Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Current approach to organising their business 1
Organisational Structure 2
Marketing 2
Resource utilisation within HR department 3
Operations and Social Responsibility 3
How to adapt to changes in their external environment 4
Ted Baker
Introduction
This report is based around Ted Baker and will explain their current approach towards how they structure their organisation and what type of structure they have adopted, it will also analyse Raymond Stuart Kelvins management style and how he fits in in the business. When analysing their current structure, it will look into their marketing department, their human resources department, e.g. and will also look into the changes happening in their external environment and how this may affect them and what changes they need to make in order to continue their success.
Ted Baker is a high street retailer, which offers everything from mainly menswear, womenswear and accessories (Ted Baker n.d.). ‘Ted Baker has 490 stores and concessions worldwide, comprising of 192 in the UK’ (Ted Baker n.d.). They are a global brand known for their quality and style. They operate through three different channels: retail, wholesale and licensing (Ted Baker 2016). Ted Baker operates as a PLC (4-Traders 2017), which stands for public limited company; this form of organisational structure is within the private sector and is often favoured by big businesses. One of the advantages Ted Baker have is that they can easily float on the stock market and sell shares quickly and effectively if needs be.
Current approach to organising their business
Organisational Structure
Ted Baker uses a functional organisation structure as they have head of departments, which are all separate from each other, Organizational Behaviour (Buchanan, Huczynski 2017: 558-559). This type of structure is good for a business such as Ted Baker as knowledge can easily be passed around from different employees as they all work within the same department making it relevant to each functional area. It also allows the prospect of learning and growth within employees as they are being managed by people that understand their role and has tailored expertise to help them, Organisational systems, design, structure and Management (Bhattacharyya 2009).
However, Ted Baker is a very global brand so they could have a divisional structure where the business is divided up into countries and then split up into the different product lines or functional areas; as then the different countries are able to work in a department that is completely focused around the same area, Organisational systems, design, structure and Management (Bhattacharyya 2009: 108).
But Ted Bakers functional organisational structure works for them as it promotes interdependence within functional areas. For example, the marketing department and the creative department work hand in hand, since the creative team are in charge of creating seasonal campaigns and store displays. They will work with the marketing department to see what new product lines they want to promote so that they can incorporate it into their new campaigns (Maxted n.d).
Marketing
Ted Baker as a brand pride themselves on having ‘a high level of market awareness’ according to their 2015/16 Annual Report (Ted Baker 2016) and they also use big data to help them make key decisions in their marketing segment, also outlined in their 2015/16 Annual Report (Ted Baker 2016). Big data can be used to produce specific promotions to certain customers, by analyzing data from different sources to see what people are buying more of and what specific demographics are looking for, Big Data- The Management Revolution (McAfee, Brynjolfsson 2012: 7)
According to a blog entitled What could marketers learn from Ted Baker’s success, it explains that Ted Baker doesn’t use conventional marketing plans and instead lets demand solely drive supply (Saima Alibhai 2016). Also, last quarter they released a German website instead of having 1 English website that foreign customers have to translate j, as it has been said that customers respond better to things if they are in their own language (Saima Alibhai 2016). Although, Ted Baker have been doing very well and have seen their profits increase at a steady gradient, even though their international customers have been forced to use a foreign website. This could suggest that the brand reputation Ted Baker has created is arguably more important to consumers than the practicality of actually purchasing the products, which could explain why they don’t market their products in the same way other brands do (TV advertisements for example) because their brand image speaks for itself.
Resource utilisation within HR department
Ted Baker is a multinational company as although they operate globally, they still consider their head quarters to be in the Ugly Brown Building in London (Ted Baker n.d). This doesn’t however mean that they don’t have global offices, as Ted Baker has offices in 17 different parts of the world according to their international opportunities page (Ted Baker n.d). For example, in America, they have their own finance, HR and payroll department that solely looks after all American employees (Ted Baker n.d).
Resource utilization refers ‘to the time required to make a product or provide a service’ according to Managerial Accounting: A Focus on Ethical Decision Making (Jackson, Sawyers, Jenkins 2007: 257). This means that in Ted Bakers case it’s about the time it takes to set up and run the same department in several different countries. Corporate Environmental Responsibility suggests that the cost of poor resource utilization especially in terms of poor process control generates a lot of hidden costs making it an expensive mistake (Neil Gunnigham 2017: 109).
Because of this, Ted Baker should maybe consider handling all their HR matters for example, in their main headquarters in the UK as this way they are not having to pay to rent out separate HR offices all around the world and paying people to work there. However, since Ted Baker operates on such a global scale the sheer amount of employees which they employee, which in their 2017 annual report they calculated to be 3,223 international employees (Ted Baker 2017); this would make it near impossible to handle all contracts and information in one area.
Operations and Social Responsibility
According to Ted Bakers sustainability and the environment page on their website, they explain how to adopt social responsibility they adapt their operations around it; for example they participate in the Wastepack Compliance Scheme, where they aim to reduce packaging as much as possible to cut down on waste, which is bad for our planet (Ted Baker n.d). This is good because they are able to combine their operations department and make that more socially responsible and sustainable rather than having separate departments working independently and then investing in social responsibility in addition to all of this.
How to adapt to changes in their external environment
Technology
Deloitte produced a report explaining that retail businesses are in trouble and have indicated that a rise in e-commerce will be one of the factors that will affect high-street retailers the most, Retail Trends (Deloitte 2017). In order for Ted Baker to keep up with the technological changes in their environment they need to make sure that they stay on top of e-commerce rather than focusing too much on their high-street presence. They have adapted to this change via their marketing department and have now released a new wave of ‘shoppable videos’ where they promote their clothes like any other advert but as new items are shown an arrow pops up where consumers can click and it will take them directly to the page where that specific item can be purchased, (Watch it Shop it 2016). This shows that they have increased their online presence by creating something that is not only interactive and will draw people in but will also generate more sales from e-commerce. This has been proven as according to an article by Marketing Week, Ted Baker on why more marketers should put faith in shoppable videos (Hobbs 2016), Ted Baker reported that brand engagement went up by 30% and a 32% rise in sales in June.
Social factors
Another prediction Deloitte came up with is that customers want convenience and if retailers aren’t willing to provide it then they will start looking elsewhere, Retail Trends (Deloitte 2017). This is a problem for Ted Baker, as apart from the German website they trialed last quarter the rest of their websites for other countries are all in English, What could marketers learn from Ted Baker’s success (Saima Alibhai 2016). This means that if Deloitte are right when they say that ‘consumers are beginning to switch some of their spending away from discretionary categories to focus on essentials’, Ted Baker could be in trouble as their brand is neither cheap or an essential since they are known for their quality and style, Retail Trends (Deloitte 2017); (Ted Baker 2017). To get around this Ted Baker could consider translating all of their websites to fit the market they are in rather than focusing on their domestic market and keeping the same business model everywhere they go. As previously mentioned in this report they saw their profits rise after this change so why not trial it and roll it out for all of their main markets to see if this makes a difference to their sales and profits. The reason this is needed is because they have obviously survived this way and haven’t needed to change but since Deloitte has highlighted that it could become an issue, Ted Baker may need to consider changing their business plan.
...(download the rest of the essay above)