The latest business environment is going through a lot of changes and these has been occurring at a random level. The collaboration between the technical world and the business world goes through this changes because the technical world advances rapidly from time to time. Utilizing Technology into business and making a business process work through it does needs to cope up with the technological changes every now and then. In the similar manner the retail business also need to cope up in order to be in the competitive market and surpass its competitors. In Australia alone, the organization of Woolworths has seen a huge loss of about 972.7 m AUD due to the lack of innovation aiding to the technological changes. The supermarket and retail business is facing a lot of trouble and this is why there is a need of innovation management in the Retail Industry as well (Foss & Saebi, 2017). The Retail Industry has embattled a massive loss that is detected in the half year financial results that has made them realize that a decision needs to be taken in order to implement innovative ways of adopting the technological advancements for focusing on the key priorities to cut the losses. Since Woolworths is a huge organization having different retail groups managed under a single organization it needs to be taken care of from all the aspects so that managing all the retail groups would not be a problem with the implementation of innovative techniques. This will be posted in the following report through the organization of Woolworths by presenting a design thinking about the innovation, the involvement of the users, the fast integration and prototyping of the testing capabilities, the cross functional management ending with an elevator pitch.
Innovation is not just about implementing technical advancements into an organization for the ease of business transaction and processing. It is also we buy which Creative Thinking can be implemented in a business process so that day to day activities in the organization can be eased. It has been studied for a long time over the years about what makes a company and people within it a little more creative compared to the others (Bailey, 2016). The idea of innovative processes in a business organization has been thought about for a long time and is also to be thought about that the implemented innovative techniques are relevant to the business process. Over many years that have been various strategies that were devised for helping an organization to adopt to a formalized methodology show that root given framework a business can implement the slightest amount of creativity and innovation within business (Carayannis, Sindakis & Walter, 2015).
For an organization in the Retail Industry like Woolworths, having so much popularity need to cope up with the loss in the business that has occurred due to lack in innovative techniques (Bailey, 2017). Following is given a design Framework for the innovative techniques implementation that can be regarded does the initial phase of implementing Creative Thinking within the business process of Woolworths:
Design thinking puts forward the attempt for inspiring the essential element for instigating creativity and it has the ability of taking an abstract idea for creating something with that idea is based upon the sole belief and the primary thinking that it has the ability of and an executed idea which somebody would have pointed as regardless or have never been realize before or is a worthless proposition (Recker, Malsbender & Kohlborn, 2016). That thinking alone can be equally as valuable as implementing innovation within the industry. A huge part of the design thinking concept includes the empathy towards the customers. This is to mean that the series of manufactured activities that grew along with the innovative ideas would be able to be consumed easily by the customers of the organization. Every innovative technique should opt for making the organization and the services easier towards a customer and not make it much more difficult. Innovation and Creative Thinking would only of for using the business process and the product and services for both the customers and the business organization equally. Following is a design thinking process for implementing innovation within the organization of Woolworths.
It is important to have user involvement in innovation process. The growth of individualization in demand has been and process and that is why the design and manufacturing of processes helps in providing a competitive advantage due to the user involvement. Intensified user involvement within an innovation process has the potential to have a much more comprehensive understanding of the needs of a user and their requirements with context within which the products and services are produced (Patroni, Briel & Recker, 2016). This gives a competitive advantage to the organization in providing better and much more suitable products and as a possibility of pleasing the customers.
There is also theoretical framework based on involving user feedback in the innovation process and these can be deployed in relation to the collection of usernames and demands and their feedback after they have been provided with a specific prototype of the innovative service or product (Hristov & Reynolds, 2015). In the similar way Woolworths have been trying to put on innovative thinking within the business but the down sales that has been resulted as Black in innovation has no plan in coming back in implementing innovation with having proper user involvement. There has been rigorous processes for finding out the best possible way to rebuild the business of wool word having a sustainable growth but taking feedback from the users but not part of the act.
It is important to involve the customers of the organization as well while depicting a process to them. It would not be possible to know if the innervated procedure service or product would be acceptable by the customers or not if they are not involved in the process altogether (Nenycz-Thiel, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary to make the users first have the idea of the innovative product and then there should be a process of having a feedback taken from the user and so that the organization could also understand about the possibilities of bringing in minute changes according to the likings and disliking of the users.
Innovation within an organization is not implemented within a day. It takes time for people to realize about the innovative process and its propagation towards the business process. However, too much time cannot be implemented on just the process of implementation as the technical world in business would change rapidly over time. The integration constraints depend upon time, costs and resources (Balan & Lindsay, 2018). For a retail business like Woolworths, it definitely needs to be focused on these three integration constraints in a faster way. The detailed constraints for implementing innovation in the retail organization for Woolworths would be described as below:
Time: Time is a big factor for retail industry and the loss that Woolworths have gone through for not innovating through these times needed to be compensated. In Australia alone, Woolworths have gone through a drop in the sales of 38.7 per cent, amounting to 2.27 billion AUD (Pantano, 2014). The time required to incorporate the innovative strategies to increase the sales in Woolworths should be made as constricted as possible to make sure that the strategies do not take up much time for the business to recover as fast as possible. The average time that should be taken up by Woolworths in the implementation of innovative strategies in the industries cannot be measured exactly but the process should be kept on till the time the business recovers it loss and see profit in the latter half of the business progression.
Costs: The entire cost for the loss in business due to the lack of innovation had amounted to a considerable amount of almost 2.27 billion in Australia alone; therefore the latest innovative strategies should be done to make sure that the losses have been recovered and the losses are also replaced with profits (Kumar, 2017). Cost innovation is a difficult task to perform in retail business since associating the customization of cost to innovation for providing more functionality but with better sophistications and less cost implementation. Cost innovation goes through three distinct phases in the innovation plan for Woolworths. These are, implementing higher technologies at a lower cost, providing varieties in product and services at a comparatively low cost and moving the functional products within the mass markets.
Resources: There are different resources in the retail industry of Woolworths that helps in applying innovations. The first and foremost need in applying innovation within a retail industry is the dealing with the customers in the shops. The idea that Woolworths can use in their industry is the use of IoT in the industry to provide evolved services to the customers and also provide the potential customers with new developments that the organization can offer (Pantano, 2014). The store operations can be driven by data, which would help in extracting data from the shopping pattern and location of the customers to provide individual detailed services to the customers.
Prototyping and testing of the capabilities of the proposed idea would be essential in the innovating process since the idea that the innovators have in mind about the innovative operations within the business process of Woolworths needs to be tested before application (Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund & Hansen, 2016). The entire situation depends upon the economic side, the social side and the ways by which the customer reacts to the entire situation. Consumers are the priority in case of a retail based organization and thus the prototyping of the entire innovative strategy should have a feedback strategy applied and tested on the customers. The customers should provide feedback for the applied strategy based on which the company would be applying the changes in the strategy.
It is not possible that an organization puts forward an innovative strategy and it happens to be a perfect one. Therefore, Woolworths should create a prototype of the innovation plan of implementing the IoT services in the business process and after a mock implementation of it, the customers should be informed to provide feedback for the latest implemented innovative strategy. Based on that, Woolworths would be able to understand which sections in the innovations does appeal greatly to the customers and which of them would they like to change in their entire strategy (Merrilees & Miller, 2014). Woolworths would be able to implement necessary changes in the innovative strategy based on the feedbacks they receive from the customers. With constant trial and error of the innovative strategy, it will be easier to device the perfect plan in no time. It also needs to be kept in mind that the innovative strategy should be according to the likings of the customer, but it does not harm the business progression of Woolworths. If the innovative strategy is implemented only by the liking of the customers and not according to the benefit of the business, then that would not be useful for the organization at all. Therefore, the implemented plan should take care of the people in the industry, the benefits of the organization as well as the customers.
Cross-functional management is a process of managing the business process of an organization beyond its traditional boundaries. In case of Woolworths, the cross-functional management needs to be implemented because the implementation of innovative strategies also includes the wholesome idea of making the entire organization be aware of the situation and be ready to handle any department in time of need (Samson, Terziovski & Lai, 2015). The CFM relates to coordinating and synergizing the activities of different units for realizing the super ordinate cross-functional goals and policy deployment. Therefore, for example, the person in charge of the IoT analysis should also be ready to handle the risk evaluation and mitigation situation in adverse and urgent needs.
Again, consumers are the priority in case of a retail based organization and thus the prototyping of the entire innovative strategy should have a feedback strategy applied and tested on the customers (Delforce, Dickson & Hogan, 2015). The customers should provide feedback for the applied strategy based on which the company would be applying the changes in the strategy. Thus, the people involved in the strategy should be ready to include any kind of changes that is required even if that falls out of their zone of management. These are crisis situations where the management and implementation team should work as a unit for the betterment of the implementation plan to make benefits for the organization.
Conclusion
Thus, from the above report it can be concluded that the entire plan for implementing innovative strategies for Woolworths would prove to be beneficial to the entire organization once they are implemented at the earliest. This conclusion is reached through the thorough analysis of the entire organization and the situation it has been through for the non-implementation of innovative strategies in the industry of retail products. The analysis have been made through the above report analyzing the organization of Woolworths by presenting a design thinking about the innovation, the involvement of the users, the fast integration and prototyping of the testing capabilities, the cross functional management ending with an elevator pitch. The analysis has put forward the business structure of Woolworths and the losses that it had incurred for not utilizing innovative business strategies.
The innovative strategy that has been suggested as a result of the analysis made on the business has been suggested to be the IoT technology. The first and foremost need in applying innovation within a retail industry is the dealing with the customers in the shops. The idea that Woolworths can use in their industry is the use of IoT in the industry to provide evolved services to the customers and also provide the potential customers with new developments that the organization can offer. The store operations can be driven by data, which would help in extracting data from the shopping pattern and location of the customers to provide individual detailed services to the customers. Thus, implementing the IoT innovations keeping all the above constraints discussed in the report above, the organization of Woolworths would again find business benefits.
Woolworths has seen a huge loss of about 972.7 m AUD due to the lack of innovation aiding to the technological changes. The supermarket and retail business is facing a lot of trouble and this is why there is a need of innovation management in the Retail Industry as well. In Australia alone, Woolworths have gone through a drop in the sales of 38.7 per cent, amounting to 2.27 billion AUD (Round, 2016). The time required to incorporate the innovative strategies to increase the sales in Woolworths should be made as constricted as possible to make sure that the strategies do not take up much time for the business to recover as fast as possible.
Based on the organization of Woolworths an implementation plan should be pitched on the basis of a design thinking about the innovation, the involvement of the users, the fast integration and prototyping of the testing capabilities, the cross functional management ending with an elevator pitch (Briel & Recker, 2017). Therefore, Woolworths should create a prototype of the innovation plan of implementing the IoT services in the business process and after a mock implementation of it, the customers should be informed to provide feedback for the latest implemented innovative strategy. Based on that, Woolworths would be able to understand which sections in the innovations does appeal greatly to the customers and which of them would they like to change in their entire strategy. Further, the cross-functional management needs to be implemented because the implementation of innovative strategies also includes the wholesome idea of making the entire organization be aware of the situation and be ready to handle any department in time of need. The idea that Woolworths can use in their industry is the use of IoT in the industry to provide evolved services to the customers and also provide the potential customers with new developments that the organization can offer. The store operations can be driven by data, which would help in extracting data from the shopping pattern and location of the customers to provide individual detailed services to the customers.
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