Discuss about the Coles Supermarket Strategic Information System.
There are certain structure that the organization allocates to every stakeholders and the employees are provided with a task of that organisation so that there is no confusion regarding the role provided for different designation. The structure could provide the organization with goals and objectives that can be achieve through supervision coordination and operation of the organization. The structure that the Coles Supermarket follows is the hierarchical structure. The organizational structure of the Coles includes the CEO at the top of the organization followed by the CFO, CIO, who handle the different organization operations. The Grocery, Liquor are supplied by the company for the Customer. Coles continuously deliver quality products and an outstanding customer service. The team leader will look into the jobs that are done by the employee. Everyday employees has to report to them directly and form the ground level supervisor. The general manager supervises various organisation like the Finance Supermarkets, Finance Property, Financial Marketing, Merchandise Transformation, Brand and Media. The Coles follow a string of acquisitions and expansions over the last 20 years. As of 2018, Coles owns 741 supermarkets in Australia.
The Coles Supermarkets has the main problem in their server and storage technology that are located to almost 700 supermarkets. The goal of the organization was to upgrade all the sites with a cluster of Server that are highly-available. This cluster of Server could be managed and monitored from the data centre of Coles’. The impact was seen on the revenue of the company due to the system outage was unacceptable. The storage and server infrastructure solution reach the end of the useful life, management aware of the reliability and its concerns. There is a new features released by the Microsoft’s Server Operating System which delivers a drastic improvements in system monitoring and remote management. The office systems used for managing day-to-day supermarket mission that are critical and had to meet the user demands. There are solution that are highly available from the redundancy design. There are point of sales prevented from failure that are processing through retails sales are actually untenable. The challenge is built to meet the user demand. The time taken to fill the items into the basket for the online shopper has become the major hurdle that are faced in the online operations.
The ERP system acquisition is the integral part for implementation process. The proposed model will be dealt in a structured way. If the ERP system acquisition is correct, the contribution to the ERP implementation system would be a successful one for the Coles Supermarket. The organization might have undertaken other major project of which ERP acquisition could be one of them. With the ERP system implementation the process become very critical to reach almost all the department and functions. For the maintenance and implementation certain investment is required for time and resources by the organization. A considerable amount of planning needs to be done and involve the entire organizations in it. A good process of ERP acquisition helps in determining the requirements of the user, helps in selecting the ERP system, make a purchase of the system in accordance with the requirement of the company and complete the deal by making some negotiation with the vendors’ regarding the terms and conditions.
Initiation Phase: In the proposed acquisition process, Initiation is the first phase where the project team formation is involve, solve the problem with proper definition, project goals and scopes are properly defined and the process of the acquisition is also plan. Initiation phase is the most important acquisition phase. If in this phase, proper planning is not done then the effect will be on the success of acquisition.
Selection Phase: The selection phase includes two main factors, short listing vendors’ and information gathering. The gathering information involves the vendors and the ERP systems. Information search is the successful acquisition process through which the ERP system can gather information through marketing material analysis, questionnaire design, vendors presentation, vendors working, use of consultant, prototype system analysis, relevant training, relevant studies analysis and other activities. The second factor which is the short listing of ERP vendors which is to analyse the vendor proposals, conduct interviews and perform site visit. The short listed vendors has to submit a complete proposal request.
Final Choice Phase: In this phase, the project team has to conduct an evaluation of the ERP systems and vendors. The technical, functional and financial aspects would be covered with the process of evaluation. As per the economic aspects, pricing methods, maintenance charges, implementation cost of the ERP system would be evaluated. During the process of selection, Technical and Functional evaluation are carried out partially. Evaluation of the Vendor includes reputation, offinancial stability verification, market share, warranty, training cost, financing, system vendor reputation, implementation strategy, and implementation and post-implementation support. From the technical aspects, ERP is evaluated for the platform interface, system architecture, current system integration, database integration, support service, development language and availability of source code. After the evaluation of the system, the final submission is done with the choice of vendor selected by the project team. There will be numerous member in the team whose choice of vendor might be different that use various method of evaluation. Some of them are scoring analysis, technical, economic, and functional techniques. In the final decision, management however will have access to data and analysis. The top management will make the final recommendation and may decide to look into additional factors or may even ignore the evaluation.
Negotiation Phase: This is the final phase in the ERP acquisition process that do negotiation with vendors. The systems and the vendors are finalized by the acquisition team. This phase is very important for the ERP acquisition that can be formal or informal. Formal negotiation is chosen for the right vendor. Informal negotiation is done on various issues that take place between the vendors and the project team. Such negotiation include, user training, product support, pricing and other related issues. In case the team had chosen a less desirable vendor with limited integrity, it is difficult for the team to return to the task with the second choice. The Legal negotiation includes ownership code discussion, implementation support, cost, deliverables, and warranties, right of the third party, financing, and the bankruptcy case, which need a clarification before signing any final contract. The steering committee or the project team would review the contract and submit it to the organization’s legal staff to clarify with the vendor if there is any questionable contract points. It is very important to pay attention to the final contract as it may vary from vendor to vendor that may include intellectual rights, software ownership, software error, payment profile, additional service entitlements, liability, license fee, errors in software, license cancellation. Any kind of open issues may be resolve by negotiation for the implementation process.
The sales procedures system flowchart represent the detail process, decision and tasks needed in the business. With the flowchart the organization will be able to easily understand and visualize the sales process. It also reveal and highlight the issues visually and number of sales get predicted. The steps represents graphically indicating the workflow direction, showing decision in diamond. The sales procedures system is completely linked with the success of the company as it include the knowledge of the product, Pre-approach sale planning, Approach, Presentation, Need assessment, Gaining commitment, Meeting Objection and Follow up. In business, the sales procedure is approach to sell the products and services.
The ERP platform is expensive and time-consuming which lack the anti-fraud or fraud control capabilities. The whole ERP system is based on processes and employee usually do not have any idea about the processes and cannot understand the requirement that need to make in the processes. Due to too many steps involve in the process it is time consuming and generate an incorrect entries. Suppose if the key person of the company leave the organization, then there is a possibility that the control process management becomes difficult to manage. The most technical problem for the ERP system is that the system break down or it become very slow. If discuss on the basis of production rapid changes are required in the ERP system as it include lot many phases during the entry process. Moreover, due to the complexity of ERP system and time consumption most of the employee do not want to use the ERP system as the basic skills to use the EPR software is not enough to solve the problems. With the breakdown of the ERP system data cannot be obtain that is required in the production. Most of the time the production is unpredictable, lines of the product will be change, breakdown of machines, and most of the time output is not known.
For running a business with efficiency, it is necessary to develop an accounting software. Bookkeeping program is the most recent program the business use today for the financial process. It perform certain function such as the automating financial transactions, tax calculating, tracking cash flows, internal auditing, analysing business data and affairs and providing a security. On the basis of needs and goals the accounting software is developed. The organization adapt accounting programs in order to boost the competitive advantages and develop the company. Through Bookkeeping programs the unique requirements of the organization such as financial tasks such as the donation activity, managing the project budgets. Custom account software is build based on the requirement of the business with core features and other related functions. First of a proper research is require to understand the needs and current processes. Reveal the drawbacks and improve the customization to create a custom solution and proceeds to the next level of designing and planning. At the stage of designing and planning, issues will be discuss the needs of the user, ROI, all possible risk, methodologies and technologies. The organization will be able to create a budget, sketch the workflow and create a design. When the design and strategy is ready, there begins a process of prototyping and development. The developer will write and compile all the code, install related environment, create a test cases, integrate all the features and refine program. The provider mostly use the concept of DevOps for continuous integration, delivery and testing. The final stage is releasing the supported software. No project are fully completed due to certain market fluctuation. Thus, with the adoption of custom software, the provider become a long-term partner for our organization and perform a post-implementation and in-process reviews. Additionally, the system is maintained and supports efficiency with the evolving requirement.
In the recent years, ‘locavore’ and ‘food miles’ concepts has spread which have drawn the attention of the environment that effects the transportation of food. The food retail corporatisation effects with regard to the Social and health effect have come to fore through Fast Food Nation, Food Inc and Future of Food. Only 2% of the total sales are done online which is very low in proportion to the total sales, and the e-commerce retailer’s standards.
The competition in the market has become a major threat for the business to operate successfully for the Coles Supermarkets. When analysing the environment of the external market, it has been found that fierce competition is faced by the company from the local retailers and the international retailers. With the increase in the number of retailers the new entrants has become a threat. The reason behind this is the stable profit that are currently offered by the Australian retail sector. There are logical and technological challenges faced by the Coles Supermarkets for the online retailers that have the advantage of the cost with regard to the company which have increase the availability of the alternative product.
Furthermore, it has been notice that the Coles Supermarket has some pricing challenges with the new competitors as it change the demand of the consumer and their taste will influence the cultural. This is another threat that restrict the retailer from gaining a competitive advantages. From the supermarket chain of Aldi it has indicated an internal threat with low cost of daily products on private level. Later, there has occurred substantial media commentary for the duopolistic and anti-competitive practice with which the concern of growing in the market has reduce the competitive pressure. With such environment, the national retailers able to take decisions to shape the production of food and retail practices. This will mostly affect the local consumers and communities.
There is a set of unique challenges the Coles supermarket has provided for the online shopping and the retailer are tackling it step by step to improve the experience of the customer. The Coles e-commerce head, Brad Foenander has shared two giant’s strategies that has ease the pain points of the supermarket. The time that the site take has been address by Coles and integrated the shopping data of the customer through online profile.
Another challenge is the imagery product that the in-store shoppers pick up, then read the information and think of comparing the sizes by not clicking to different pages.
It is recommended to develop an online sales in collaboration with the superior and suppliers. This can be a strategic solution to the Coles Supermarkets. Through this concept the Coles organization can gain competitive advantages for the growth of the brand. With this strategy the cost will be reduced, a better consumer service will be provided using the new technologies, market access will be better, and the sales can get better with the increase in market shares.
Secondly, it is recommended to take some advance measure that can implement online retail technology. The sale done online if increase by matching the price that are in the store and setting some lower prices for those product that are shown online. In addition to this, a click-collect locations can be launch in great amount to multiple location and include spot collection that drive through the online buyers. The site need some changes in the digital interactions for the online sites. This can help to leverage the loyalty programs of the customer. Furthermore, it has been realized that the online business achieve the technological advancement by adopting the hybrid cloud model. There have been a considerable amount of cost reductions and the information management of the consumer has become better. It can also include mobility in the projects for testing a tablet solution for the manufacture and a solution selected for mobile-based to enhance the online store.
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