MIS Application in Service-Based Organizations - Essay Example

MIS APPLICATION IN SERVICE BASED ORGANIZATIONS by Student’s Name Code + Course Name Professor University City/State Date MIS Application in Service Based Organizations Introduction Retailing is an important business aspect that mainly deals with activities involved in selling goods and services to a company’s consumers. Thus in a simpler means, retailing can be defined as every activity involved on a commodity or goods before reaching the final consumer for his personal use (Verchoor 1998). Many production firms today have majored in retailing of their products at a large scale base to ensure consumer satisfaction. It is due to this that retailing is considered to be at its highest peak possible in the history of business. For instance, the Mall.co.uk is one of the leading companies when it comes to sales. Other companies with a high degree of sales are general motors, W-Mart and other leading manufacturing companies. With improve in technology as days goes by, the Mall retail business is exposed to a variety of opportunities for expansion. With the technological advancements, consumers tend to put more pressure to the management in a quest to obtain effective services from their retail outlets. This may include the expectations of improved or automated services in their stores that have to come in hand with a cut in price of the commodity. This comes as a challenge to the developing retail stores and those that are already established (Verchoor 1998). This is because; the retail outlets may tend not to meet the required standards of their clients. It’s due to this numerous challenges facing their operations that force retailers such as the Mall to establish more stores all over the dominated market to meet its customer demand. But as a result of this and stiff competition, they are forced to cut off their prices for their relevance to be seen in the market. The Mall has experienced numerous challenges they are exposed to while serving their clients, some of the challenges exhibited is coming up with a strategy on how they can deliver quality to their clients and at the same time earn their own fare share of the profit, strategies that will ensure they survive in the competitive market where the consumers have a variety of products to choose from (McShane 2008). Techniques for Collection of Data in Retail Context Data collection regarding the retail system of the company Mall.co.uk for instance, can be derived to from the sales of the company. Sales, is simply the volume of goods and services a retailer delivers to its clients (McShane 2008). With an increase in sales, the Mall retail store will obviously be able to know its position in the market. With this in mind the management of the mall will have to put less emphasis on short term profits in order to benefit from the future profits. Using sales as a tool to collect information, it therefore means that the company’s investments that are put to place recently will yield future profits. The retail store will be able to know the quantity of goods to be supplied to their consumers by their sales. An increase in sales means the store has to increase the supply to meet the consumer demand. The retail store has to establish goals for the services it offers. For Mall.co.uk stability is one of the goals. The company puts emphasis on the maintenance of their sales volume and market price of their products. Retailers often seek to maintain a stable sale ratio on the products and services offered to their consumers. Sales can be an essential tool to use in the collection of data that can in turn be used to make decisions that are important to the business. The sales of accompany can at times be used to analyze the financial statements of the company (McShane 2008). It helps in keeping of records and in analysis of activities involved in the retail process. Another tool that is important in the analysis of the retail process of the Mall is the profit the company gets through the retailer (Raven 2009). The company through the retail stores has an objective of obtaining a minimum profit from its operations. This is the core business of majority of business operational in the markets. The profit of a company may be expressed in monetary value or as a percentage of the sales in question. From the analysis of the profit, a company can come up with a financial statement that is accurate. For the company Mall.co.uk, if the profit is less than 16% of the total capital expenditure, the company conceders it is making profit in its operations which is approximately $800000 (Raven 2009). Big financial firms such as the Mall with a higher capital expenditure in return set a return on investment as their main objective of operation. Return on investments can be described as the relationship between the investment in capital items and the profit the business makes. The maximum acceptable rate is obtained and compared with the actual returns from the sales at the end of a financial year. Operational efficiency is also an important aspect to be defined in the financial statement of the company. This can be expressed as the average cost of production minus the operational expenses. From this, profit of the company is viewed as an important tool in the establishment of a financial statement analysis. Consumer satisfaction is also an important tool in the development of a retail analysis. Consumer satisfaction is simply the ability of a company or its retail stores to fully satisfy the consumer’s needs. The Mall and the operations of the company strive at satisfying the consumers in order to maintain them. Consumer satisfaction may at times be able to be extended to public satisfaction (Raven 2009). This is for it to be able to cover the shareholders. Public satisfaction in this context is the key objectives of any operational retail stores in the market. A retail store should be able to satisfy the government, its employees, the community at large and its consumers. As a form of public satisfaction, a retail stores position in the market also plays an essential role in the analysis of operations. The market position or commonly known as the retail image is simply the consumer’s perspective of the retail chains. This can be in the form of specialization, innovation, discount oriented and many more traits. It is very necessary for an organization to have a clean and clear image to the public. A successful market position or image of a retail store is for the consumer to view the retailer as intended. It is from this image that the retailer will establish strategies in order to maintain its relevance in the market. RETAIL MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN PRODUCT AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT Retail management can be described as operating a store in which the goods and services are sold and on the other hand, retail management information system includes use of accessories to run the retail store. The accessories used include, hardware, software and procedures essential in management of retail activities (Von Glinow 2008). The activities range from planning to financial management, to the logistics and the point of sales transactions involved. This simply implies that Mall could use retail management information system in the management of stores, and other retail operations from one office setting. This system, which is the retail management information system, can be used to support the basic retail functions of procurement, delivery of goods and services to clients, and the storage of transactions. On the other hand, the retail management information system can also be used by a retail store in governing of customer information such as the inventory and the product sales. One of the major key functions of this system is the ability to trace the paths of the purchase orders and in updating the clients inventory records. Despite all this activities undertaken by the use of retail management information system, the system can also be used as a tool to analyze checks and credit cards transactions and cash involved in purchasing of goods. By this, there will be an efficient flow of resources from one point of the retail store to another. There are many forms of retail management information systems adopted by the Mall that can be customized according to the demand of the company. The system for instance, can be made to deal with the departmental stores, in the shopping malls, or for prescription of drugs. They can also be formulated to accommodate multiple languages in order to accommodate all the clients, multiple currencies, and different tax systems in order for the retail store to cover a wider market. With the customized systems, the Mall can access a wider markets and a wider access to clients for an increased production. With this, retail management information systems have been incorporated into retails stores to manage the financial services involved. By using this system, operations are improved and as a result, there is a significant reduction of cost. This is because, when retailers use the system, they reduce and minimize the chances of duplicate entries and transactions. This is because; the system is responsible in facilitating the important integrals between payments, inventory and the client’s transactions (Von Glinow 2008). Retail Management Information Systems in Customer Services By effectively keeping track of the customer’s inventory, the process can be dealt with at a faster speed compared with the time required to process the request without using the system. This will greatly improve the services offered at the Mall and in return earn more customers. It is will later be observed that the profit expected in the running of the Mall will increase significantly. The system will also allow the retailer to have an easy access to data. By so doing, the company will be able to identify the opportunities that present themselves in the service and as a result reduce the cost of production for the company. The use of the retail management information system by the company will simply result to operation of a profitable business. The pricing of the products consumed will be adhered to by the system and it will ensure the policies set aside will be followed. In order for the company to effectively put into place an effective retail management information system, it has to establish its potential consumers for his products and make an effort to personalize their products to meet their demands. The store has also to establish effective data collection techniques in order to know the nature of the consumers. The company for instance has used this method to also analyze the behavior of his consumers for it to be able to predict the market scale. For instance, an increase in demand or a decrease in the consumption of the goods it provides. By the use of the system, there is a higher chance of an increase in consumer loyalty. This means that the consumers of their products will be attracted to the services offered by the store and will not prefer other retail services other than those they are used to. This will ensure that the company’s services remain available and a low record of losses will be recorded if possible. Customer loyalty is an important aspect important in any retail operations. The Mall thus has to device strategies to use in order to acquire more loyal consumers. The use of retail management information system will work great in achieving this retail goal. By the use of this system, there is promised developments in retail management systems in malls operational globally. This means that there will be more services offered to clients and the loyal consumers will have a chance to expect more from the operations of malls such as the Mall as a retail center. The use of electronic systems for instance will attract customers to the retail store thus there will be an increase in profit. An increase in profit means a relevance of the business in its operations. That is the main reason of operation of major business. Implication of the Use of Retail Management Information System The fact that the Mall.co.uk is prone to changes brings about the issue of constantly having the need to develop retail planning. This can be a very complex process especially when the changes turn out to be rapid. With this in mind, the company’s management has to put into consideration the effective use of retail management information system. Factors such as technological advancements, competition, and the market forces are responsible for the rapid changes experienced in the management of the Mall stores. As a result of the use of retail management information system, there will be a decrease in labor cost. This is because; the introduction of this system means there will be computerization of services from various departments in the retail chains. A decrease in production cost will definitely lead to an increase in output. This is because; the labor cost that could otherwise be paid to the laborers will now be utilized to run other activities in the company. This will be of advantage in the retails chain but a disadvantage to the market as the rate of unemployment will be expected to increase significantly. The use of the retail management information system will bring about an improved transparency in the consumer transactions. This implies that, there will be an overview of the transactions mode from the company to the consumer. The clients and the consumers would be able to trace their goods and products as they flow from the suppliers to the retail stores and later on to him. This will minimize cases of corruption in the process. The retailing function of distribution will be reduced to a computerized system that will be easily monitored from one office sitting this will be of importance to the company due to the winning of loyalty from its clients. Before the introduction of the retail management information system, the relationship between the suppliers and the retail store was complex. This was because; the company was and is still part of the distribution channels. But due to lack of transparency in their operations, there resulted into various misunderstanding. But with the introduction of a system that will be credible and transparent, both parties will be able to understand the processes involved in the supply retail chain. Transparence in the movement of goods and services is a key factor that has been dealt with by the introduction of an information management system (Watson 2006). The great advancements in the computerized information technology, a wider verity in system management have been developed that are essential in helping the company’s managers make important decisions that will help run the store. The systems at times have proven to be helpful in the implementation of the policies set aside to govern the activities of the retail chains (Lucy 2004). Majority of this systems are developed and managed by managers and are designed to attend to specific functions of the retail store. The functions may include the distribution chain, the consumer feedback desk and the stores. As a result of the introduction of the information system, the retailers have now a variety of choices to choose from, the retail management can decide if to participate in selective retailing of their products to consumers or to intensify on the type of distribution they were previously on. This has led to the increase in consumer loyalty. With this, there will be development of retail specialization. This is where the retailer will have to specialize in supply and distribution of one kind of good or product. This can be a strategy to cub the problem of competition or to improve in the record keeping of the transactions. The Differences Present From the information provided above, its evidence that with the introduction of retail management information system to the Mall retail stores will yield numerous clients to service. It will be easier to attract consumers using the online shopping portal for instance (Lucy 2004). It is from this that the company does different from other retail stores to offer convenient services to its clients. With this, the clients will be able to purchase their required goods and services online without necessarily going to a shopping mall. When a retailer introduces this to the system, the retail chains will record a significant increase in the profits. In order to ensure maximum satisfaction of consumer to their products, as compared to other retail stores, the management of the company has developed effective strategies that will help attract consumers to his services. As described above, introduction of an online shopping system is an effective way to help this. Clients will be attracted to retail services that offer effective services to them. Development of an online customer care desk will also be essential step in the development of an effective service operation. An online customer complainant desk can also prove to be the difference between services offered by the Mall and services offered by other retail stores. Retail customers can expect more from the technological advancements exhibited by the retail chains of supply. The role of an effective use of retail management information system has been displayed to be effective to the operations of the Mall. Advancements in computerized systems of operations has favored the retrieval of important information online, processing of vital processes in retailing systems, and the major displays of goods and services for advertisement processes (McShane 2008). With the rapid increase in technological advancements, there are also developments of important mobile applications that will be used by retailers and their consumers in the retail services. This will greatly advance the retail operations of the Mall. Work cited Verchoor, C.C. 1998, A study of the link between a corporation’s financial performance and its commitment to ethics, Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 1509-1516. Lucy, T. 2004, Management information system, retailing Palgrave McMillan, Pg. 121 Wilson, F. 2010,Retail behavior and improvement in the technological processes, New York: Oxford University Press. Watson, T. 2006,Organizing and managing retailers, UK: Pearson Education Limited. McShane, S.L. & Von Glinow, M.A. 2008, Retail Behavior, 4ed, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irvin. French, J. R. P. & Raven, B. 2009, The bases of technological power. In D. Cartwright and A. Zander.Group dynamics.New York: Harper & Row. Read More