Question

In this service learning based project, you are expected to identify a local small business (for example, a grocery store) in your community, and apply your knowledge about IT and business to analyze the role of IT for this business, and develop an IT Plan for it. The plan would specify (at a high level) the key IT applications that the business should focus on, the underlying infrastructure technologies necessary to support these applications, how to go about achieving this (e.g., sequencing the introduction of major applications), whether services should be delivered via in-house resources or outsources, etc. Explain how the IT plan is consistent with (and whether it suggests changes to) the business needs, financial resources, competitive position etc.

You can assume that you are hired by a local small business company as an IT consultant. You are given 500-10,000 dollars to improve or setup its information systems. What is your Information System plan for the company?

A useful way to structure your research and project results is the following.

1. Introduce the context: the small business company introduction, its products, markets, and mission.

2. Discuss the problems with its current information processing abilities – analyze whether it is inadequate in satisfying computing requirements, misaligned with firm strategy, not cost effective etc.

3. Develop and justify your proposed IT strategy. What new technologies should be introduced? What applications would they support, and who would use them to do what differently?

4. Summary.

Answer 1

Introduction:

A small Grocery shop is currently managing everything manually. e.g. supplier supplies items which are counted and stored manually, inventory management is done manually, receiepts if required are given manually, cash management and actual sell is also done manually.

Problems identified:

. Due to all manual management, there are certain issues which are identified below.

a) Exact inventory of products at any point is not known. It has to be checked manually. This takes time and affects next delivery cycle

b) Receipts are given only when required by customers and they are handmade which are prone to errors.

c) Cash management is done manually which may be prone to errors.

d) There is demand for certain items and some items are kept in the store without sell for long time. It’s difficult to understand manually which items require to be filled immediately and which items can wait.

e) Billing cycle is decided by vendor and store keeper has to pay according to credit days given for any product. Its difficult to analyze manually, how many products are sold within credit day period and hence profitable to keep and how many products take time to sell.  

f) Manual maintenance of accounts is cumbersome.

Proposed IT strategy:

Introduction of one laptop with internet connection and ERP software which with modules Purchase, Accounts, Sales, Cash Management. This will require some initial capital investment, but it will provide tremendous benefit to grocery store owner.

Benefits of above strategy:

1) All the items which come from the distributors will be marked in Purchase module with appropriate quantity, cost, expiry date if any etc. Once sales of one item happens, owner will prepare sales receipt from the system. Inventory in the system will automatically get updated. This will help in maintainece of real time inventory of store at any time

2) Receipts will be printed automatically. No chance of error.

3) Cash management will be done automatically. At the end of the day, the total sales amount should match with actual cash + card receipts. Every day cash management will be automatic and easy.

4) By referring to inventory at any time, owner can understand which items are going to exhaust soon and need to be ordered to distributor. He can exactly guess when he can order those items. This will help him in increasing his credit period on ordered items and optimization of profits. On similar note, he can check from the system, which items are in the store for long time. This will help him in identifying those items which are not in demand and should be ordered in minimum quantity. Additionally if there is demand for specific new item, it can be included in the inventory order list easily from the system.

5) Overall efficiency of store will increase. This will help the store owner to beat the competition nearby.

6) At the end of month, quarter, year overall accounts report can be automatically generated. This will help in understanding overall turnover, profits, filing tax statements etc.

Summary:

IT has tremendous benefits and it helps in automation of many human tasks. This helps in optimization of business demand and supply and also the profit. Therefore it will be wise to to introduce automated IT systems in business with the help of proper IT consultant. It will make the small scale business lean, more meaningful and efficient.