Thursday, June 29, 2000
Supermarket companies are more likely to outsource their administration as in-house options offer no strategic or competitive advantages. This is the conclusion drawn by Karianne van Rongen from Rijksuniversiteit, Groningen in The Netherlands in her thesis, 'Joining forces with the Financial Shared Service Center'. Her study was awarded first prize in this year's Royal Ahold Retail Award competition
Van Rongen received USD 5,000 and a study trip to Ahold supermarkets in the United States. The jury, chaired by Jacques Schraven, President of the Dutch Employer's Federation, described Van Rongen's thesis as "a solid and profound study on the consequences of using external agencies to attend to administrative organization in the food retail sector".
For her thesis, Van Rongen studied practices of Ahold operating companies in The Netherlands. They plan to integrate their administrative organizations and merge them into a single "Financial Shared Services Center".
The annual Ahold Retail Award was instigated in 1995 and encourages academic research into retail trade. This year's entries from The Netherlands and other countries came from recent university graduates, who completed professional or academic degrees.
Jan Andreae, Ahold member of the Corporate Executive Board, said at a ceremony to announce the winner that knowhow and experience are vital to Ahold's success. "The exchange of knowledge is crucial to our company. A good understanding of the customer, competition, local culture, legislation, future and trends such as consolidation and globalization provide an advantage over the competition. Quality databases, international experience, showing alertness and sensitivity is required to respond today to what the customer will want tomorrow."
Royal Ahold
Royal Ahold operates approximately 7,000 supermarkets, hypermarkets and other store formats in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia with annualized sales approaching Euro 50 billion. Ahold employs over 350,000 associates and serves the food needs of over 30 million loyal customers in 22 countries every week.