Supermarket Information Systems

INTRODUCTION

Following the development of technology, Supermarket information systems have been improved from time to time. From the beginning of buying product from supermarket, to internet shopping system, up to now, Supermarket information system, customer’s behaviour have changes a lot.

However, as retail system need high business analysis procedures, the ePos system and decision support system and Customer Loyalty System has been overlooked. This project aims to improve these Supermarket information systems in human factors perspective.

History

China Resources Vanguard Shop (CRV) is one of the largest supermarket chains in Hong Kong. It is a member of China Resources Enterprise, a wholly owned subsidiary of State-owned enterprise.

China Resources Vanguard Shop, or CR Vanguard, is a flagship operating supermarket chains of China Resources. It is the third largest supermarket chain in Hong Kong. It operates approximately 450 stores in Hong Kong, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing.

PROBLEM DEFINITION

DSS:

For the decision support system, Traditional Invoicing system based on single database system, usually including management Information systems and decision support systems, business processing subsystem and decision support systems with a database. Composed of a single database-centric database systems often can not satisfy the diversification of modern supermarket data processing requirements. Specifically manifested in the following areas:

Cannot integrate internal and external aspects of data.

Cannot meet transaction processing and analysis and processing needs.

Difficult to adapt to various types of users of different levels of data integration requirements.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

SWOT [B2] – A tool that identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization. SWOT analysis determines what may assist the firm in accomplishing its objectives, and what obstacles must be overcome or minimized to achieve desired results.

Strengths

Part of the China Resources Enterprise

2926 stores in Hong Kong and China.

Provide wide range of products

No. of Staff 14500 in China ; 1000 in Hong Kong

Weaknesses

Founded in 1984

Branch store less than PARKnSHOP & Wellcome in HK.

Manpower:

-Only 1000 in Hong Kong

Product or service:

– Undifferentiated in relation to supermarket.

Location.

Opportunities

Developing market:

China

Merger:

Alliance with Manka (Supermarket)

Theaters

Price war.

Negative impression

a new competitor in your own home market

Substitute:

Competitor also has a new, innovative substitute product.

Porter’s 5 Forces [B3] – A tools is a simple but powerful tool for understanding where power lies in a business situation. This is useful, because it helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive position, and the strength of a position you’re considering moving into.

Threat of New Entrants (Low Pressure)

High capital and investment requirement

High likelihood of retaliation from existing industry players

Threat of Substitutes (Low Pressure)

Not easy to have substitution

Modern family and office lady dislikes the traditional market

Online supermarket / phone order is not popular

No delivery delay

Power of Supplier (Low Pressure)

Many supplier sources

Many kind of goods

Supermarket has much bargaining power for price negotiation

Power of Buyers (Medium Pressure)

Not easy to order the goods from supplier directly

Various customer group

Easy to switch to other competitors

Competitive Rivalry (High Pressure)

Many equally sized competitors

Park’n, Wellcome, DCH, Jusco and etc

Price Wars

DATA GATHERING juki

CRC Business Manager, Roland said: “We spent a few days, and open business meeting, the Preparatory trend analysis of customer loyalty to a few months, so we prefer to focus on the rush for our products than our competition Opponents and the development of our business.

Questions Asked

The questions that were asked from the Manager of Business¼ŒMr. Rolando, are:

â€¢ How many sales staff do you have?

â€¢ How many customers do they cover daily?

â€¢ What is the process of registering a new customer in your organization and how do the sales people introduce the company products?

â€¢ The way of keeping the customer history?

The questions that were asked from the Head of IT are:

â€¢ Describe the current environment in the supermarket industry?

â€¢Current IT capability and infrastructure of the company?

RECORD REVIEWING AND ONSITE OBSERVATION

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PROPOSED SYSTEM

In the chart, we will be able to see the whole flow of the supermarket system situation, first by the RFID received the data by the customer and sales and supplies and the production warehouse, and then save into the traditional Database, the data have been re-organization store into the Data warehouse, used to support decision analysis (OLAY), at the end, Customer Loyalty system can collect the right information use for the promotion. RFID, OLAY and Customer Loyalty are the object of our study. We recommend the following three ways:

DSS

Data warehouse [B2] and Technology in the application of DSS on decision support systems has become a new trend. OLAP [B1]decision-making method according to demand in the process of multi-dimensional view [Figure1]of various types of information to the data stored in the warehouse, to provide decision makers with a wide range of business analysis. Data Warehouse environment supermarket Invoicing System Architecture

Traditional Invoicing system has been built with a single database-centric data organization model, decision analysis has been unable to meet the system requirements on the database, but the emergence of data warehouse technology and Development of the above-mentioned problems provides a powerful tool and Means . Data warehousing is a kind of multiple distributed, heterogeneous databases to provide a unified query technology. Data warehouse management system of enterprises from outside the original data and collate the data together into a data warehouse, on this basis, through smooth, rational, comprehensive information management, so that end users can extract data directly from the data warehouse, associated data analysis.

Data warehouse is not a substitute for traditional databases [Figure 4], but on the basis of a traditional database, the data re-organization, used to support decision analysis. Data warehouse and traditional database systems assume different tasks, play a different role. That is based on the traditional database, business processing system to complete the daily business of data entry and processing, the data processed are sent to data warehouse; based on data warehouse decision support system implementation analysis and processing, in order to provide decision makers with complete, timely and accurate decision-making information. In this way, transaction processing environment and analytical processing environment to achieve the separation, the relative independence, constitute new system environments, while the data warehouse is a system of core-based environment .

Data warehouse environment at a supermarket invoicing system Structure shown in [Figure 1]. System is composed of business processing subsystem, support decision-making subsystem, and data management subsystem consists of three parts. Business processing subsystem in which the background for the traditional database (can be multiple distributed, heterogeneous database), foreground is a business application systems, the completion of all Invoicing business day processing, the entire Invoicing system data entry, and to support decision-making subsystem provides the raw data; support decision-making subsystem, the background for the data warehouse, front from the on-line analytical tools, data mining tools, etc., and the completion of statistical analysis and forecasting capabilities to achieve decision-making support; data management subsystem is responsible for the entire system of data management, in particular data from various data sources (traditional database) to the transfer of data warehouse and data warehouse data structures and business rules management.

GOLBAL SUCCESS STORIES

PROPOSED SOLUTION – ADVANTAGES

DSS

Carry out market analysis

Trend analysis

Subgroups of commodities, layout, purchase of the analysis, recommendation and merchandise

The analysis of the effectiveness of promotional activities carried out

Customer loyalty analysis

PROPOSED SOLUTION – DISADVANTAGES

DSS

Higher initial capital investment

Staff should need a special training.

Difficult to integrate with other management information system.

OVERALL BENEFITS OF THE SOLUTION

DSS

Data warehouse and multi-dimensional analysis with comprehensive data on capacity and can be fast and accurate analysis of the data to help managers make better business decisions, you can bring a competitive advantage for enterprises. The current data warehouse and data mining technology in domestic applications is not very extensive, but because of commercial enterprises have complex business structures, there are a large number of Invoicing business data, there is a specific need for decision analysis, the data warehouse technology in the business enterprise applications has broad prospects.

GAINING A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGRE

DSS.

Carry out market analysis

Trend analysis

Subgroups of commodities, layout, purchase of the analysis, recommendation and merchandise

The analysis of the effectiveness of promotional activities carried out

Customer loyalty analysis

RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES

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MAIN RESEARCH OUTCOMES

Given below are the main research outcomes that we came across. The figures however are derived from observing past data of the organisation.

â€¢ This project can be deployed with an initial cost of around US$.1 million

â€¢ ROI Expectation time within 18-30 months

â€¢ Expected sales growth up to the maximum of 25%-35%

â€¢ Clear competitive advantage with the new system

BIBLIOGAPHY

Book references:

[B1]Jun Chen, Sheng Yi-chi, CHEN Mian-yun. OLAP-based data warehouse DSS application in the study of .2003 (1) :30-31

[B2] WHInmon. Data warehouse. Mechanical Industry Press, 2000,5

[B2] SWOT Analysis I: Looking Outside for Threats and Opportunities

[B3] Australias Construction Industry – Porters Five Forces Strategy Analysis by Aruvian’s R’search

Web references:

[E1]

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