Alliance Supermarket and Point-of-Sale Systems

Alliance Supermarket and Point-of-Sale Systems

Inventory records are vital for any organization as it is one of the sources of information that the management requires to plan for future sales and purchases in the market.  To aid the information collection for the planning of inventory records, business information, and management systems are crucial. The POS (point of sale) system is one of the renowned business information systems that give the business a platform to record and acquire data in the form of universal product codes (Lal, 2018).   This data is relevant to the business market analysis involving customers as well as purchase habits.  This elaboration matches with the case of Alliance Supermarkets which have established a point of sale system for their business operation and inventory records. The system, however, had benefited the organization in terms of strategizing the market processes.  However, there have been notable challenges with the information system that needs to be addressed for the benefit of the business.   One of the challenges is the inability of the system to adapt and spot abrupt demand changes due to its reliance on historical demand information its database.

The other prevalent challenge with the system is that it is hard for organizing to keep track of various customer purchase strategies. Finally, the organization has been challenged regularly by the manufacturers to help them determine various purchase history and plan market targets for their products, something that the POS has not achieved yet.  This paper, therefore, aims at giving the solutions to Alliance Supermarkets’ challenges through recommending innovative strategic uses of the information from the system,   proposal of new information use from the system, and proposal of the information that would help the organization to use the least cost while delivering quality services to the customers.

One category of information that the business would obtain from the POS system would be the product sale information. This type of data would, therefore, be used to calculate the different purchases and costs of various products with the aim of conducting an ABC analysis strategy on each product the business deals with (Chapter 10). This type of analysis helps the management to determine the products which have the highest turnover and the ones that have the lowest profit (Aleem & Bee, 2013). With this type of information, the organization is able to concentrate on the highest turnover products. Therefore, the profit of the organization is generally impacted.   The system should hence, be configured to provide this information.

From the system, the costs of production of transport of the products from the manufacturers should be noted. This type of information would help the management of the organization to set various prices of the services and products with the consideration of the market purchased patterns of the customers.  The management would hence, have a point of analyzing the cheapest way to obtain the goods in order to sell them to the customers at an affordable price.   In this process, the quality will also be maintained to ensure that business sustainability and competitiveness in the market is achieved.

Having the POS system at Alliance Supermarkets would give them the advantage of accessing individual customer information. For example, the system would help to analyze the purchase habits and frequency of individual customers as well as their feedback.    The organization would, therefore, use the information with a new approach that would help it to improve its turnover as well as customer satisfaction.  One of the approaches that Alliance would incorporate is the use of this information to target guide their production processes. Notably, when individual customers give their feedback, it would be very important for the organization to understand the upgrades they ought to impose on its service and product delivery (Rainer, Cegielski, Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, & Sanchez-Rodriguez, 2013).  This strategy would also be of help for the manufacturers of Alliance products in targeting their customers. Finally, the individual customer information would also be relevant for the organization in making decisions related to inventory upgrades.

The data obtained from the POS systems is privately accessed by the management of the organization.  However, based on the fact that the suppliers of Alliance Supermarkets’ products request for customer details from the management in order to plan for their marking targets, it would be unethical for Alliance to share the data with them.   The data should be upheld with the utmost integrity to prevent customer details exposition. In general, the system seems to be secure unless tampered with by the management.  This issue can be justified through the CEO’s sole access to the system.

In conclusion, inventory management requires to be fed with information from various business information systems like the POS.  This paper has elaborated on the use of POS in Alliance Supermarkets.   However, it was noted that besides the merits of the system to this organization, there were challenges in customer data management as well as tracing market patterns. The paper has, therefore, projected that information form the POS would be used to strategize the marketing as well as production processes.   Finally, it was determined that ethical violations of the system would be prevalent if the management decides to use the individual customer data to help its manufacturers to set their market targets. However, the privacy was assessed to be fine based on the reason that only a few members of the organization, like the CEO, access the data.

References

(Chapter 10).Inventory Management

Aleem, A., & Bee, R. (2013). Sales And Inventory Management System. Retrieved from: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/13591/1/Rahmet%20Bee_13743.pdf

Lal, M.(2018). Study of Effectiveness of POS Data in Managing Supply Chain. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328406416_Study_of_Effectiveness_of_POS_Data_in_Managing_Supply_Chain

Rainer, R. K., Cegielski, C. G., Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, I., & Sanchez-Rodriguez, C. (2013). Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LAIeCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA280&dq=Information+Systems+for+Inventory+Management+book&ots=-XrQ0LFdx2&sig=hC9o6BA6y-8jM-_mL-4UYc4pK3c&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Information%20Systems%20for%20Inventory%20Management%20book&f=false