Buy More 102

Anita’s Notes/Observation

Sales and Marketing

Sales and Marketing, Anita felt was essential in Retail. Also, she was aware that the VP Sales and the
then CEO had been batch mates. Probably why the CEO selected the VP Sales into Buy More. Apart
from this personal tie, she was extremely competitive and came up with brilliant ideas to increase
sales. The Marketing department complemented Sales and was at the top rung until recently.
However, now most of the marketing strategies seem to be primarily inspired by the market, i.e.,
competition.

Operations

The operations team has always been at the top rung. However, Anita felt that it was because it did
not require any significant change in their work. They received ample support from all other functions
but seemed to get all the credit (and the money!).

HR

Anita knew that the critical focus in Retail is procurement, operations and sales. However, she was
concerned about a threat of unionization and demand for permanence. So far, in this organization,
there was no problem, and the overall HR team has been handling it well. Thanks to this, the other
functions have been able to push their work down to the stores quickly. But should it affect HR teams
compensation? She does not think so.

IT

Even though finance is not that critical a function, IT is. The head of IT was crucial in ensuring that
the IT organization they have outsourced the entire IT to, understood the job clearly. She also realized
that this could help in predictive analytics and therefore felt it to be critical.

Finance

Finance at Buy More was mainly very A to B job/function. They did as were directed by the then
CEO. The CEO took most of the financial decisions. Of course, there were stories that earlier VP
Finance resigned because no one listened to her suggestions. She never received the respect her
position deserved at Buy More.