Customer service & distribution of Nestle Bangladesh Limited

Abstract

“Nestlé is the leading nutrition, health and wellness company throughout the world. It enhance lives with science-based nutrition and health solutions for all stages of life, helping consumers, care for themselves and their families” (Nestle, 2016). Nestlé initiated with only some limited brands such as, Nespray, Cerelac, Lactogen, and Blue Cross etc. after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. However, it started its operation commercially in Bangladesh in the year of 1994 (Bangladesh Business Directory, 2016). There are some products like Maggi Noodles, Soup, Nido, Cerelac, some SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) of Nescafe etc. are manufactured here in Bangladesh factory established in Sreepur. Some packaging and ‘Stickering’ are done here in Bangladesh. Others are imported from outside the country. The company provides excellent working environment for the employees and celebrate “Subordinateship” with them. NBL is well organized with efficient departments under different functions. It has Finance and Control, Marketing, Sales, HR, Corporate Affairs and Supply Chain functions for managing the operations in Bangladesh. Supply Chain is a huge function containing three departments. They are- Demand & Supply Planning (D&SP), Procurement and Customer Service & Distribution (CS&D). Demand and Supply Planning aligns and adapts the physical resources of the Business with the strategic and tactical plans in order to translate the high level expectations into local and timely capability to respond to risk and opportunity. Procurement is responsible for acquiring and ensuring on time arrival of the Finished Goods, Raw materials and Packaging materials required by D&SP. CS&D is a key function of Supply Chain who are mainly dealing with daily Primary Sales of Nestle with its distributors. CS&D is a combination of customer service, customer facing supply chain and distribution. This combination makes happen smooth workflow of CS&D. The members of this whole team have their own role to play in order to fulfill the whole Order to Cash Process and Delivery process. There are two transport agencies (SBTA and UCCL) deliver the product to various distribution points located at six regions of Bangladesh. Distributors are the integral part of Nestle Supply Chain. There are 109 authorized distributors of NBL. They can be divided into high, moderate and low revenue generator. The distributors are more or less satisfied with the performance of the company. However, they have some complains about transport agencies, delayed shipment, late night delivery of products, unavailability of some products and so on. Nestle Bangladesh is trying to come out of these problematic issues and moving forward for the betterment of the company.