Countdown is a supermarket situated in New Zealand which is a full-service supermarket chain and subsidiary of the Progressive Enterprise which itself is subsidiary of the Australian Woolworths Limited. This is a larger than the other average supermarkets placed in New Zealand. The first store of Countdown supermarket started its business in 1981 and by the year of 2016 it has almost 184 (countdown.co.nz, 2018). This is considered as the largest and the only single supermarket chain which runs in New Zealand with a number of stores. But despite of this the rival four square chain has the largest number of premises which includes smaller retail stores in the rural areas of New Zealand.
By the year of 2017 there were almost 184 Countdown supermarkets which operates in the North and the South Island of New Zealand. The organization consists of various operations whereas the major operations are handled by the Progressive Enterprises head office which is situated in the city of Mangere, Auckland. This stores have been distinguished into 10 major areas. Each area consists of an Area Manager and along with this all this areas are supported by the National Operations Manager (countdown.co.nz, 2018). But in previous days the areas were separated into North and South regions and each of them are having 5 areas. Besides this the pricing and the specials were separated into two major regions and this included the North Island and the South Island. The northern region has been further divided in sub-divisions and this includes the Upper and the Lower. Besides this Countdown Supermarket has also been associated with providing New Zealand a wide range of online grocery delivery service by making use of the online grocery shop.
Along with the increase in globalization of the retailing industry while considering them in terms of their points-of-sale and their points-of-supply. Along with this the spending upon the information technology (IT) by the Countdown supermarket has increased in a significant way. The role that is played by the IT has an increasingly important role in the management of complex operations inside the supermarket (Laudon & Traver, 2013). Supermarkets might not be needing any type of IT like the service-oriented businesses but certainly this does not mean that they cannot make use of the computers in their daily activities. Like many other supermarkets countdown supermarket has also adopted complex computer systems which is associated with allowing them to regulate many of their daily practices. This initially helps the business leaders to obtain more information which initially helps them in taking decision along with adaptation of automatic processes. All this helps the supermarket in saving money as well as money.
Knowledge about the Market, along with the control of data and information acts as the major key responsible for the purpose of obtaining a competitive advantage in the retail industry of New Zealand. In today’s world it has been seen that the Markets are growing in continuous way and besides it is becoming more complex day by day (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Besides this the simple process of retailing in Countdown has initially started the deployment of more advanced retail information systems for the purpose of coping up with all the transactions that are involved in the various processes of Countdown.
The main reason lying behind the need of the new IT infrastructure by the retailer Countdown has been listed below and the reasons are numerous.
The data warehouse and the technology can be considered to be an application of the DSS or the Decision Support Systems which is considered as one of the latest trend. OLAP or Online Analytical Processing decision making method are to be done according to the demand in the process of multi-dimensional view of the different type of information to the data that are stored in the warehouse for the purpose of providing the decision makers with a wide range of business analysis (Avgerou & Walsham, 2017). “Data Warehouse Environment Supermarket Invoicing System Architecture” is to be adopted. The “Traditional Invoicing System” is to be built with the single database-centric data organization model, along with this the decision analysis has also been not capable of meeting the system requirements which are present in the database but with the usage of the data warehouse technology along with the development of the problem which has been discussed above has been associated with providing a powerful tool and means as well. Data Warehousing can be considered to be a kind of multiple distributed heterogeneous database which has been associated with providing a unified query technology. the data warehouse management system of enterprise from outside the original data and this is followed by collating the data together into a data warehouse and depending on this by making use of smooth, rational and comprehensive information management in order to make the end user capable of extracting the data directly from the data warehouse which is associated with analysis of the data (Lloyd, 2017).
Data warehouse is not considered to be a substitute of the traditional database but on the basis of the traditional database the re-organization of the data which is used for the purpose of supporting the decision analysis. The Data Warehouse and the traditional database system is associated with assuming various kind of tasks which plays different kind of roles (Hilton et al., 2013). By adopting this process the transaction processing environment and the analytic processing environment for the purpose of achieving the separation along with the relative independence, which is generally consisting of the entire new system environment. The data warehouse can be considered to be a system of core-based environment. The environment of Data Warehouse, at the countdown supermarkets invoicing system would be composing of business processing subsystems along with support decision-making subsystem and the data management subsystem which generally has three parts. The business processing subsystem where the background for the traditional database foreground can be considered to be a business application system along with the completion of the entire invoicing business day processing along with the full invoicing system data entry and also to provide assistance to the decision making subsystems is associated with providing the raw data which includes the support decision making system and many more (Wang, Harris & Patterson, 2012). Along with this the completion of the statistical analysis and the forecasting capabilities would be associated with achieving decision making support. Along with this the data management subsystem would be responsible of the data management of the entire system or in particular the data from different data sources in order to transfer the data warehouse and the structure of the data warehouse and the business rules management.
The new proposed system has advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of the advantages includes the easy carrying out of the market analysis, trend analysis along with this the subgroups of commodities, layout, purchase of the analysis recommendation and merchandise. Carrying out of the analysis of the effectiveness of the promotional activities would also become easy. The customer loyalty can also be analyzed in an easy way (Gil-Garcia, Helbig & Ojo, 2014). Along with this there also exists some disadvantages like the higher initial capital investment need of special training for the staffs along with difficulties during integration of this system with the other management information system.
Despite of this there exists some benefits for the organization. The data warehouse and the multi-dimensional analysis along with comprehensive data on capacity along with this it can also be fast and accurate while analyzing the data in order to provide help to the managers for making better decision so as to bring a competitive advantage for the countdown supermarket. The data warehouse and the data mining technology that is being used by the supermarket currently is not very extensive however being a commercial enterprise they are having complex business structures ad so there are numerous Invoicing business data (Rao, Brümmer & Qaim, 2012). Due to all this reason there is a specific need for analyzing the decision along with the data warehouse technology that is used in the business enterprise applications which is having a broad prospect.
The major security risks faced by the Countdown supermarket can be categorized into four different categories and this includes the following:
Physical threat: This threats generally occurs due to physical access or damage of the IT resources like the servers that are used by the countdown supermarket. This type of threats includes the damage to the instruments due to fire or flood or any kind of unauthorized access to the data which are confidential and are regarding an employee or a customer.
Electronic threats: This type of threats is generally aimed at making compromises regarding the information of the business which might be including a hacker capable of getting access to the website of the supermarket or to the IT system and they can become infected by a computer virus. Besides this the threat also includes the supermarkets becoming a victim of a fraudulent email or website. This type of threat are commonly of a criminal nature (Rainer et al., 2013).
Technical failure: This mainly includes the software bugs, complete failure of a computer component or a computer crash. This type of failures can be considered to be catastrophic for example in case if the hard drive of any of the computer used by the Countdown supermarket crashes then it is totally not possible to retrieve the data from that damaged hard drive and along there also does not exists any kind of backup copy as well (Li et al., 2012).
Infrastructure failure: This type of threat might include the loss of internet connectivity which would be having a major impact on the daily business conducted by the supermarket for example loss of important purchase order.
Human error: This can be considered to be one of the major security risk for example when someone accidentally deletes a data which is important or there might occur also situation when an individual fails to follow the security procedures properly (Beynon-Davies, 2013).
All this security threats can be mitigated by two main type of risk assessments and this includes the following:
Quantitative risk assessment: This type of assessment is associated with combining the probability of the risks that are occurring and the costs related to the impact and recovery. In cases when the supermarket assesses a risk which is having a high probability of happening along with the potential of high cost/impact to the business then it the responsibility of the supermarket to deem it as high risk (Volkow, 2017). Besides this the low risk category includes the risks which are unlikely to happen or will cost very little. This type of quantitative mesures works whenever there is the presence of a good set of data. The supermarket always might not be having the data that is needed to work out with the probability or with the cost estimations related to the IT risks as they are changing at a very quick rate.
Qualitative risk assessment: This type of approach is considered to be much more practical and generally relies upon the use of judgements for the purpose of deciding whether the probability of occurrence of risk is high, medium or low. The supermarket might be using this approach for the purpose of classifying as high probability something that they can expect to be happening several times a year (Zhu, Mukhopadhyay & Kurata, 2012). The same thing is to be done for the cost or impact in whatever terms seem useful. Followed by this the supermarket might be associated with taking decisions so as to rank the risks according to the significance that they are having to the business of the supermarket. Once establishment of what the risks are and what is the importance that they are having to the business then the supermarket would become capable of deciding whether the risks are to be accepted or are they to be managed.
Countdown supermarket has started to notice that role that is played by the technology which acts as one of the major enabler. In an essential way the information technology would also be speeding up the processes as well as the delivery of cost saving benefits to the company.
The supermarket Countdown has been associated with facing many specific challenges which are related to the management of the IT and this includes the following:
Unlike many of the supermarkets the Countdown supermarket has also been struggling a lot with the information overload and this is due to the reason that they required to collect the data and to sift through mass amounts of data, which would followed by the converting of the data into useful information for the customer-centric industry and Countdown supermarket is a customer-centric organization (Winter, 2014).
Countdown supermarket has been associated with increasing the transparency between the systems, along with obtaining a better tracking for the purpose of integrating the systems from manufacturer to the consumer by obtaining the information about the customer and sales related information (Kalnikait?, Bird & Rogers, 2013).
The presence of radio frequency identification/electronic product coding in the Countdown supermarket has mad the entire supply chain become more intelligent. The supermarket is associated with the usage of real-time data for the purpose of watching the levels of inventory. Along with this the radio frequency identification tagging or the RFID tagging helped a lot in positioning the company capable of safeguarding its shipments which is generally done by allowing products to be tracked from manufacturer through the entire supply chain. RFID can be considered to be a barcode that is associated with emitting a radio frequency. By making use of the computer monitoring system the supermarket Countdown is associated with tracking the products when the product leaves the shelves and whenever they check out (Yin, Pei & Ranchhod, 2013). This is associated with helping the supermarket to analyze the products that are bought by the customers along with having a better track of the inventory whenever it moves throughout the store.
PCI Security Compliance is also used by the Countdown Supermarket which is associated with addressing the supermarkets internal security setup along with the practices, for the purpose of mitigating the security risks related to the various kind of payments. In case when a retailer is associated with collection or storage of the credit card information which when compromised might lead to losing of the capability of accepting credit card payments (Bhaskaran, 2013). There also exists other type of possibilities and this mainly includes the lawsuits, insurance claims, cancelled accounts, and government fines.
The retailers who are associated with taking advantage of outsourcing IT would be responsible for obtaining the optimal advice along with the benefits from outsourcing. It has been seen that numerous retailers have been associated with turning towards the IT outsourcing which generally acts as a way of controlling the costs and improving the delivery of services.
Inventory computer systems are used by the supermarket which is used for automatic tracking of all the inventory that is possessed by the supermarket. All these computers are used as the part of the checkout process which is associated with holding of information like the amount of supplies present in the shelves, what kind of suppliers are available in the warehouse and what are the requirements of the supermarket (Dubey & Jalal, 2013). This advanced systems are associated with predicting the storage along with ordering of the new inventory whenever it is necessary. The simple systems present inside the supermarket helps the users in checking the sales for accuracy and also to monitor the inventory by themselves.
The computer system helps the supermarkets in analyzing the data related to sales so as to help the managers in making a better plan related to marketing. The computers are associated with the usage of the inventory systems for the purpose of gathering data related to the product that are being sold, analysis of the data so as to figure out the trends of certain products. Thin in turn is associated with allowing the marketing department to make an educated guess regarding the products what are being sold and thereby organizing the supermarkets so as to make the finding of this products easier (Costa et al., 2013). This in turn are connected to the promotions of the product.
Countdown is associated with dealing of various food groups which needs particular type of temperature control. Countdown is associated with the usage of computers for the purpose of monitoring the temperatures and conditions inside the supermarket and makes adjustment whenever necessary.
The CIO or the chief executive officers are responsible for the setting of the goals and the objectives that the company is having. Their responsibility basically involves the development of the supermarket profitability goals of the supermarket, the management of the capital allocation and the development of the supermarket image and the design of the supermarkets operating strategies. Profits or particularly the returns on the investments are considered to be most common financial performance measures that are to be used by the supermarket (countdown.co.nz, 2018). The capital allocation decision are related to the real estates and the purchase of the equipment’s and the sales as well. For the purpose of cultivating the firm image, the standards are to be set for the customer services, the quality of the product, mixture of the product, the methods related to display, advertising and the appearance of the employees as well. The operational strategies of the supermarket mainly involves the various pricing methods, the objectives of the sales and the budgets related to advertising. There also exists the store managers, department managers, EMID and the scanning coordinators, Merchandisers and many more. Each of them are assigned with a specific role.
Conclusion
The discussion conducted above helps in concluding to the fact that the supermarket Countdown has earned a lot of benefits due to the usage of the IT. The report has also been discussing about the entire supermarket along with primary commercial activities. The main business processes has also been discussed in this report. The current Information Technology and the system of the Countdown supermarket has also been discussed. The IT vision for this organization has also been discussed. Along with this various kind of security risks has also been discussed in this report along with the way by which the risks can be mitigated.
References
Avgerou, C., & Walsham, G. (Eds.). (2017). Information Technology in Context: Studies from the Perspective of Developing Countries: Studies from the Perspective of Developing Countries. Routledge.
Beynon-Davies, P. (2013). Business information systems. Palgrave Macmillan.
Bhaskaran, S. (2013). Structured case studies: Information communication technology adoption by small-to-medium food enterprises. British Food Journal, 115(3), 425-447.
Costa, C., Antonucci, F., Pallottino, F., Aguzzi, J., Sarriá, D., & Menesatti, P. (2013). A review on agri-food supply chain traceability by means of RFID technology. Food and Bioprocess Technology, 6(2), 353-366.
countdown.co.nz. (2018). Countdown Supermarkets – New Zealand’s leading supermarket brand. Retrieved from https://www.countdown.co.nz/
Dubey, S. R., & Jalal, A. S. (2013). Species and variety detection of fruits and vegetables from images. International Journal of Applied Pattern Recognition, 1(1), 108-126.
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Yin, Y., Pei, E., & Ranchhod, A. (2013). The shopping experience of older supermarket consumers. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 26(4), 444-471.
Zhu, X., Mukhopadhyay, S. K., & Kurata, H. (2012). A review of RFID technology and its managerial applications in different industries. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 29(1), 152-167.
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