Operational Challenges Sodexo Faces
PURPOSE
This assignment builds on the entire course journey, focusing on a particular organization you select to assist by associating your learning from the course to develop your marketing, new product development, and innovation capabilities. The organization can be for-profit, non-profit, or a government agency located anywhere in the world, as long as you prepare for this assignment thoroughly, with the support of relevant literature and external sources, and preferably interviewing someone from the company.
The assignment aims to associate your newly captured insights with an organization of your choice. Choose an organization you are passionate about that could do with your expertise. Consider this an excellent opportunity to reflect and advise the chosen organization in growing its design thinking and innovation capacity in times of considerable uncertainty.
GUIDANCE
Please complete the following tasks:
Review all course materials and team assignment-related materials again.
Explore and decide on a target organization you are excited about and want to advise.
Make a deep dive market research based on published materials, observation, and personal email or live interviews to scope a significant problem worth solving in the organization context.
The problem could relate to something the organization could do significantly better.
Based on research findings, design a novel and intriguing solution by applying design and business thinking described in the course and other materials covered.
Write all this in an executive-level advisory report, which your target company can use as a base for action in their next leadership meeting.
Remember to reference actively written and interviewed sources.
DELIVERABLES
Cover with heading and name, max six pages of pure text with page numbering and subheadings as requested: professional document with APA references, unlimited number of complete appendices including relevant and readable tables, graphs, images, etc. Font 12, 1.0 spacing, and standard margins.
Note: executives are busy people who crave evidence to make sound decisions, so ensure you stick to the core, reference, and if you need more pages, refer to relevant appendices in the main text.
Before starting this assignment, check the rubric for what determines a quality contribution.
You are expected to submit a detailed description of your problem-solution set for the chosen organization by referring actively to relevant sources to strengthen your problem argument and then responding to the following critical areas of importance (use these headings):
Introduction and Problem Statement: Introduce the paper by leading the reading to the theme, the problem, and critical findings, along with a brief document flow overview. Remember to briefly introduce your chosen organization and any key stakeholders you plan to advise.
Market Research: Identify and define the problem area based on your research findings regarding currency, relevancy, and societal and business significance (actively referenced, both academically and professionally).
Associate to course learnings: Apply the skill of associating as described in the course materials by identifying critical insights from the course and your individual and small group work. Discuss these essential insights and use them as inspiration when describing how they can help develop a solution to the organization's current problem. As you may recall, associating is the idea that you borrow ideas from one area and then use them as inspiration in another.
The Problem-Solution Fit: Describe your solution and provide evidence to the extent possible that it solves the problem as defined in this paper.
Concluding Discussion: Conclude by arguing, based on your newly gathered research and analyzed intelligence, why solving this problem is worthwhile, especially from a business and data collection perspective. Why is it novel and fresh, despite potential competition / alternative solutions? Finally, list concrete actions for your client to proceed and succeed in building a state-of-the-art solution.
Personal Reflection: Discuss critical findings from this assignment and the course at large for yourself; what was most valuable learning? Discuss how you enhanced your knowledge throughout the course.
Reference List
Appendices
Applying Course Learning in Business
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name and Number
Lecturer’s Name
Due Date
Introduction and Problem Statement
Sodexo is a French food service and facility management company headquartered in Paris, France. The company operates in 53 countries, serving about 500 million customers daily (Sodexo, 2023). It is the second-largest company after compass group by revenue and the number of employees. As of 2022, the firm's revenue reached $22.4 billion, an 11.49% increase from the previous year, with an underlying operating profit of more than €1.1 billion (Sodexo, 2022). About 400,000 employees work for the corporation (Sodexo, 2023). Sodexo serves many sectors, including private companies and government agencies such as schools, healthcare organizations, military bases, assisted-living facilities, and prisons. Despite its success, it struggles with operational challenges, particularly toughening market conditions that have slowed down Sodexo’s operations. The organization's K-12 food hospitality sector also faces challenges with rapidly increasing costs (Kappan, 2020), the inability to hire and retain competent staff, and fierce competition from large global and aggressive regional competitors (Sodexo, 2023). The company seeks to address these challenges to maintain its reputation and remain afloat. This paper explores the problem Sodexo faced and advises senior marketing and sales executives of North American schools at Sodexo on the potential solutions to the challenges.
Market Research
As noted, Sodexo experiences operational challenges influenced by toughening market conditions and aggressive competition. When Keith Stewart joined the company in 2020 as the Vice President of Marketing North American Schools, he had difficulty bringing forth and promoting delicious, nutritious, and reasonably priced food options that excite all stakeholders. This was due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused unprecedented food disruption systems worldwide, with most governments taking severe containment measures to curb the spread (Lee & Ham, 2021). This led to unpredicted food price inflations. The COVID-19 impact on Sodexo was tough. Consumers stopped going to restaurants nearly overnight, resulting in reduced revenues that prompted layoffs and temporary closure. Students disappeared from schools while social distancing mandates upended the link between Sodexo operations and its stakeholders. Operationally, COVID-19 has devastated Sodexo.
Besides COVID-19 severity, the K-12 food hospitality sector experiences new challenges with rapidly increasing costs, the inability to hire and retain staff, and stiff competition from large international and aggressive regional competitors (Kappan, 2020). There is always ongoing competition that puts downward pressure on Sodexo’s prices. This has reduced profits due to reduced market share. Its key competitors, such as Compass Group, Aramark, and Elior Group, have also invested in technological advancements, posing a threat to Sodexo as today’s customers are more attracted to new technologies (Pereira, 2023). Due to technological advancements, Sodexo has lost some of its customers to its competitors. Many organizations face competition to attract the best talent to fulfill positions and functions. Sodexo believes hiring and retaining a diverse group with the right skill is necessary. The corporation makes it a priority to have flexibility in changing employee needs. Workers appreciate employers that allow them to juggle their work and daily lives. This enables a company to attract skilled individuals who balance work and family.
Talent scarcity and constant inflation have led to price increases. Sodexo actively seeks ways to increase operational excellence and improve its effectiveness. Traditionally, hospitality s a labor-intensive sector that can gain value through innovation and automation. However, the company faces the challenge of minimal service hours, especially in the K-12 sector. School-food service is open only for bout 3-4 hours daily, challenging the investment in the automation process (Sodexo, 2023). Additionally, student customers and stakeholders use an in-person service instead of warm food vending machines, which are fully accessible to caretakers and patients in the healthcare sector. Therefore, the ongoing challenge is balancing the tradeoffs between the absence of skilled talent and increasingly machine-supported collaboration. In the future, employee-heavy sectors such as hospitality and their customers must leverage automation, digital mobility, data analytics, and emerging technologies to maintain service quality, efficiencies, and margins (Sodexo, 2023). Due to challenging market conditions, Sodexo's senior marketing and sales executives must implement a differentiation strategy to give the company a competitive edge and allow it to compete effectively with regional upstarts.
Associate to Course Learning
Innovation is the backbone of today’s market economy. Different corporations always try to outdo each other by launching quality and more efficient products and services or investing in advanced technology. Innovation keeps the business operational and successful. Individuals who do not possess the skill are quickly driven out of the market or overpowered by more aggressive competitors. In other words, innovation helps businesses to gain competitive advantage and sustainability. For innovation to exist, an individual must understand associating skills: linking unrelated aspects. The association is a cognitive skill that enables innovators to borrow ideas from one area and use them as inspiration in another.
In this paper, association skills were used to borrow ideas from the course materials and use them to generate a problem facing Sodexo and a solution to the identified problem. The course materials give insights into various phenomena that can be applied to this assignment. One of the insights is observation. Observing helps one maintain an open mind, enhancing their chances of making a discovery. It goes hand in hand with asking questions to get detailed information about a subject.
As an innovator, I have worked tirelessly to design solutions for Sodexo's problems. These solutions will help the company to improve its profitability and maintain its position in the food service industry. I have been thinking about how to address the operational challenge at Sodexo. To accomplish this mission, observing customer and employee behavior, performing product tests, and evaluating the corporation would be necessary. After reading the course learning materials, I believe improving my association skill will assist me in developing effective solutions to Sodexo's challenges.
Associating skills also give insight into experimentation. Not every borrowed idea can be successfully tried and executed. Some ideas are too wild, and it would be essential to experiment with them to find the appropriate one. Many companies are stuck with old tricks and ineffective products because they purposely avoid experimenting with new opportunities. This insight enables organizations to test the viability and adaptability of the proposed solution. For the case of Sodexo, experimentation will help determine whether the proposed solutions are relevant to the identified problems. Doing so enables problem-solvers to make appropriate decisions.
The Problem-Solution Fit
Findings show that Sodexo faces operational challenges prompted by toughening market conditions and aggressive competition. Although the company has a strong brand, hiring and retaining top talent has been problematic, particularly in the K-12 food hospitality sector (Sodexo, 2023). One solution is to build and nurture a high-performing team by building trust and camaraderie to keep the team excited to go to work every day. Employees feel comfortable working in a friendly environment, which provides a sense of safety. When the team members feel safe with each other, they feel comfortable sharing ideas, taking appropriate risks, and exposing vulnerabilities.
Another solution is to offer competitive pay and benefits. This can attract top candidates seeking stability and job security. The organization should also allow staff, residents, and departments to communicate openly, regularly, and effectively. Keeping people well-informed makes them feel like they are part of the team. In this context, Sodexo should resolutely bridge department silos for an assimilated community experience. Constant, meaningful communication ensures safe and smooth operation. It creates a positive work culture by fostering a supportive and collaborat...