Teams and Departments at B-F Australia

The structure of Brown-Forman Australia is broken down into departments and then into teams. The Brisbane office, where I work, is part of the sales department and there are also parts of the sales departments across the country in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The IT, marketing, and finance departments are all based in the home office, in Sydney. The parts of the sales departments that are in different cities are broken into respective teams. Within those sales teams, employees are, for the most part, self-directed. They meet with customers, formulate proposals, and prepare for event activations. They are overseen by their state on-premise manager, but not every step of the way. These employees need to be self-motivated and figure out what their customer’s needs are without too much assistance from their superiors. In a way, this is decentralized decision-making, but team members still need to run some things past their managers like how they are going to use a part of their on-premise budget.

Because of this, there has to be a great level of trust between managers and others on the sales team. If a manager is worried about the number of customers an employee has, the manager can reduce the number of customers they have or reduce them to the type of venue. For instance, one member of the sales team was having difficulty once the region that he needed to cover was enlarged. His manager knows that the employee understands nightclubs and small bars more so then modern pubs and restaurants so the manager reined back the latter venues. That way, the employee was able to regain some insights on the other venues, while still maintaining the relationships he has with the other customers.