Submitted by : Minelli Cordeiro

ExPGDBM Batch II
17th June, 2010

LANDMARK DINING INC. CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Landmark Dining Inc. is a future-focused organization that possesses a strong and

dynamic mix of attributes that contributes to it's continued success. Their approaches in
most regards are effective and responsive to it's continually changing business
environment. The focus on the stakeholders is strategic and beneficial to all parties
concerned. The roles played by the upper management is witnessed through all levels
within the organization and is manifestated into practice through careful division of
responsibilities and duties.

The systems that Landmark have put in practise like Foodtrak and Voices are highly
beneficial to all levels of stakeholders. Their strategic planning process uses the data
received from these systems to facilitate information based on actual facts. Their goals
and objectives are clearly defined with a mission and value statement and they have set
into effect action plans to help them accomplish these short and long term goals. These
data systems provide Landmark with the information they need to keep up with changing
trends in the market and stay on top of their competitors.

The sense of a team spirit is clearly evident within Landmark process of data collection.
They have a highly effective communication chain that encourages learning through line-
up meetings and several performance reviews. I believe what also boosts employee
morale is the sense of "being part of" every decision taken by Landmark as everyone is
given access to extremely important information that would be relevant to their work as
and when needed. The Foodtrak Knowledge Management system is by far one of the
most productive practices that has been incorporated into the work environment.

The leadership structure evident in Landmark Dining is an example of their commitment

to organizational excellence. The benefits to their employees are beyond satisfactory
and include discounted healthcare to even their part-time employees. They do this to
keep in line with Landmark's proud value of family culture within the organization.
Employee orientations and on-floor time also promote this culture. The organization also
creates an environment of "doing the right thing" and this is carried out with ethics
statements, ethical behavior assesments and is even carried out to their exterior
stakeholders such as their suppliers. Honesty and integrity is the name of the game and
is duly communicated to all levels of stakeholders, internal and external.

They incorporate a vision/direction for a paticular focus, a process and finally

accountability for one's actions. The development of the IRDPs is another example of
how the leaders within this organization aim to provide sustanability. Motivation and
empowering of employees is carried out through mentoring and identifying of talented
employees and reviews at the end of the month further facilitates the culture that
Landmark strives to establish. Their vision, mission and values are kept aligned with the
daily goals throught successful leadership and direction by senior management.
Rewards and recognition are instrumental in encouraging employees to acheive this.
During the monthly reviews, ideas from employees are actually considered and
employee morale boosted.

Moving into their customer base, Landmark continually focuses their efforts towards
good customer relationships. They incorporate a marketing mix of radio, the net,
promotions, television, etc to promote awareness to targeted consumers. Their "Our
family frequent-diner program" again not only promotes their family culture but also
strengthens their customer loyalty and ensures repeated customers. They engage in
several points of customer contact via phones, emails, etc to track their customer
satisfaction and also keep up with changing wants and needs of their consumers. On-
floor customer dissatisfaction is curbed through programs like their 'service recovery
process' to avoid losing customers due to service glitches. The Diners teams use all this
information, collected even from foodtrak to create a sort of ranking system of
importance to the customer. Weaknesses are identified through this data (inclusive of
surveys), and diligently worked on until turned into a strength.

The Voices program is another brilliant system introduced by Landmark Dining to hear
out their customers. Through this, customer satisfaction is tracked and analzed and any
problematic areas duly identified and rectified. The secret diner program allows them to
literally peer into their own business using an outside opinion. The information received
is fresh and realistic down to every experience of an actual customer. In doing this, they
are able to gain insight into information that regular customers may not have the time to
share.

Senior leaders lead quarterly meeting to dicuss and review performance at every level of
service both within and outside the organization. Employee reveiws of the jobs they
actually do are also considered to keep up employee morale and dedication to the
business goals. Feedback from all other levels are integrated into these quarterly
reviews to create an extensive 'current position' analysis. Action plans are then created
by upper management to take the organization from where it currently is, to where it
would like to be. Together, as a team, these action plans are integrated at all levels of
the organization to continually focus on exceeding stakeholder's expectations. Once
satisfied, the stakeholders then have a unique value associated with Landmark Dining
Inc. and support the decisions that management sees as most beneficial.

The value-added benefit that Landmark creates is that from the customer's perspective,
not their own. The data collected from multiple stakeholders from the overall dining
experience is used for this purpose. This information extends out to it's suppliers as well
who provide valuable input into their reviews. Identification of their key areas of
performance is carried out through intensive documentation of the value generation
process. This information is then shared with all levels of employees through periodic
meetings to review and analyze as a team.

The organization is loyal to it's environment that it resides in and goes through extensive
measures to promote it's well-being. It supports the local communities and grants days
off for family events, personal events and cultural events. Volunteer groups serve in the
community to help when needed and the organization is active in support groups in the
community. They assume responsibility for their products and services on the
community and address most concerns regarding this to ensure their safety. Donations
and other non-monetary contributions are also evident in Landmark Dining and they
have a clean record for environmental friendliness. The focus of this to to satisfy ever
stakeholder at every level.

Landmark continually grows in the market as their reaction to external factors is always
flexible. A detialed SWOT analysis is carried out at the end of each year to analyze
where the organization currently is versus where it should be. By analyzing their external
and internal threats before they actually occur, they are able to incorporate action plans
to possibly even evade them entirely if not plan for them. Analyzing their key
stakeholders allows them to focus on who's most important for them to acheive their
missions and goals as an organization. Effective leaders put this into practice by
analysis of sensitive date to identify and isolate any and all financial, customer, legal and
market needs. They adopted the ADLI concept that keeps them on track with the
achievement of their long term goals.

Other than the overall increase in revenues, between 2001 and 2004 and their catering
service's increase in performance during the same time, Landmark Dining outshined
their competitiors on several dimensions. The key factor in any restraunt business is
spoilage and even this reduced considerably during this time. Among others, these few
performance indicators boast an efficiently effective organization with a well planned and
strategic outlook to the business environment that they currently reside. Their key factors
such as customer satisfaction, supplier relationships, financial performance and their
products and service quality all saw an increase during this time to indicate effective
management systems as well.