Strategic Information System Coles Supermarket

A strategy which is a plan of how an information system will be made and the procedures describing its functions is developed. This is the Strategic Information System that is geared to give the organization a new edge in processes, products and services delivery in a way that will bring an advantage to the business in terms of revenue and time. Background Information: Coles Supermarket Coles Supermarket has since its inception about a century ago developed to be one of the leading and innovative organizations in the retail industry of Australia. George Coles, the founder, had a key and vital role in the early retail enterprise of Australia (Deloitte, 2012). Having a background in retailing courtesy of his father he travelled to the U.

Two years prior, there was a de-merging of Myer from Cole business to a privately owned company, however, in 2009 the company was once again listed. To this day, Coles Supermarkets continues to offer retailing of Australian food. The company employs tens of thousands employees who are the forerunners in carrying out the company’s transactions. The Cole’s Supermarkets is one of two chains of supermarkets that retail in Australia (Gunasekaran, 2008). Coles supermarkets run more than 800 stores all around Australia. Operations and functionality Cole’s supermarkets provide an assurance to its customers of value and convenience. This is done by management of inventory well and assessing of quality to the letter. First, the company has procedures and policies that have been set that ensures the synchrony of the time of stock arrival to their display in the shelves where defective goods are sifted out.

The products that are on the shelves are constantly checked to make sure that required levels are kept to avoid shortage (Dwivedi, 2012). Second, SOS (Sophisticated point of sale) is used to record and track products sold. The business also uses an online platform for selling to their customers. The platform deals with the payments that are made and takes information of the customer to facilitate physical delivery of the goods purchased on time. Coles Supermarket has heavily invested in information systems to help it keep its edge as one of the competitive retailers in Australia. Cole Supermarket is yet to use big data analytics (Cameron, 2014). As a strategic information system, this will enable maximization of sales and marketing strategies. An information system should have a measure of reaching the wide-ranging databases that hold data from various sources (Loshin, 2017).

• Exchange, delivery, and transformation of data – The information system should provide a way of efficiently moving information from the source to the target. This is regardless of the format of the source data. Information System ensures that information is well set for delivery in the right format (Loshin, 2017). • Replication of data and capture of data change – These processes allow for bypassing of bottlenecks that data delivery impede in a way to control delivery and ease of access. This is done on a real-time basis, therefore, ESP enables an organization to be ahead of its competitors with appropriate use of Information System (Loshin, 2017). Metadata management The Strategic Information System should define a modern information system that will be sensitive to business-related metadata control.

This will include business terms used frequently and lineage of data and how it relates to various models (Loshin, 2017). Data quality management The information system should have a management system for data that has a high precision for identifying of flaws. It should also have a capability to analyze and standardize the data errors. Information technology also enables organizations to get strategies for cost leadership. Barrier to Entry -Industries that have a high potential to give returns are more preferred by investors. However, for an organization in such an industry, the profit margins will decrease with entrants to the market by competitors (Porter & Millar, 1985). Organisations in these industries need to give services that are not easy to imitate to differentiate themselves from the market.

Information Technology gives a good platform to do this. Using Information technology well a firm can carve out a good portion of the market to itself and thus progress in its growth. Technology offers a wonderful opportunity through the internet to reach through to a global market. Alliance building-As an organization expands and gets to new lands that it does not originate from, it is prudent to maintain a good relationship with other companies in the same industry and support industries so that they can maintain their competitive advantage (Porter & Millar, 1996). It is a new trend for companies to work together these days than it was in the past. Companies can avoid many hassles by having a good rapport with other industries.

Shortage of resources to educate users of system use 4. Inability of the system to satisfy the user’s expectations 5. Employees who are not knowledgeable about the product (Almalki, et al. , 2017) Technical Challenges 1. Difficulty in transforming the business to suit the system 2. For a particular business, what should be taken into consideration is the recommendations of the previous team or one that befits the current model of the business (Almalki, et al. , 2017) Conclusion A strategic Information System is an important tool that is used to develop infrastructure that will enable a business to be on the fore of its competitors. Technology gives a wide berth to organizations to analyze the data that is at their disposal, get actionable knowledge and use it to improve their processes.