Hi everybody,

Due the much needed answers I got from posting my last question on nairaland.com about doing a masters degree in the UK, I decided to call for help once again. This time around it is business related. I hope you guys can help me out!

I am working on my final year Bsc dissertation. My research topic is:
The subsequent impacts of Centralizing a foreign company division.

I am doing a research for a Dutch company which is active as a B2B supplier of processing machineries and has 2 branches, 1 in the Netherlands and 1 in Belgium. Now the decision is made to discontinue the sales division in Belgium, so that the Netherlands Branch can take over their sales activities.

The sales of these machines are done at the branches through contacting existing costumers and new costumers by phone by contact center employees. So the contact Center is going to centralized.

I have to find out what the impacts are going to be after the centralization.

But the only thing I can think of are:
the impacts that the centralization can have on employees at the contact center, the cultural and communicative differences and behavior (business wise) between the Dutch and Belgians and how this can effect the costumers in Belgium (the dutch contact centre is now the contact point for them) and the competitive advantage of the company.

Can anyone give me tips which other impact I have to consider in my research
Thnx, Liquid

Hi Liquid,

Saw your question and was surprised that no one replied.Anyway, what do you mean by centralizing a foreign division.does it it mean running a foreing division of a company from the head quaters of the parent company? if it menas that; i believe that companies being too big makes them lose customer focus and expend so much money on expenses that would have been avoided.Lean companies are always better.
I believe that it is better to grant a foreing division a great degree of autonomy.In this way they are able to generate country specific strategies to run the business. the realities in the foreing office are quite different from that of the parent companies so it would be better for the foreign office to relate to its realities without interfrence.

In doing this research, i believe you should be open minded.get all the pro and con factors.a good place to look for comparative scenarios is in China.Many u.S companies have outsorced some of their productions to china.It was a big problem for them to do business the chineese way.

Hi Nandus,
Thnx for your reply.

With centralizing I mean in-sourcing a foreign division back to the headquarter.

For instance.

The Company located in Amsterdam (headquarter) has its sales division at two locations.1 in Amsterdam and 1 in Belgium. Due lack of technical operational support at the Belgian branch which has a negative effect on costumer relationship & satisfaction. The directors of the company wants to centralize the sales division. They want to merge the two sales divisions.

Now I wanted to know, or I need to find out what kind of impact it will have for the company.

(p.s my English is not so good)

greetings, liquid81

You also need to consider the cost considerations.
Both Locations are cost-centres but with different cost elements. Which has a higher divisoner cost-Belgium office or Netherlands? If Netherlands will now be handle all sales support, will it significantly increase the company's overheads or it will be reduced? The impact on increased/reduced cost profile needs to be considered too.

Will the staff in Belgium get sacked?What is the severance package?

Also, do you have locational staff tied to some specific buyers? What kind of inter-personal relationships exist presently with your major customers?

I am a bit late with replying your posts. sorry for that.

nontheless i would like to thank you guys for your help and suggestions.
I used it in my dissertation and got a 7 out of 10 mark. thnx again.

liquid.