Business demographics and goals of Hell Pizza Executive Summary

Hell Pizza is a New Zealand business, which was established in Wellington, by several young people in 1996. After 14 years development, there are 66 Hell Pizza outlets in countrywide, and covered all major city in New Zealand. In 2008, 9 new shops were opened in Brisbane, Australia. In 2009, the new restaurant was opened in Dublin, Ireland. Through the history of Hell Pizza, it is able to find out a business development track, from a small local firm to an international business.

This report is aiming to identify, how effective communication management influences Hell Pizza organizational performance in following contexts:

Business demographics

Organizational goals

Organizational culture and ethics

Management of knowledge resources

Group dynamics

Meeting management

Stakeholders

Networks

Finding and Analysis

Business Demographics

Business demography is the study of depending on different characteristics of population, business differentiate their products in different geographical location.

Hell Pizza is an international business. The inter-organizational communications are usually in different location.

In Hell Pizza operational system, this is a function called “Pizza War”, which is showing how many pizzas are sold in that certain day in national wide. If manager click the “Statistic” icon, it is able to find the following information for each store, how many pizzas are sold in different flavour, how many pizzas are sold each hour in a day, how many pizzas are sold in different suburbs.

These information are shared through Hell Pizza operation system, and it could be seen by head-quarter. Although, there are no any language communications, the information is delivered by the internet automatically. Head-quarter could operational decision for the whole Hell Pizza group. For example, if the statistic result shows that a kind flavour of pizza is rarely ordered, this kind of pizza may be replaced by some other new flavour pizza, and the ingredients will be vary from suppliers.

Moreover, head-quarter is able to differentiate trading hours for different store, by the city culture and customer behaviour. For example, the trading time is different Christchurch stores and Auckland stores.

Organizational Goals

Organizational Goals are the objectives, which an organization wishes to achieve. There are two kind of organizational goals by group goals and individual goals. The group goal could be either accordant or struggles.

Hell Pizza’s Group Goals:

Hell Pizza’s vision is to provide the best quality fast-food Pizza and service in Australasia region.

Making Hell Pizza is the most popular fast-food Pizza in Australasia region.

Establishing more store in other parts of world.

Maintaining the highest customer satisfaction in New Zealand fast-food industry.

Hell Pizza Hornby Store(a franchisee) Goals:

To maximize the store profit

To be the best store in Hell Pizza

Avoid the Goodwill to head-quarter as much as can do.

To achieve the above goals, an effective communication through the whole organizational structure is necessary. For example: individual goals want to maximize the profit margin. It may lead the food quality down. On the other hand, head-quarter want to maintain the highest customer satisfaction in New Zealand, the head-quarter send out the auditing team to the outlets without any notice. It will monitor and rate each stores food quality and service attitude. Then, check every store’s hygiene and employees’ management. All these information will submit to Hell Pizza head-quarter. Then head-quarter will inform that store how make the improvement. If a store fails the compliance, it has to improve as soon as possible, and face the second audit in a short time. If fails again, the store will be closed, until it achieve the standard. In this communication process, auditor is the media between first-line store employees and head-quarter. They are going to ensure head-quarter is able to control the franchisee, and franchisee can following the rules strictly.

Organizational Culture and Ethics

Same as most of New Zealand business, Hell Pizza stores are multicultural groups. For example, in Hell Pizza Hornby, there are 15 employees working in this shop. In these 15 employees, 6 are from New Zealand, 7 are from China, 1 is from Vietnam and 1 from Japan. In other words, there are two ethnic groups, local New Zealander and Asian.

In the group, all Asian workers have good educational background, and most local workers only have high school qualification. All Asian workers have university qualification in commerce, or is studying commerce course in Lincoln University and University of Canterbury. But only 1 local employee is studying in university.

The communication will lead the conflict between local employees and Asian employees. Asian employees think they know how to operate a successful business. But local worker think they understand the business more than foreigners in New Zealand. There is a bottom line cannot be touched for all employees, which race is not an excuse for conflict.

After a period of communication again, most of management roles is taking by Asian employees, as better knowledge and hard work. Local employees are doing more customer service jobs and labour jobs.

Management of Knowledge Resource

Knowledge management is the branch of management for achieving breakthrough business performance through the synergy of people, processes, and technology.

In Hell Pizza, the most common technical failure is operation system crash. Hell Pizza’s operation system is powered by Stephine Ltd NZ, which is call “HellO” program. Apart taking customer order, this program also provides a wide range of function, and allowed different stores to share information, such as sales, stock level and so on. Because, this software has such a strong function and network performance, it may crash sometimes. Although the incidence is not frequently, it still make lots trouble for shop. It requires store manager able to deal with this kind of situation in right decision. All these actions are records by “manager handbook”

Customers are unable to take order through in store operational system. Manager should restart the server computer first, and restart the “HellO” program. If it is still not working, manager should contact with Stephine to ask solution.

Tell reception staff to slow down taking order speed, in order to get more time for technicians.

Meanwhile, manager needs to ask reception staff taking order by “off-line order form”, which is the quick paper order form in system crash. These forms must be kept until all orders details have been updated to system, after fix.

Manager should go through intranet system, and make the store off-line. Otherwise, when customers finish their website order, the store is unable to receive the order. It may lead customer unhappy about the service.

Meeting Management

Hell Pizza stores are franchise businesses. Each signal store has different owner, which is called director in Hell Pizza. To collect opinions about business strategies,

The directors meeting was hold every half year in Auckland head-quarter. At least, before the meeting start, a meeting notice is informed to directors by e-mail. Usually the notice include the following contents: venue of meeting, opening time, chairman, purpose of meeting and agenda. It gives time to directors discussing with their managers, and decide what their opinions for the meeting issues are. Apart franchisees directors, the head-quarter Marketing manager and Auditing manager are invited to attend the meeting also.

The Chairman, the founder and the President of Hell Pizza Group, will announces meeting opening, and ensure it opens on time. The Chairman introduces the purpose of meeting first. Then, he addresses the rules of meeting, and reads the agenda. The Chairman is a tough person, although he wishes every franchisee could express their opinion, he wants all discussion is following the agenda and topic. Usually, one of his two secretaries is the secretary of meeting. She is responsible to make minutes, in order to record every person’s speech.

After the meeting, secretary will e-mail to every attendances a minutes in following week, which is going to lets speaker to check.

Group Dynamics

Group dynamic is the study of groups, and also a general term for group processes. As discussion on above, there are two kinds of goals, group goals and individual goals. The group goals are the common goals for a group of people, which is override the individual goals.

Usually, there are four stages in group development. I will use the Hell Pizza example to explain how communication affects these four stages.

Forming is the stage of orientation to task and testing interpersonal behaviours. In this stage, people access the group, talk each other, and have the general understand about other people. They know, they will work together for a common goal in next period. In Hell Pizza, This stage is the new employees are introduced into a group. Communication could help people build an incompact relationship amongst group members

Storming is the second stage of group development. In this stage, interpersonal conflicts are arisen in group. It is the common sense, if people lived, conflicts are existed. In this stage may struggle for leadership as well. In Hell Pizza, when the new employees have merged into group completely, the group conflicts will around him/her. The communication barrier may rise by different personality, culture, and background of members. Thus, conflicts become unable to avoid.

Norming is the stage of group entering a stable stage, and the group cohesiveness is built. After the struggle and argument of storming, some members may quit, if they cannot merge into group. Through more communication, other people would learn how to survival in group, and how to avoid conflicts. They are going to work for common goals.

Performing is the stage, team work become effective for solving common goals. In Hell Pizza, workers could provide brilliant service and quality food for customers.

Stakeholders

In a Hell Pizza store, there are many stakeholders. The main stakeholders are: shareholders, employees, suppliers, and so on.

Hell Pizza is franchise business, each store has different owners. The most important communication is directors meeting every half year. This has been explained in chapter “meeting management”. The director meeting is aiming to setup the organizational strategy for the whole group.

Another frequently communication is between management and employees in a store. For example, in Hell Pizza Hornby store, manager will e-mail the roster to every employee two weeks advanced. The reason is, he want to give everyone an opportunity to arrange their time, of give an opportunity for himself to change the roster, when employee are unable to attend on that day. Moreover, manager is responsible to resolve employees’ conflicts. Manager will identify the reason of conflicts, is that personal conflict or different opinion about work. If it is personal conflict, he tries to avoid put them work in same shift. If it is different opinion about work, they will sit together to find a solution. Employees management is the implementation of the strategy.

The communication between Hell Pizza and supplier is completed by website. Manager is able to make ingredients order through intranet. Manager just need fill up the order quantity for each ingredient, and the intranet will sent the order to different supplier automatically, such as Tegal Chicken, Mainland Cheese, etc. On the second day, supplier will confirm the order, and send the invoice copy through e-mail. The supplier communications provide the material support to organization.

Network

Hell Pizza network is powered by Stephine Ltd NZ, which provides the in-shop operational system, public website and internal communication system for Hell Pizza Group.

The public website is www.hellpizza.co.nz . People can make online food order here, or find out current promotion or company introduction. Every person is able to visit this site.

The operational system is called “HellO”. This software mainly use for in-store ordering, and information share with other stores.

The intranet website name is confidential. It uses for material ordering, franchises communication.