Table of Contents
Table of Contents 1
Brief Summary of Zara 2
How would you advise Salgado to proceed on the issue of upgrading Zara’s POS systems? 3 - Should the company upgrade the POS terminals to modern operating system? 3 - Should the company build in-store networks? 4 - Should the company give employees the ability to look up inventory balances for items in their own stores? 4 - Should the company give employees the ability to look up inventory balances for items in their other stores? 4
What is the Zara “business model”? How is it different from the business model of other large clothing retailers? What weaknesses, if any, do you see within this business model? Is it scalable? 4
In your opinion, what are the most
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With an IT technology upgrade, manual intervention would be eliminated, thus promoting operational efficiency (Moore, 2009).
* Should the company upgrade the POS terminals to modern operating system?
Yes, the POS terminals were out-dated and were being backed by DOS operating system which Microsoft no longer supported. They are running a risk of the product becoming obsolete and being unable to maintain support from vendors. Up-to-date operating system would provide more user friendly mechanisms, more functionality, thus allowing effective communication between stores and headquarters. New modern operating systems would allow simple standardisation and sharing of data across the board. Modern operating systems also provide more security platforms (such as credit card details), inventory management, and report generation for decision making. Also it allows real time transactions to be recorded.
* Should the company build in-store networks?
Yes, the company is missing out on communication and information sharing within the store network system. The in-store network allows connectivity and provides daily sales totals, also ordering in “real time “processing. It allows POS terminals to talk to one another and allows viewing of up-to-date data at any time.
* Should the company give employees the ability to look up inventory balances for items in their own stores?
Absolutely, as it will save time during the ordering
This will need to be a system that is available at each of the individual stores. Sales clerks will need to have the ability to access this information so that when a
In addition, the company can benefit from a distinctly higher level of productivity as well as an increase in the morale of staff as a result of putting in place this technology. In other instances, it has been argued that putting in place this technology will be key in ensuring that the company’s intranet will be a helpful aid in ensuring that each of the store’s managers and employees will be able to clearly track their sales and inventory (Zhang & Li, 2009). Considering the fact that the company is a retailer that is growing retail store, the use of iPads will be critical in ensuring an automation of the store’s processes of supply chain which will be an aid in enabling them to efficiently receive inventory and ensuring that the pricing of shelf labels as well as in performing of markdowns (Fosso et al,
point of sale system. The POS system is a perpetual inventory counting method that electronically records items immediately upon their point of sale (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). In other words, as a cashier scans a customer 's groceries, each scanned item is automatically recorded in the system and deducted from the store’s inventory. Implementing a point of sale would benefit a business’s inventory management function in several ways. First, the POS system will provide managers with a continuous flow of updated information (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). As a result, the information will provide more accuracy when used for sales forecasts and analysis, which substantially affect inventory decisions. Continuously, this inventory system would also allow greater flexibility in the sense that it can be wirelessly linked to the main company’s inventory system, creating a network of the company’s inventory systems. The POS system is capable of tracking many operations at once and can be modified according to management’s needs (MacCarthy, n.d.). This flexibility would undoubtedly benefit a large company like Wegman’s with many store locations. Lastly, the system is able to help businesses maintain a high level of customer service. Because the system gives customers a receipt with the price and quantity of each item purchased, the customer is able to see exactly what he or she purchased. This practice
It might not be in the retailer’s best interest to perform such upgrade, as the new system will replace three of the existing legacy systems in terms of ordering and fulfillment. The IS department will perceive such upgrade as a radical move and is expected to show high resistance in response to it. Even though Zara has a decentralized decision making process, the retailer’s IS department exercises absolute autonomy on the IT infrastructure and design. The fact that “only one person had left the department” in the past 10 years further confirms that the retailer is suffering from cognitive and action inertia, and thus creating a huge barrier for such
Increasing security threat: Zara were working from a decentralised IT system based on floppy disks, providing little opportunity to access highly valuable data on a networked database. The majority of security breeches originate with careless or vindictive employees (Austin and Darby, 2003). For Zara, there is limited opportunity for an employee to threaten the system, the worst-case scenario is that they might delete the days sales records. With such a basic system, there is also limited opportunity for hackers to infiltrate the system as the data is transferred only once a day to headquarters.
The Spanish retail chain Zara has unique supply chain management practices that enable it to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion retailers in the industry. Zara’s rapid response time enables the firm to quickly respond to changing fashions while deliberately under producing products. This strategy, which is supported by competencies in logistic management, design and information systems, allows the company to maintain less inventory and higher profit margins and is a key factor to Zara’s success. The firm should continue to add value by seeking new opportunities to expand in the retail market and maintain their sustainable growth.
An inventory management system would be a great asset to any restaurant. It is very important to be able to keep track of inventory to make sure items are being used and food costs are staying low. Having an inventory management system will
Another problem that Zara’s information system is facing is that it is not sustainable in an ecological way. Indeed, the amount of shipping required by the actual centralized business model is already massive and it is expected to grow exponentially with the participation of the booming Asian economies. Such a model is not complying with the current ecological trends and reforms. For instance, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI), a group of manufacturers and retailers working together to simplify and promote global commerce has lately been working on the elaboration of the 2016 Future supply chain design. Roland Dachs and Xavier Derycke, members of the GCI Future Supply Chain Work Team, announced in a report “In the future, the (supply chain)
The finance department will also monitor levels of lost and outdated inventory to make sure that the levels don’t become too high. They need to write off this inventory but has to make sure that it isn’t excessive. Finance people also monitor the counts or physical inventories in order to reconcile what is actually on hand with what has been recorded in the company’s records. The finance department does not manage the inventory personally but it does have to make sure that the people
Managing what's in a warehouse or on the shop floor can be extremely complex if you're looking for optimal cost and supply chain management capabilities( Needleman, 2017 ). Inventory estimation and control is directly impacted a company’s profitability.
The data can easily loss because they only use a logbook to record their inventory data. With the system, it will help more on the security of the data. Inventory loss hard to detect because admin need to review one by one page in the logbook, but with the system developed, it may help the admin to detect the inventory in and out from the
This is also good security since you can easily just not give those people managing inventory access to the financial database, whereas if they were stored in the same database, you would need to configure special permissions on the data, again requiring someone with greater knowledge of information systems than the typical business owner has.
What Bruno Sanchez Ocampo couldn’t see, was that even though the system was working properly, there were several gaps that a new system could fulfill efficiently. The lack of constant communication with the headquarters could be taken as a perfect example. The cost of having only one daily communication after the store was closed could be simply solved by a new wireless system. Having only one modem connected POS per store turned day to day operation into highly unproductive situation, not to say that using floppy disk and carrying them around the store each time was extremely out of date by the year 2003. A major lack in the system was that there was no possibility of sharing data between the POS and the PDA. As a consequence there was a complete miscommunication between the point of sales and the personal display assistants. Furthermore, another flaw in the system was the impossibility of communication between the different stores. This is a huge opportunity cost if we think about the internal supply that could be provided by the nearby stores. Even though Zara made an effort and changed the hardware of the POS, this seemed to be not enough. The software was still run by DOS and there was no more support for that kind of program.
Zara is a clothing company that was founded in 1975 and came from Spain. Its under Inditex group which owns other brands such as Massimo Dutti, Pull & Bear, Oysho, Uterques and many more companies. Zara grew very fast and currently in 2012 has 1,617 stores worldwide. With a large name in the fashion industry, besides that, Zara faces tough competition internationally including H&M, Benetton, and GAP. In order to keep up with the speed chic, Zara need to keep up also with the information system to run their business.