Discussion of sourcing options and the resulting social responsibility

1

Running head: BUSINESS ANALYTICS SYSTEM

3

Running head: Supply Chain Technology/Paper #3

Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising

Fall 2019

MBUMT 5300: Logistics Management

Professor Wendy Klarik

Supply Chain Technology/Paper #3

Lingrong Xiang

October 31, 2019

Conducting business today is significantly different from the way people did a century ago. There have been improvements in the ways of conducting business through information technology which results in faster and accurate transactions. The retail industry in particular has tremendously improved through the adoption of retail systems which allows people to serve customers faster and effectively. Various retail systems in practice today are point of sale, enterprise resource planning system and customer relationship management system. This essay discusses the retail industry and the various systems that are used today.

Retail refers to the act of selling goods and services to consumers through different distribution channels. Retailers are the people who satisfy customer demands that are identified through supply chain and they are on the lowest level of the supply chain management. They typically fulfill small orders of a large number of people who are the final users of the products (Suriyantphupha, & Bourlakis, 2019). They typical goods that retailers sell include clothing and food and sometimes recreational activities. Retail outlets are usually widely distributed across all areas and include outlets such as kiosks, supermarkets, boutiques, and recreational parks. A retail system is a technological item that assists in the process of retail. It facilitates transactions between the retailer and the customer and significantly improves services (Grewal, Roggeveen & Nordfält, 2017). They are usually for facilitating payments, managing the interactions of a company with the current and potential customers, storing customer data and recording financial transactions. The major retail systems are point of sale enterprise resource planning system and customer relationship management system.

Sales goals are those targets that companies and sales people hopes to achieve over a certain period of time. They are usually measured in the number of units sold or the amount of revenue acquired over a specified period of time (Suriyantphupha, & Bourlakis, 2019). Organizations, marketing departments and sales people are involved in making these goals and all have specific roles to play in order to achieve them. The goals help them to focus on the tasks they have to perform to achieve them. A merchandise plan refers to a plan to buy and sell merchandise in a way that maximizes return on investment. In basic terms, it means having the right stock without being over or under stocked and having the necessary product descriptions as desired by the customers. It means having products with the right size, color, taste, quantity and other qualities as preferred by customers (Suriyantphupha, & Bourlakis, 2019). Buy planning and analytics refers to the process of forecasting, budgeting and other analytical processes that benefit the business strategy and financial health of an organization. Management reporting refers to the reports that managers use to make business decisions, operate the organization and monitor progress. It also involves providing relevant information to different levels of management to help in determining their effectiveness in performing their responsibilities.

Point of sale refers to a system that facilitates transactions in a retail store. It is a business section where customers make a payment for services and products that they purchase in a store. Customers usually complete a point of sale transaction whenever they purchase something at a store. It is a critical component of the business which involves management of inventory sales and customer management. Point of sale system enables a retails store to generate report about sales which includes profit percentage, net profit, gross margin and cost of items sold. It also provides charts about the sales performance of the store.

Enterprise resource Planning refers to software that consists of integrated applications. It is used to collect, store, manage and interpret data from a wide range of business activities. The system also provides continuously updated and integrated views of critical business processes by use of common databases that are usually maintained by a database management system (Venkatesh, 2017). ERP is useful in increasing efficiency by reducing the effort and work required by the employees to carry out daily activities. Besides, it also helps in securing the company data as there are specific people who can edit it.

Customer relationship management is a system that manages the interactions of a company with the current and potential customers. The major goals of the company are to improve business relationships (Venkatesh, 2017). The system is crucial in helping companies to stay connected with customers, increase profitability and rationalize processes.

Business analytics refers to the practices, skills and technologies that enables one to investigate and explore the past business performance to know how to go about business planning. Business analytics aims at developing new approaches and understanding of the performance of business based on statistical methods and data (Grewal, Roggeveen & Nordfält, 2017). In the sustainable recycle cocktail dress, what works in terms of business analytics is the availability of the point of sale and customer relationship management systems. They help the company to make accurate reports about the financials and also process customers’ transactions faster. A customer relationship management system helps the company to manage the interactions of a company with the current and the potential customers (Copacino, 2019). The two systems help the company to reach a wide range of clients and also to maintain good relationships with them. What lacks in the company that manufactures the sustainable recycle cocktail dress are the necessary skills that are required to operate the systems. There are few trained people who can operate the systems which makes it hard to serve a wide range of customers.

Promotions significantly drive the business. The company conducts promotions in form of campaigns, road shows, pamphlets and brochures. The promotional campaigns have significantly contributed to increased knowledge among the consumers and have resulted in large sales. The company has previously benchmarked its operations with those of the competitors and companies that are ahead in the marketplace (Hugos, 2018). This has significantly helped it to improve the products and services. What drives the business is the desire to achieve environmental sustainability. Sale of sustainable recycle cocktail dress ensures there are minimal environmental impacts.

My product is a recyclable sustainable cocktail dress from Reformation. A cocktail dress is a semi-formal dress, which are worn usually in the late afternoon hours by evening 5:00 P.M. Women wear these dresses, and walk around and meet people on cocktail parties. The demographics of the sustainable recycle cocktail dress are middle aged and old women. The reason why they buy the dress is because they are aware of environmental sustainability and by purchasing the recycle cocktail dress they are indirectly contributing to environmental conservation. Trends about the dress are a shift and increase in the volume of sales in the last few years. This is as a result of promotional campaigns and positive word of mouth from the customers who have purchased it before. The significant attributes about the dress are the color, size and style, fabric, pattern . Most ladies prefer dresses with brighter colors like red and pink and those are the ones the company makes in bulk. The company also makes dresses of different sizes as the customers have differing body sizes. Styles of the dresses keep changing as new one arise. There are also customers who request dresses with specific styles.

References

Copacino, W. C. (2019). Supply chain management: The basics and beyond. Routledge.

Grewal, D., Roggeveen, A. L., & Nordfält, J. (2017). The future of retailing. Journal of Retailing, 93(1), 1-6.

Hugos, M. H. (2018). Essentials of supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.

Suriyantphupha, P., & Bourlakis, M. (2019). Information Technology in a Traditional Retail Supply Chain: A Structured Literature Review. Projectics/Proyectica/Projectique, (1), 89-102.

Venkatesh, J. (2017). RFID Technology: role of POS, E-commerce, ERP & CRM technologies inthe retail industry. Journal Homepage: http://www. ijmra. us, 6(12).