FRITO-LAY MANAGER’S BLUNDER IN

SOFTWARE DESIGN DECISIONS

Group V
Akansha Sinha
Bhagirath Chauhan
Kaustubh Tiwary
Piyush Khurana
Ritika Singh
Sruthi Soundararajan
 CONTENTS

• Introduction
• The Problem & the Proposed solution
• Approach & Defects
• Setting it right
• Management For “A new Management Portal”
• Information Gathering
• Blunders
• Decision Making improved with the new Software system
implemented
• Programmed & Non Programmed decisions
• Intuitive & Systematic decisions
• The effect of the new Software System on these decisions
• Summary & Questions
 INTRODUCTION

• Some big blunders bring great opportunities; others just waste

time & energy

• Frito-Lay Inc. is based in Plano, Texas

• Vice President for Category & Customer development – Mike Marino

• Sales Team Leader – Joe Ackerman

 THE PROBLEM

• In 1990’s, One of Frito-Lay’s biggest customer “A Multi billion dollar

Supermarket chain” adopts a centralized decision making structure

• They wanted a huge range of information from Frito-Lay

• The floor plan of the market & the reasons behind it

• The sources of motivation for a customer

 PROPOSED SOLUTION

• Frito-Lay creates a National Sales team to handle its customers

• Neglects the interests of the regional sales teams

• Nation wide collaboration found difficult – Performance started

suffering

• In early 1999, a Software developer is engaged to help design a

Web based Portal combining tools for Knowledge management &
collaboration
 APPROACH & DEFECTS

• Sourced the Web for external sources such as trade publications &
industry organizations

• Identified in-house SME’s & noted their areas of expertise on an

online Database

• Forgot to include the Sales team in the design of the tool

• Ackerman – “when the folks are not on the frontline, their view of
what is valuable is different from those running 100 miles an hour
in the field.”
 SETTING IT RIGHT

• 4 Months of hard work with Sales people to evolve a prototype into

a system they would embrace

• Call reporting feature enabled, served as an immediate

documentation as to what exactly happened on a sales call

• Tool users (Company employees) allowed to manipulate the data

instead of only viewing them

• They rolled out the new version with Ackerman’s approval so that
the sales team was entirely satisfied
 YES TO DEVELOP A KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT PORTAL

• Vice President ‘Mike Marino’ gives a green signal to development of

knowledge management portal

• Coordination of the sales team & the company required

• Information such as the merchandising plans of its products

• Ways to motivate the customer

 SOME BIG BLUNDERS BRING GREAT
OPPORTUNITIES

• In 1999, a software was developed for the sales team where the
developers forgot to include them in the design tool

• The developer team corrected the blunder by adding the sales

team option in the design tool as well as including some more
innovative ideas that made work easy for them like the call-
reporting feature etc. or which Ackerman said

“Now they can use them in more of a turnkey fashion”

 FUTURE PROSPECTS

• Effects on decision making of knowledge management system

• Programmed decisions - decisions are said to be programmed if

they are repetitive and routine

• Non programmed decisions - a non programmed decision is one in

which there is no pre existing structure or decision making
procedure in place
 FUTURE PROSPECTS (Contd.)

• Intuitive decisions - intuitive decision making involves the use of

estimates , guesses or hunches to decide among alternative course
of action

• Systematic decisions - systematic decision making process is an

organized ,exacting, data driven process and it requires a clear set
of objectives , a relevant information base and sharing of ideas
among key managers and other employees.

• More or less this knowledge management system will have a

improving effect on all these types of decision but especially in case
of non programmed, intuitive and systematic decisions
 SUMMARY

• In 1990’s, One of Frito-Lay’s biggest customer “A Multi billion dollar

Supermarket chain” adopts a centralized decision making structure.
Therefore asks for more & more information

• Frito-Lay creates a National Sales team to handle its customers

• Neglects the interests of the regional sales teams

• 4 Months of hard work with Sales people to evolve a prototype into

a system they would embrace

“Everybody makes mistakes, the important thing is to learn from them”

QUESTIONS