she failed to bring the business back to the desired mark of profitability. She has graduated recently and is working on this task without any pre-defined reward or pay. Unfortunately, if at the end it does not work our rightly, then she might be jobless without any money and no job commitment for her future.
How Would You Assess Shelby Givens’ Efforts To Date?
As Shelby Givens was a young recent graduate, so she was well aware of the market situation and customer preferences. She took a wise decision of presenting the options in front of the board members. Her decision for controlling extra financial costs helped to balance the expenses. She carefully analyzed how to increase customers as it will ultimately result in boost of sales and profitability. She even changed the operational timings of Westlake Lanes as customers were not being satisfied by those timings. This also affected the customer traffic. She proposed the idea of changing the menu items which consisted only of beer and pizza. It is not necessary that all people prefer eating pizza so there should have been a variety of other options. She realized that the employees were afraid to be fired to meet expenses and profitability. She made sure that she boosted the employee morale and encouraged them to feel secure about their jobs.
Keeping all the above mentioned efforts under consideration, it would be suitable to assess that Shelby Given was dealing whole-heartedly with this project. She took time to look into the deep root causes of all such problems. After carefully analyzing all these issues, she gave strategic solutions to resolve these. It was an overall good effort on her behalf.
How Would You Save This Business?
If I was the general manager of Westlake Lanes in the place of Shelby Given, I would opt for implementing the idea of attracting families and involving kids as their customer base. This will cost around $200,000 to $300,000. There are restricted upfront costs, no major re-structuring needs to be done. A few minor changes will be made in the food menu to appeal to the kids.
They should choose a family and kids friendly environment. There is a possibility that the business will turn around to improved operations and profitability. By choosing this option, I will be keeping both target markets intact at the same time. Bowlers will be kept as they can use the alleys for their weekday nights whereas the families along with kids will be more over the weekends, summer days and vacations. Video games will be added at a separate corner for entertaining the children so they will not distract the bowlers. There is a possibility of more competition from the indirect competitors but Westlake Lanes has the competitive advantage of being the only bowling alley in that location. A party hall will be launched where parents can plan to organize their children’s birthday parties. This will also help in generating more revenue. When these activities and parties are operational, this will bring high profits for them. So ultimately they can easily pay back their loan in a reasonable time period(Palepu, Healy and Peek).
In my opinion, the upscale bowling lounge option is a very expensive one. It might be considered as a short time, trendy fad. Many other restaurants and cafes are already operating with this so there will be high competition in that case. Therefore, this option would be quite risky in terms of return on investment. Keeping this under consideration, it would be the best option to execute the family friendly decision. There will be no huge costs involved as no major re-engineering or re-structuring is required. There is only a requirement for few extra workers who can handle these operations effectively and efficiently.
FRAMEWORKS USED
After analyzing this case carefully, I have concluded that Shelby Givens had used the leadership, strategy, individual level and marketing framework in her solution to the problem. She changed the leadership style as she was friendly and more focused on employee satisfaction. Her strategy for dealing with issues was different than the previous general manager. She demanded frequent communication and feedback among employees and management. Her focus on marketing the products was new to the company. Due to all these changes, it was helpful for Westlake Lanes to recover from the declining phase.
Shelby Givens added value proposition to Westlake Lanes services by altering the complete layout and customer base. Earlier, their target market was mostly youngsters but now they were welcoming families along with children. This made them enter a huge market where their clientele was wider than before. Value was added to the already existing services by increasing operational timings and adding more food items in the menu.
References
- Collis, Jill, and Roger Hussey. Business research. Basingstoke^ eNH NH: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
- Louise, Claire. "Analysing business performance: counting the “soft” issues."Leadership& Organization Development Journal 17.4 (1996): 21-28.
- Palepu, Krishna G., Paul M. Healy, and Erik Peek. Business analysis and valuation. Thomson Learning, 2007.
