Business operation management is currently faced with some challenges. These challenges also depend on the type of business and type of supply chain that is found in the business. Some of the challenges that impact the current business include changing technologies, globalization of market, changing customer’s expectations, changing job design, quality management and global manufacturing. There is some operational management areas that can make business succeed in the current business environment. These operational areas include goods and service design, supply chain design, managing inventory, resource management, and quality management. A good business is ICONIC Fashion Designers that was founded in 2006 located in Sydney. The ICONIC Fashion Designers is an Australian fashion retailer that sells both men and women wear (The ICONIC Fashion Designers 2017). ICONIC Fashion Designers is online and in-house business that is with in-house store located in Sydney Australia. ICONIC Fashion Designers has 700 local and international brands and more than 45,000 fashion and sports products for both men and women. ICONIC Fashion Designers is a typical business that is currently faced by different challenges. The following report discusses challenges that affect ICONIC Fashion Designers business with some operational management practices that can ensure success of the business.
ICONIC Fashion Designers is an interesting business that is in the middle of different challenges. The dynamics of fashion market is directly influence by a number of concepts and these have impact on the business. Some of these concepts are discussed below.
Changing technology is one of the challenges that are currently affecting most of business around the world. ICONIC being online and in house fashion designers, the ICONIC is the most affected business. The main aim of the ICONIC is to give the customers world class technological shopping experience (Davenport & Short 2003, p.97). The online ICONIC store is built in the e-commerce software couple with award-wining mobile app. Firstly, ICONIC store build its own mobile app and this is based on the ever changing technology especially the customer based technologies. The ICONIC had to develop mobile app that can comply with various mobile operating system including other devices such as tablets and iphones. There is increasing demand for customer based shopping mobile apps allow easy purchase of goods and services anywhere around the world. The technological experience made ICONIC to shift its operations mainly online to serve customers within Australia and New Zealand and globally. The second technological challenge that is due to changing technologies is the security of the store. It is important to note that security challenge is most likely to affect the ICONIC since the increase in technology is coupled with hackers that can attack and destroy the store. Online store are fitted with online payment systems that facilitate online transactions and this attract potential attacks that can only be resisted through development of firewalls within the system (Ioannou, Prastacos & Skintzi 2004, pp 107-132).
Globalization is a major boost for ICONIC Fashion Designers since the online nature of the business allows online transaction of business globally. The initial vision of the business was to define the future fashion retail in Australia and New Zealand that is expected to change with the increase globalization as many businesses now tries to enter the global market. Globalization also poses future challenges that include international logistics, quality control and terms of trade. Firstly, with the globalization there is need to ship goods and services to any customer across the world and this require strong logistics network that also depend on the tariffs and fiscal policies of destination country. Secondly, ICONIC need to control the quality of products it has as globalization market considers quality above all other business factors. Each country has its quality indicators and policies and this implies that the quality of goods within the global market is important. Thirdly, terms of trade between Australia and other countries is another globalization challenge (Saxena 2009, pp. 24). For ICONIC fashion designers to successful in the international market the terms of trade between Australia and other trading countries need to be favorable. Finally, entrants of 1st and 2nd world have high impact on the operations of ICONIC fashion designers since those countries are also potential customers for the business.
Changing customer’s expectation and satisfaction is another challenge that is experienced with the current business. Customer’s expectations include what customers want in terms of quality, services and shipping of products to customer’s location. Some of the issues in the customer’s expectation include type delivery of channel, after sale services and quality of goods and services. Firstly, customers expect the channels especially the delivery channel to be integrated in what is called omni-channel (Achabal, Mcintyre, Smith & Kalyanam 2000, pp 430-454). This implies that ICONIC fashion designers need to integrate different services in all channels. Secondly, customers expect ICONIC fashion designers to deliver quality products though this is continuously changing due to differences in quality indicators or measurements. For instance, there are different ways to determine quality of clothes ranging from material used in making the clothes and the design this is quite different from one customer to another. Thirdly, customer’s expectations in terms of after sale services such as delivery services are ever changing. ICONIC customers expect free shipping services as done by some prominent online businesses such as Amazon.com. The business need to formulate strategies to deal with the changing customer expectation especially in the global market (Davenport & Short 2003, p.97).
Job specification in the current contemporary is dynamic and keeps on changing from organizational requirement and technological requirement. The challenging issue that remains important in the current business such as ICONIC is the integration of employees and the technological requirement. The ICONIC fashion designers has many employees yet designing job for these employees remains a challenge since customers requirements are increasingly changing (Asensio et al, 2012, pp 7467–7478). The online store needs to integrate customer’s service as well as customer product delivery service people. The business had to redesign its job specifications and method to cope up with the changing job design. There are also social aspects of job design as the current business conditions that employee heavy technological usage requires social relationship marketing. This also incorporate social media that allow employees to interact within themselves, customers and this therefore influence their attitude towards work or job. Job design also takes into account the market standards for specific jobs and this is continuously changing with the current online mode of business (Cannella & Ciancimino 2010, 175-185). Finally, the nature of jobs is also changing and this also has important influence in employee’s attitude. Some fashion design jobs are considered female specific and this is characterized with job problems. This makes the ICONIC business to continuously review job design to keep up with current dynamics of job design.
Quality management is another challenge that is experienced within the market currently. Quality of various products sold at ICONIC business is key to business operations. Deciding on the quality indicators that can be used to measure quality is quite important for business with wide market segment (Johnston, Clark & Shulver 2012). ICONIC fashion designers had to continuously design quality measurements that are in line with the customers’ requirements since it is the goal of the business to satisfy customers. Moreover, customers require high quality products though this also depends on the customers’ quality specifications. In order for the business to perform better in the global platforms its quality indicators need to match that of the international requirement. When also designing the store customer need to have well defined quality parameters attached to the product in order to assure customers of the quality. In addition, quality challenge is most likely to be experience at the delivery point as customers has to be given the product of the right quality. Failure to inform the customers about the quality of products means they will reject the product at delivery time. Therefore, quality management still remains an important issue in online store such as ICONIC fashion designers (Hawker 2005).
It is important to note that global manufacturing is also a challenging issue in online business since customers normally consider the place of manufacturing products. This is particularly important for quality determination in the international market. Products that are sold at ICONIC store are manufactured from different places across the world. Though the company also has its designers it is important to clearly determine global manufacturing system to cope up with globalization (Krajewski, Ritzman, & Malhorta 2013). Globalization has made the ICONIC business to concentrate in the global manufacturing as oppose to local manufacturing. This is in bid to reach more customers outside Australia and allow business growth. In the global manufacturing platform, ICONIC business sources some of its products from other main designers outside Australia. This is shipped into the country and transported to warehouse and store in Sydney via truckers. When a customer from another country outside Australia order products, this product is shipped to whichever the country the customer may be from. Migration from local manufacturing to global manufacturing has drastic impact on the ICONIC fashion designers given that the store was started 6 years ago (Paul 1998, pp 59–63).
The success of ICONIC fully depends on operational management of the store and this has impact on the future survival of the company in the market. There are some operational management areas that have impact and success of the ICONIC business. These include goods and service design, supply chain design, managing inventory, resource management, and quality management.
Goods and service design is an important aspect of operational management of the ICONIC fashion designers. ICONIC business deals in various products that are grouped into brands. In fashion design, some factors that are considered when deciding on new products include customer’s wants, quality goals, cost target and product design process. Firstly, when ICONIC store management is designing new products the key factor or principle lies on the customer’s want. Secondly, ICONIC store design products with the quality goal of giving customers high quality goods and services (Osland et al 2007, p. 108). Thirdly, the cost of products and services is another principle that is used in designing new products. Customers expect the cost of products to be favorable that they can afford and not exploitative price. In addition, customers normally prefer set price without any other hidden cost that is most likely to affect their purchase power. Therefore, when the ICONIC is designing new product the product design process should consider set target cost of those products. Lastly, product design process is another important factor in goods and services design. Product design process can be divided into steps that include motivation, ideas to improve, organization capabilities and forecasting (Pound & Spearman 2014, p 47).
Goods and service design take in account some process that needs planning and development. Some of the components of product design process are life cycle planning, design for manufacturing, concurrent engineering, digital design, quality function and sustainability.
Planning the life cycle of products is crucial step in product design process. In planning some of the aspects of planning are introduction of product into the market, the growth of the new product in the market, maturity of the product and decline of the product position in the market. These aspects product life cycle in the market helps ICONIC store to conceptualize the most probably customers response to the new product. The life cycle planning within the ICONIC in-house store in Sydney normally is done with the help of quality analyst, and financial analyst (Belmiro et al., 2000, pp.1183–1203).
The second product design process is the design manufacturing stage where there is actual manufacturing of the new product. In fashion designers like ICONIC fashion designers, products manufacturing involve designing different fashion options that can match the customer’s desire. In order to match customers’ wants the store sometimes makes order from manufactures that specifically meet customer’s requirement. Some of the fashion wares are also redesigned according to the size that meets customer’s specifications. This implies that ICONIC is also involved in sewing of new clothes according to the customer’s need (Parker 2014, pp 661–691).
Concurrent engineering and digital design are two other steps in products design process. Firstly, concurrent engineering is the integration of various departments such as marketing, research and development, distribution, and product development process within the products development. This stage of development ICONIC bring together all the departments that will be involve in marketing and distribution of the products to customers. Secondly, digital design is the process of involving computer automated simulation to design the product or service before physical design of the product or services. Current goods and service design takes into consideration the technological growth (Alavudeen & Venkateshwaran 2010).
Quality function and sustainability are two last stages of goods and service design. Firstly, quality function is the process of assessing the quality of products that need to be introduced in the market. The quality function stage of product development according the ICONIC decides on the quality areas, product capabilities and products quality. Secondly, sustainability aspect of product and services design takes into account sustainability of the product in the market and environmental effect of the products. As an operational management aspect sustainability requires good product quality that does not leads to depletion of environmental resources (Heizer & Render 2011).
Supply chain does not occur on its own instead supply chain should be designed to facilitate free movement of goods and services along the supply chain. The design of the supply chain will determine the competition ability of the product or the business in the market. Supply chain process takes into the following process selection of chain, formation of chain team, mapping of the chain team, and determination of supply chain performance (Shen, Coullard & Daskin 2003, pp 40-55). Firstly, when selecting supply chain for ICONIC store, the store determines the longest product that gives the highest sales. Therefore, ICONIC store identifies the product cycle and product performance in the supply chain. Secondly, the ICONIC determines the parties involved in the product purchase and distribution and this forms the supply chain team. Supply chain team for ICONIC store can be as far as logistic team distributing products outside Australia or local distributers. Thirdly, mapping of the supply chain is another process in the supply chain design (Cheung & Lee 2002, pp 300-306). The ICONIC map supply chain and the team involve from point of purchase to point of delivery and the team involve in each stage of supply chain. Some of products that are sold by ICONIC store are shipped from large manufactures such as Adidas and Nike for sport wears. This is then connected to the distributers within the supply chain map. Fourthly, ICONIC finally determines the supply chain performance in terms of total cost quality, cycle time, reliability and specific products performance in the supply chain. In addition, ICONIC select the each supply chain components and analyse its performance and length in bid to determine the suitability of the supply chain. For instance, performance of selected supply chain that is involved in moving clothes to customer staying in New Zealand should complement the cost of moving such products. This implies that supply chain should not result into loss for the business; instead it should result in profit (Poluha 2016).
Managing inventory involve controlling ordering, storage, and use of components of company’s products sales. ICONIC fashion designers largely operate online, this make the inventory management system an important aspect of e-commerce software. ICONIC inventory management can be divided into two, software and physical inventory management system (Achabal, Mcintyre, Smith & Kalyanam 2000, pp 430-454). Firstly, the current e-commerce software has incorporated inventory system that monitors and oversees the movement of goods and services from orders to delivery or shipping of products. The online shopping software has shopping cart plugging that allow client to pick all the items need before ordering. This allows the customer to pay for all clothes after picking without paying for each item separately. Secondly, the in-house store in Sydney has inventory system that involves records for product ordered, stored in warehouse and products under distribution process. A good inventory management system involves organized product location and names, inventory gives item descriptions, number of clothes, unit of measurements like bags, pieces etc, and inventory system that can track all sales activities (Cheung 2002, pp 300-306). Some business often finds training of employee on the whole inventory system as the best operation management practice. This implies that before ICONIC could implement the inventory system whether software or physical, the company needs to train customers on the whole system.
Resource management is the management of various resources within the organization such as human resource, financial resource, information technology, inventory and production resources. Firstly, ICONIC has 50 employees in its store in Sydney and more than 300 employees spread across the entire supply chain for the company. These employees are managed in the best way to facilitate achievement of good result for the company. Human resource management is in charge of employee within the organization (Shenoy & Zabelle 2016, pp 13-24). Secondly, financial resource management is another important operational management. This involves management of financial resources through monitoring and analysis of financial capability of the business and its performance. ICONIC needs to monitor its inventory to ensure that the business does not run into lost but instead makes profit. The success of ICONIC business rest on proper management of financial resources and this can be achieved through controlling inventory. Thirdly, information technology has tremendous impact on ICONIC store since most of its operation is online and the operation management depends of information technology (Davenport & Short 2003, p.97). A technical glitch in has direct impact on the operation of ICONIC business since it will be translated in the operation errors of the online store. Fourthly, Inventory management is another resource management aspect that specifically deals with products movement and supply chain management. Production resources on the other hand are resources that aim at maximizing production while minimizing cost of production. A good production management ensures that products are available for customers and this is achieved in ICONIC fashion designers through importation or locally tailoring of products (Wall & Parker 2001, pp 7980–7983).
Quality management is the process where business ensures that the right quality goal is achieved either in purchasing products or in manufacturing of products. ICONIC fashion designers’ vision is to give the best quality wears to customers around the globe. For the business to achieve this quality goal it must establish good quality management strategies. According to Walsh, Hershauer & Tommelein (2014, p 818), the success of the business partly depends on the quality of products that are sold or purchased. ICONIC business ha clearly defined quality indicators that include types of materials used in the clothe design, type of design and design. The materials that are used in manufacturing of clothes play an important role in the quality of products. Clothes are normally made from cotton or nylon and whatever the material used. Quality of the overall product differs from various materials. Another quality indicator is the type of design that gives the final brand attractiveness or not. This design will either attract customers or decline in market position, whatever the case design is used to assess or mange the quality of products. Clear control of quality indicators helps in quality management of the products within the organization. Moreover, quality management assist the business realize its mandates as expected by the government (Nederpelt 2012).
Facility and work design are also aspect of operation management that can ensure success of ICONIC business. Firstly, facility management as per ICONIC fashion designer is divided into two in-house store and online store. In-house store in located in Sydney Australia where there are management team. The store has numerous women, men and sportswear that represent some of the items displayed in the online store. The second facility is technological facility basically not physical and is located in www.theiconic.com.au . This facility is virtually managed through a pool of computer technicians that design and display products. Work design is based on the facility location (Norman 2002, p. 29). For instance, when designing job for employees some are left to manage and maintain online store while other are on the overall company management. Proper work design is coupled with some advantages such as motivation, good attitude and good performance at work. When the ICONIC Fashion Designers management properly design work for various employees, employees feel motivated and work well within the business. Satisfying work instill good attitudes among employees leading to good working relationship. Finally, proper work description and design increases the overall output for each employee. Employee feels motivated and their attitude drives them to work hard leading to high production in workplace (Schultz & Sydney 2010, p. 159).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the ICONIC Fashion Designers business is a good example of business that currently influenced by various management challenges. Some of these concepts that are viewed as challenges are changing technologies, globalization of market, changing customer’s expectations, changing job design, quality management and global manufacturing. Management operation on the other hand has some areas that have impact on the operation and success of ICONIC business. Some of these areas include goods and service design, supply chain design, managing inventory, resource management, and quality management. All these factors play an important role in operation management hence determines the business success. For instance, information technology provides the overall backbone used to manage and maintain operation of the online ICONIC Fashion Designers store.
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