entire operation was highly centralised; (3) the organisation was
procurement, rather than sales, oriented; and (4) there were several
gaps in the structure.

Although S.T.C. handled over 65,000 products and had an an-
nual turnover of over Shs. 600 million, the McKinsey consultants
failed to provide the S.T.C. with an accounting system! The
systems which were introduced by the accounting staff are
makeshift at best and generally ten to fifteen years out of date. An
independent accounting firm concluded that none of the McKinsey
management systems provided for S.T.C. would begin to operate
until accounting systems were designed and introduced to fit
them. This conclusion was given to management in December of
1971. Put another way, the management decisions relating to
policy, planning, general product selection, credit, prices etc., the
stock and purchasing decisions of the product divisions, both on a
long term and a day-to-day basis, and the branch decisions about
what to order, how much, what items to discontinue and the
correctness of particular prices all depended upon information
which could only be made available from the accounting system.
But the system could not produce it.

The absence of an adequate accounting system had the most
far-reaching effects. As a preface, however, three things need to
be pointed out which increased the difficulties of the already
inadequate accounting system. First, the godown construction
programme was never fully completed. Designed to operate out of
4-5 large godowns in Dar es Salaam, by early 1972 the Cor-
poration was using 40 godowns, only a few of which were
anywhere near the original space design. This meant that product
lines and identical products were often spread all over the city and
the overcrowding (exaggerated by pressures to clear S.T.C. goods
from the harbour because of storage problems there) of godowns
often made the knowledge of what goods were in a particular
godown unavailable. Slow-moving, dead, fast moving and
damaged stock were all mixed together proper inventories were
obviously not forthcoming. Second, there was a severe shortage of
accountants at all levels. Third, the Head Office and main Dar es
Salaam operations were designed to operate out of a single
building, where communication would be relatively simple. In
fact, the Corporation offices were dispersed throughout the city
and many operations were housed in hopelessly inadequate
facilities.”

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