Consultancy Assignment On Solving Issues Faced By Dunkin Donuts With The Help Of A Consultancy Firm

Question

Task: “Consultancy Plan” Submission
Students are to develop a detailed “Consultancy Plan”, which reflects the initial “Consultancy Brief” presented by their group. Minor modifications may be applied following the feedbacks given by the tutor. The “Consultancy Plan” must be based on individual work.
The words limit is 3.500.
The Consultancy Plan should include details concerning:

• Your project team
• Results of your study – specific details about your business/product idea
• Brief note on the methodology and approach used for the study
• A cost estimate of consultancy advice (how much would you charge the client for your work)
• A cost estimate of implementing the idea (how much would it cost to implement the idea)
• Timing (implementation of idea)
• Any other relevant material

Criteria of Assessment for Assessment 2:
Student will be assessed on their ability to:

• Work professionally as individuals and produce a clear consultancy plan.
• Present clear and detailed information to support their ideas
• Adopt a creative/original approach to their work
• Undertake adequate research to underpin their ideas (indicate source of reference where appropriate)
• Produce and justify original but feasible consultancy ideas
• Coherently summarize the key aspects of their analysis

Answer

Introduction
The Consultancy Plan accounts to offer a wide range of advice upon all the matters which are concerned about the development, planning and issues related to the environment which surrounds the project of business company. According to the views of Leonidouet al., (2017), the consultancy planner is actively involved in all the stages of the planning for a business company. The consultancy firms help within the administration and the enforcement of the planning processes, determining the application of the planning and the development of the local plan and policies. Hence, the present consultancy assignment highlights the consultancy plan of the PGP consulting group regarding the Dunkin Donuts by finding out their challenges and mitigating it along with Balanced scorecard, cost estimations of the advice and implementation of the idea and lastly, the recommendations.

Organizational overview
PGP Consulting Group BV is an international and independent consultancy assignment firm whose main purpose is to analyze the business structure while identifying challenges and issues that are faced by its clients and hence advising them to mitigate all those issues and sustain success and growth. The company is evidenced to collaborate with its clients until their organizational structure is not improved. The company operates its business in Berlin, Quebec, Munich, New York, The Hague and Amsterdam. There are 723 employees appointed who are trained adequately to think out of the box strategies. 

Figure 1: Dunkin Donuts
Source: (www.dunkindonuts.com, 2020)

To support the discussed consultancy assignment of the company, assistance from one of its clients Dunkin has been considered. It has been determined that Dunkin is a company, known as one of the leading franchisors in approximately 60 countries.

Fig 2: Annual revenue of Dunkin Donuts for the last 4 years
(Source: www.trefis.com, 2020)

However, collaborating with its business units, the company has been identified as encountering diverse contemporary business issues, for which PGP Consulting is helping them to overcome and sustain success and growth without any interrupted consultancy assignment aspects.

Challenges arising within Dunkin Donuts
There are certain challenges associated with Dunkin Donuts as found by the PGP consultancy group are enlisted below,

Improper Franchise model
According to the observation of Akteret al., (2016), the improper franchise model of the Dunkin Donuts has created the limitation for the organisational flexibility of the brand. The company is facing one flaw within its business models as the owners of the franchise face numerous lawsuits from the franchisees. It was observed by Dunkin Donuts that many of its franchisees in the smaller location where selling the stale food products for which the parent company filed a lawsuit to some its franchise to provide healthy and fresh food on a daily basis. It was even seen that many of the franchisees were demanding for new food offering as per the culture and tradition of food on that specified area to increase the sale, but it was accepted by Dunkin Donuts as they could not approve for the food quality. According to the opinion of Soltanizadehet al., (2016), these rules limit the ability of the franchisee’s to tailor the products in order to meet the local market’s demand. However, the Dunkin Donuts experienced a problem within its Russian franchise as it was selling alcohol with doughnuts. 

Issues within the supply chain
The Dunkin Donuts had franchised its central manufacturing unit with another doughnut manufacturing company, which was responsible for producing the bakery goods and the doughnuts, and delivered it to the Dunkin Donuts restaurants on a daily basis, which had caused numerous problems for the parent company. The maintenance of the quality and safety of the food products was challenging and there was an inability to maintain it properly due to delays within transportation, poor storage conditions, industrial damage or inclement weather. There was a compromise within the taste of the doughnuts as like by the customers. According to the observation of Rahimi(2016), there was a rise in the cost of supply chain due to the investment in new technologies, manpower, freight and logistics and the cost of fuel and energy and keeping a track on it was a challenge for the company. The communication between the franchisee manufacturing unit band the parent company was inadequate which caused inefficiency and waste along with causing distrust between the suppliers and the company. Thus, the issues of Supply Chain causes inconsistency within the products and services have plagued the brand image. 

Health concerns
The desire regarding healthy food is growing as the market trends within the food industry and hence, it was a challenging factor for the company of Dunkin Donuts to make its stores to appear healthy. As the name suggests the company sells food products with high concentration of sugar, which might be delicious for the tongue but unhealthy in the long run and thus, it becomes an issue. According to the views of Ritter and Lettl(2018), the legal specifications and regulations of different states may put certain lawsuits for the Dunkin Donuts stores situated in a variety of places. These might include the banning of the trans-fat oils, need to pay extra ‘sugar’ tax to sell off food with higher concentration of sugar, mandate for calorie counters on the menu board and similar others. However, in some of the places, Dunkin’s had removed the word Donut from the frame, in order to fight back the negative ideologies of being associated with selling only junk and unhealthy foods, among the customers.

Higher labour cost
As per the law introduced such as the Obama Healthcare Law it stated to have coverage of health insurance for all the employees within the food industry as well as in the other industry. Thus, it becomes roughly challenging for food companies like Dunkin Donuts as the employees within the company were mostly the minimum wage labourers. Thus, implementing such law within the company will incur a higher cost for the labour in the future. Hence, the company due to all these issues faces labour shortage in many of the stores.

Methodology for executing the research
As opined by Cassidy, (2016), rendering insight research on the respective topic or company is necessary as without generating sufficient information, findings and results would never be appropriate and reliable to be used. Hence, for conducting the research in this consultancy assignment on the company Dunkin Donuts, in-depth analysis has been done while evaluating all financial position of the company for the last 10 years. In addition, necessary information on the company's background has been explored. This consultancy assignment would help in finding and exploring innovative ideas and solution as per the acceptance and capability level of the company so that changes that are required to be implemented can be rendered in a flexible manner. 

Financial strength and position of Dunkin along with necessary details of their competitors, customers and suppliers are also focused. As opined by Debickiet al., (2016), for sustaining proactive strategic plan, it is necessary to understand all the strengths and weaknesses along with their interest, in the company's stakeholders. In addition, internal and external factors that are hindering the company's success and growth in the market has been analysed by surveying and interviewing managers and staff of the company along with some of the company's potential clients and suppliers. Hence, the information that was generated interviewing them are found to be helpful to sustain bets suitable operation management strategic plan that would ensure Dunkin to achieve sustainable competitive edge and success through its expansion.

Five Forces Analysis

Table 1: Five Forces Analysis for Dunkin Donuts 
(Source: Developed by the Learner)

Analysis
According to Huang, (2019), the potential customer base of the respective company are quality conscious which give Dunkin Donuts an opportunity to charge a premium price from its customers as compared to other coffee shop as this would help the company attract more customers for whom cost is not matter when it comes to quality and standard of food. Hence, from the above discussion it can be evaluated that Dunkin Donut is required to majorly focus on improving its productivity unit, doing this would help the company to collaborate effectively with their suppliers, competitors along with customers in a systematic manner while sustaining sustainable competitive edge along with success and growth.

Action plan for mitigating the challenges (Recommendations)
There are many strategies, which can be adopted by the food company like Dunkin Donuts in order to mitigate the issues arising within the company matters such as,

Strategies that need to be taken up by Dunkin Donuts, based on market analysis
Paying more attention to the labours within the restaurant: 
The Dunkin Donuts should maintain the standard of its franchise in order to maintain its brand image throughout the world such as it should invest a proper amount of its financial resources in planning a solid program for providing training for its employees and even the trainers for the company's betterment in the long term. According to the observation of Fjeldstad and Snow (2018), there should be checking of regular feedback from the franchise institutes regarding the training program and the performance of the employees. However, ongoing support should be provided by the company to the employees such the trainer should be available all the time for granting assistance to the staff. The company should also have the option of suing the franchise as if the employees they hire are not authorised in working for the company and thus, should demonstrate the employer being lawful which increase the chance of landing more of the legal working visas. Thus, with protecting the bottom-line; this would help the company to avoid the cost for the labour violation.

Dunking going healthy and green:
The Dunkin Donuts should start cultivating the affiliation with many of the promotional channels for building and maintaining a strong brand name. The restaurant should make freshness as its priority, which is the plus point for Dunkins, and further it should avoid the artificial ingredients involved in making of doughnuts. Instead the company should organic raw materials along with suing the branded ingredients which would make its product to be much more healthy. According to the observation of Olson et al., (2018), the Dunkin Donuts should work upon the strategies like Food Quality Control with focusing upon the quality of the ingredients like its smell, taste and time it was delivered. Thus, this would help the company to deliver better quality meals of high standard to the customers. However, the Dunkin Donuts could also improve its standard without harming the environment such as reusing the containers, recycling of the materials, seasonal menu items and similar others.

 Managing the supplier manufacturing:
The managing of the supply chain is considered the most crucial part of the business company by maintaining a fair trade sourcing with the stakeholder of the company. The company should maintain transparency within its management and the commercial relationships and should be accountable to all of its stakeholders. Thus, it helps in respecting the sensitivity and confidentiality of the supply of commercial information. The company should maintain the fair trading practices with paying the fair prices and ensuring no child labour within the stores along with gender inequality, no discrimination and commitment. According to the opinion of Razaket al., (2016), the strengthening of the supply chain management through frequently communicating with the suppliers, remembering the supplier goals, accepting supplier as the team would help the company to be cooperative and increase the productivity. The use of TraQtion software by the Dunkin Donuts helps the restaurant to manage the supply chain along with the product qualityproactively and hence, the effectiveness and efficiency of the software should be measured.

Strategic objectives for improvement (SMART)

Table 2: SMART objective
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Table 3: SMART objective
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Table 4: SMART Objective
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Timing for the implementation of the idea

Balanced Scorecard
Financial Perspective

Table 5: Financial perspective
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Based on the above consultancy assignment, it has been identified that cost control and funding are most important techniques of Dunkin Donuts for developing their performance. The cost control is essential for enhancing profit base in the competitive market. Furthermore, return on investment has to be made properly for developing organizational performance and improving competency level.

Customer Perspective
The customer performance can be developed by enhancing supply chain management system of the organisation. This is because the supply chain management helps to obtain raw materials on time and production process can be continued easily. The effective production helps to enhance customer performance in the market. The enhancement of supply-chain management system would help to provide quality service to the customers and organizational performance would be developed. In order to enhance supply chain management system, technological development is essential that

can improve competency level of business. Furthermore, management of cost supply chain is also essential to develop customer base.
Perspective of Internal Business Process

The employee-development programme would help to enhance productivity of the project and the competency level of the business would be developed. Furthermore, development of franchise model can help Dunkin Donuts to enhance performance in the competitive market. The improper franchise model has deteriorated the flexibility of organisation and it is needed to be overcome by enhancing franchise model. The development of organizational flexibility is essential for enhancing effectiveness of the business performance. The major issue has been identified regarding organizational flexibility in this consultancy assignment of Dunkin Donuts and hence, it is important to develop franchise model.
Growth and Learning Perspective

Based on the overall consultancy assignment, it has been identified that training and development programme is needed to be developed for ensuring growth and learning perspective. The employee performance would help to develop learning process and the entity can develop training programme. Actually, the growth and learning perspective would help to ensure sustainability of the project.

Cost estimation for the implementation of the idea
There is an estimation of cost that the company would incur for the implementation of the idea given by the PGP consultancy group such as

Table 6: Cost estimation for plan implementation
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Cost estimation for the consultancy advice 
The PGP Consultancy Group might incur certain cost for providing its advice and time to the Dunkin Donuts such as

Table 7: Cost estimation for consultancy advice
Source: (Developed by the learner)

Recommendations for further improvement and risk mitigation
Some of the likely risk that can encounter Dunkin Donuts to integrate effectively with its formulated business strategic plan is lacking financial support. Another risk is if the workforce do not cooperate with the changes that are integrated as per the strategic planning. Dunkin, in the matter of backup plan, can incorporate partnership with multinational organizations. This would help the company to overcome any issues and obstacles during the time of integrating changes associated with the designed strategic plan. Hence, for this aspects the management system can incorporate with situational and servant leadership style. According to Huang, (2019), both the respective leadership style are found to be effective in encouraging and motivating the employee by increasing their job satisfaction. Thus, it can be evaluated that after observing progress and success while integrating respective strategic planning, Dunkin Donuts can focus on exploring its business units.

Conclusion
The present consultancy assignment highlights the concept of consultancy plan provided by the PGP consultancy group to its client Dunkin Donuts. The study discusses the challenges faced by the Dunkin Donuts vas evaluated by the PGP group along with the methods of mitigating its. The Methodology of the research, five Force analysis, SMART objectives and the Cost Estimation is also mentioned within the consultancy assignment.

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