Business Environment/SHRM in Westcon Group (Australian Branch)
Environmental vitality is a broadly-explored build in the organization theory and strategic management literature. This construct has an emergent importance according to the amount of volatility or disorder of such key operating concerns as market and industry conditions as well as more common technological, economic, social, and political forces. In this context, business environment makes its presence which is a wide term referring to a set of social, political, economical and institutional conditions that are usually uncontrollable in nature and affects the organization’s functions (Welford, 2011).
Taking its significance in consideration, the main purpose of this essay is to provide the insights of business environment of an organization. Australian branch of Westcon Group has been chosen for the discussion over its business environment/human resource management framework in the organization. Next, essay attempts to highlight the strategic objectives and analysis of the need for SHRM in Westcon Group.
After finding the need for strategic human resource management with regards to business environment of the said organization, a critical analysis has been outlined for seeking the practices of SHRM within the company.
Before starting with Westcon group’s business environment and HRM context, it is necessary to brief a general background of the company. Westcon group, Inc dispenses the category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure, data center and provides security solutions with a worldwide network set of specialty resellers. It is a multinational company headquartered in Tarrytown, NY, USA. It has one of its branches in Australia (Westcon Group, 2012).
Here, in this essay Australian branch being chosen for the discussion will make an overall description of its human resource framework in the company and business environment.
Concerning the business environment of an organization, it has two internal and external components. Where, internal environment of an enterprise includes man, material, machinery, money and management, generally within the control of business. It is proposed that an enterprise can modify these factors according to the changes in the functioning of the organization (Welford, 2012).
On the other hand, the factors which are uncontrollable for a business are regarded as external factors such as government and other legal factors, geo-physical factors, political, socio-cultural and demo-graphical factors. This may again include micro and macro general environment of the organization. Suppliers, customers, market intermediaries, competitors, public, etc are counted in micro environment. Alternatively, economic, political, technological, natural, demographic, and international environments are considered as macro (Craig & Campbell, 2005).
Subsequently, taking Westcon Group for describing its business environment, the company values its employees and indentifies that the success and expansion of the enterprise they have achieved over the year is the result of their capability, trustworthiness and commitment of their employees. They have strong relationships at every level of the organization which facilitates Westcon’s partners to get support customized to their requirements. Moreover, Westcon Group is considered as the world’s foremost specialty distributor of advanced network technology solutions.
At Westcon Group their success is built on offering exceptional service to their resellers and the vendors the company partner with. Company’s holistic approach to delivery means they look beyond inventory. Westcon focuses on the people they employ, vendors they partner with, resellers they support and the best-practice processes to support all three. The company’s difference is the passion they have for technology, their product proficiency and can-do attitude towards customers. The company knows that to be the best distributor in Australia they require to focus their efforts on the core competencies and help the partners grow their business. That’s why the company focuses their attention exclusively on distributing networking, convergence, security and storage technologies (Westcon Group Australia, 2012).
Moreover, from worldwide logistics and flexible tailored financing solutions to pre-sales, technical and engineering support, the company’s employees work with company’s partners to respond with dexterity and speed to changing market conditions so that they can obtain the closer time to revenue (Westcon Group, 2012).
Next, the company has strong group of leaders and management involving Thomas Dolan the co-founder of Westcon group, David Henderson as a managing director, Wendy O’ Keeffe as an executive vice president, who supporst the development of business environment (Westcon Group, Management, 2012).
Further, revealing the business environment of Westcon group’s Australian branch, their vendors & technologies list can also be presented on the basis of an analysis done in April 2012. Westcon Group specializes in offering leading primary and emerging converged networking, security and storage technologies that meet their customers’ needs. It has numerous expertise in different areas such network infrastructure and data centre solutions, unified communications and collaboration solutions, network power, cooling and accessories, network security solutions, wireless & mobility solutions, software solutions, content management and storage solutions and lastly printer solutions. These services include a list of some specific vendors dealing with Westcon Group in Australia; Acme packet, Aruba Networks, Avaya, Brocade, check point software-tech, Cisco, crossbeam systems, EMC Corporation, Emerson network power, Emulex Corporation, F5, IBM.IBM ISS, Iomega, Juniper networks, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, Polycom, Qlogic, Radware, Riverbed technology, Tandberg data, Vasco, and VCE (Global line card, 2012).
Australian branch of Westcon group proposes advanced management backed by a devoted team of responsive and consistent experts who are entirely focused on their partner’s business. As a strong strategic partner, the company offers the financial potency and extent of global competencies to associate and manage their varying needs. Similarly, the business environment in case of relationship with their vendors is also remarkable. As a value-added distributor, Westcon group is more focused on building the programs and also maintains that pick up the pace of their partner’s business (Westcon Group, 2012).
Westcon group has a great number of employees within its various branches. As of February 29, 2004, Westcon had approximately 1,000 full time employees, of which around 345 were based in the United States and approximately 510 were based in Europe. The remainders are based in their operations in Canada, Australia, Brazil and Singapore. Approximately 78 of them are working with Australian branch. Westcon group considers its relations with the employees to be good for effective distribution and success of the business (Malley III, 2004).
These employees work to meet the customer’s expectations. The company has two types of customer, one is system integrator and other is service provider.
In their business environment’s structure, Westcon group depicts that it is not like other distributors in the market. It confirms that it just don’t take and fill the orders of the customers, it adds the value to the resellers, system integrators and provide their customers spirited solutions. In sum, they have a management system ‘the team behind your team” which states that Westcon is providing the best level of service and world-class logistics to its customers in more than 80 countries (Westcon Group News release, 2012).
It is a successful organization with its high-class service. Westcon has the powerful combination of innovative and proficient executive leaders which contribute to Westcon Group, its customers and businesses remain at the front position of the distribution and continue to be strong financially.
Besides, it’s man and management; it is a specialized technology distributor with a particular focus and proficiency in networking, conversion, protection and mobility products and solutions. Australian tem of Westcon group has maintained an all-inclusive methodology for assisting their customers to be more competent and effective. From this perspective, various roles of manufacturer, distributor, solution provider and end-user can be viewed throughout the route to market for products and services (Edger online, 2012).
Management of Westcon includes CEO Thomas Dolan, co-founder of the said company. They have an appropriate composition of board and directors including the audit, compensation, nominating and corporate governance committees. Then, company uses the employment agreements with all of its executives except directors, CEO and other involving in board group. Each employment agreement with the executive officers has one-year tenure which is involuntary renewable for following one-year term (Malley III, 2004).
Nevertheless, each agreement may be terminated by either the company itself or the associated executive officer at any point of time with cause or upon 60 days’ notice without cause. Besides, the employee agreements propose for annual salary, bonus amounts, and active participation in company’s employee benefit plans (Malley III, 2004)
Next, a specialized team of experts accumulate in Westcon to support their customer’s need. Accordingly, they help customers getting the right product at the right time and to the right place. It makes them abreast with the updated and current information. Westcon in Australia tends to develop the number, market size and productivity of their sales prospects. Likewise, it attempts to grow company’s reach into new markets which is controllable 9Edgar online, 2012).
Likewise, there are always pros and cons of an organization, for which it requires to implement strategic human resource management within the premises. Subsequently, Westcon group of Australia considers that it has less number of employees working with the branch who deal with the vendors and competitors. Similarly, the company has a risk factor that their competitors may propose the products and services alike to theirs that could further result in price reductions, reduced gross margins, and loss of market share as well. For that they need to train the employees to meet the demands of the customers according to their specifications (Westcon group news release, 2012).
In addition, since, the company is dependent on its information systems and a failure of these systems could dislocate their business and harm the company’s reputation, revenue, results of operations and cash flows, company can involve the employees more, both in terms of taking active participation in decision-making and having opportunities to converse suggestions for improvement of the new and upgraded information systems (Malley III, 2004).
Accordingly, risk of harm to the business and prospects of future growth due to loss of key personnel reveal the need of SHRM in the organization. All these key issues represent the requirement of SHRM at Westcon group in Australia.
As SHRM is concerned with longer-term people issues and macro concerns about structure, quality, culture, values, dedication and matching resources to future need, it encompasses the link between strategic objectives and human resource management of an organization (Kathy and John McMackin, 2001). Therefore, the strategic objectives of the enterprise, statements of vision tend to be quite extensive and can be defined as an objective that corresponds to an inspiring, overarching, and sensitively driven target. On the other hand, mission statements, likely to be more specific and address questions with reference to the organization’s reason for being and the basis of its projected competitive advantage in the marketplace (Boswell, 2000)
Similarly, strategic objectives are used to operationalize the statement of mission. That is, they help to present direction on how the organization can accomplish or move toward the high goals in the goal hierarchy-the mission and vision. (Lieberman, 2010).
In this context, the key strategic objective of Westcon is to prolong to be a foremost sales channel for the prevailing technology vendors in the communications and networking tool market. Apart from that, it aims to develop the lucid demonstration of vendor technologies, products and overall core security solutions along with fostering vendor based program and their benefits to drive the partners into partner status. Simultaneously, it intends to help partners through enablement, demand creation opportunities and channel development. For that, Westcon needs to manage and implement strategic human resource activities to get the maximum out of all objectives (Westcon group, 2012).
Next, to achieve the strategic objectives of the said organization, it is essential to link them with the human resource management with the process of strategic human resource management in order to improve the overall performance (Bratton, 2005).
Some of the practices that have been consistently considered strategic human resource practices include internal career opportunities, formal training systems, results-oriented appraisals, employment security, employees’ participation, job descriptions and profit sharing (Kathy and John McMackin, 2001).
Therefore, it is better to seek the practices of SHRM in Westcon aligning human resources and strategic objectives. Westcon conceits itself on its comprehensive abilities. The company truly believes that their capability to distribute the needs of their local customers and simultaneously meet the necessities of the customer’s global consumptions really gets to the heart of what Westcon is all about. (Lieberman, 2010).
On the basis of Westcon’s business environment and human resource management, SHRM application can be noticed out through various studies available from company’s itself.
One of the major applications can be viewed from the case presented by Westcon in its divisional report. It stated that Westcon group’s dean Douglas provided the appreciation to top 100 executives in channel in 2011. They were nominated and appraised on their basis of their influence, effectiveness, capability, and performance at the work-place (Comstor, 2012).
Next, the company heavily invests in training for new and already existing employees for their orientation and talent management programs. Afterward, by offering the employment and job security, providing appraisals to the employees, company tends to retain the most talented employees of the company. It also conducts the internal training and career development programs for the employees to foster the internal employment (Datatec, 2012).
To justify this, a statement of one of the press releases of Westcon group can be taken into consideration which highlighted that Australian branch of the company normally hired the local employees and mainly focused on internal and branches’ employees to take upon for the operations (Westcon group news release, 2012).
Additionally, company executed one of the most talented advanced technology assistance team for the employees in the business which presented the applicability of strategic human resource management. Supportively, engineers of the company search for the products and services that may be used for customer satisfaction and to improve productivity as well. Afterward, Westcon applied the strategies assisting their customers reinforce their competitive advantage with a collection of well-selected corresponding products, solutions ad technologies (Westcon Group, 2012).
Moreover, to foster the broad-based internal training and career development programs in the organization, Westcon group identified and introduced a new updated and competitive compensation plan for its employees. This particular plan’s main purpose was to align the sales force activities with the company’s strategic business objectives. It also ensured that Westcon group just not only aims to attract the best talent for work but also attempts to retain the best performers of the company. In contrast, Westcon conducts an annual review cycle to make sure that strategic objectives of both personnel and organization are aligned properly (Datatec, 2012).
Moreover, over the last several years, Westcon has crafted highly successful and award winning solutions programs principally focusing on Cisco, Convergence, Security, mobility, network infrastructure and other service solutions. It represented the strong bonding and relationship between company and its vendors. (Westcon Group, 2012).
Furthermore, Westcon framed its core competencies from several perspectives. The company included partner enablement, logistical services, inventory management, configuration and integration, global procurement system, service providers and global credit and financing. As Westcon is dealing with a large network of resellers, it sought to improve its internal processes in making HR data, distributing information certain. Whereby, company mainly highlighted the area for increased HR efficiency on a global scale (Datatec, 2012).
However, strategic approach to inventory management presented the high stock availability at Westcon branches. It fully utilized the comprehensive inventory and provided with shortage analysis. After implementing SHRM in enterprise’s practices, it standardized company’s terms & conditions, eliminated cross border shipping, executed within vendor approved schemes (Western Group, 2012).
Besides, Westcon applied a Datatec share option scheme for, employee-directors, officers and employees under which they have been permitted stock options. This scheme helped involving employees in company’s decisions making system and other relevant businesses. Apart from this, company started offering long-term incentive plans which enhanced the performance level of employees working with Westcon. In other words, a specific SHRM practice may influence company’s overall performance positively (Boselie, 2011).
Westcon’s Australian branch also depicted that by configuring the solutions to turn-key stage on their premises; resellers can instantly set money aside on freight and spend less time on their customers’ sites carrying out implementations. This means less disruption for the end-user and quicker completion of the project for the reseller. Westcon’s press release declared that company has also increased the size of their warehouse by nearly 50 per cent to 2300 square meters so that they can hold more stock from their vendors and offer a faster turnaround time for deliveries to our resellers. In contrast, the combination of company’s mechanized systems and the insightful knowledge of company’s people is reinforcing efficiencies and resulting in real benefits to the customers and vendors (Connecting the Australian channel, 2012).
They added that the growth of Westcon’s Sydney premises corresponds with the appointment of additional staff locally and in many of the company’s branch offices. In sum, Wendy O’ Keeffe, executive Vice President of Westcon group’s Asia pacific branch, mentioned that Asia Pacific is one of the greatest growing markets for Westcon with Australia being behind much of that drive (Westcon Group News release, 2012).
Afterward, a conclusion can be drawn on the basis of overall discussion made for Westcon Group of Australia. Firstly, the essay provided the details of the company and its business. Westcon is a global distributor of category-leading unified communications, network infrastructure, data center and also provides security solutions with a worldwide network set of specialty resellers. It is headquartered in USA and one of its branches is in Australia.
Then, the essay talked about the business environment of Westcon group which revealed the human resource context, management and vendor list of the company and also discussed about two types of customers it deals with. Moreover, according to the company human resource framework, they have an employee agreement system which is followed by each employee in the company. This agreement tenure is for one year. Consequently, it highlighted the company’s core competencies and relationship with their partners and analyzed the requirement of SHRM in Westcon. It provided the insights related to the risk associated with employees, customers and vendors with reference to company’s profit, revenue and position in the world. Then, company sought to approach SHRM practices within the organization to align the strategic objectives with human resource management. In that case, company confirms that it just not fulfill the orders of the customers but also adds the value to their business for future expansion. It conducts the career development programs and training programs for new and old employees for both individual and organizational betterment.
Additionally, essay depicted that company values its employees and considers their involvement in business’ growth and success. Talking about the SHRM of Westcon group and its application in the organization, essay highlighted the annual review programs, new and updated compensation and incentive plans, appraisal systems used by Westcon with reference to employees. The company attempted to grow in the market with persuading its strategic objective of enhancing relationship with vendors and partners. Entire discussion of the essay also made a note that Australian branch of the company hires employees locally or from its others branch.
On the basis of the discussion, it can be concluded that company merely focuses on its relationship with partners and strengthen employee’s contribution to the business by applying SHRM in the premises.
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