Organizational Structure of Coles Supermarket

Discuss about the Strategic Information System: Coles Supermarkets.

In the field of Information System, Strategic Information System (SIS) is mainly defined as some specific pre-determined procedures which are used in different organizations to set all their different plans as well as strategies based on the existing criterion. Cassidy, (2016) also defined that Strategic Information System is a type of descriptive framework that assists to have the better understanding and clarity of relationships within IT and strategic management. SIS also assists any organization to achieve both short goals as well as long term goals. Among different parts of SIS, AIS is one the integral part which is mainly used by any organization to organize their all different types of operations. In today’s market there are plentiful types of accounting software packages that assists to use AIS in any organization.

The literature review is considerably outlined the elaborated illustration about different accounting information systems used in all retail supermarkets of Australia. In this particular report, it also clear the idea about the organizational structure, operational problems faced in Coles Supermarket. Along with this, it also discussed about the sales flow chart of Coles and the undertaken system acquisition method. Nevertheless, the second part of report discusses about the literature review of all suitable accounting software packages and choosing the suitable one for Coles with better recommendations of all faced issues.

Coles Supermarket or merely Coles is one the significant grocery store in Australia which is operated by the parent company Wesfarmers (Coles.com.au, 2018). It is mainly founded in 1914 and gives tight competition with Woolworth which is more than 80% share holder in Australian Market. Coles provides fresh groceries, food materials, fuel, liquor, etc. Coles operates more than 801 supermarkets within Australia with some re-branded BI-LO Supermarkets. Coles, which is also known as ‘Click & Collect’ also suggests different remarkable services of home delivery option. This organization also raised all their dividends to almost 80% of it.

The organizational structure of Australian Supermarket, Coles has two different structures which are of two different structures. In both the management and corporate structure, it discuss about both details of all present products and relevant of various management bodies in Coles Pvt. Ltd.

The corporate structure of this organization helps to have the proper understanding of all types of services as well as goods. However, the prices of all used items are discussed in the corporate structure.

Operational Problems Faced by Coles Supermarket

Coles Supermarket is one of the leading organizations of Australia that supplies different services all goods to the customer base. Therefore, despite of maintaining better advantages of client and its popularity, Coles faced some important and vital operational problems with their existing system (Coles.com.au, 2018). One of the most vital reasons for all these issues is the ending of server and storage infrastructure solution due to the management awareness of uptime and reliability concerns. Therefore, the office systems used for the daily management activities become critical and also not ready to meet all criteria of user demands. It also causes the rapid growth fall of Coles in the Australian economic market. This type of problem mainly occurred due to not having the timely update of their system as well as the redundancies in system monitoring and remote management (Coles.com.au, 2018). In view of the facts of rapid rise of competitive market due to different other supermarkets availability, Coles is not able to maintain to meet all customer needs. The supply rate of the product is fewer than the demand rate of customer. Hence, people started to favour other supermarkets which lead to the degradation of sales growth and market share exponentially.

Depicts the extreme downfall of Coles Supermarket share. The main downfall occurs within 2009 to 2015. It has the clear image shown in the graph that Coles is also not capable enough to maintain their old existing clients. Hence, because of rejection of existing customers, new customers avoid Coles and choose other organization over it.  The high price of products also acts an important role towards the customers as they are getting same product from others in lesser price from Coles. Another reason is also the marketing strategy used in Coles which becomes more standalone in respect to others. Therefore, they should do proper advertising about their best product which helps to attract more customers. They also need to assign a best marketing experts team who able to cope up with all these problems and helps Coles to gain their position again.

Coles Supermarket has undertaken a strategy to improve their market value. The first strategy is ‘customer needs’ for which Coles need to capture large share of weekly expenditure as much as possible. The second is, ‘ Coles offering’ which mention about the human touch need to be there to the visitors at store visit and dummy direction automated touch should be there at the visit of their sample. The third is, ‘core competencies’ it suggests Coles to offers products in cheaper rate which helps to attract more customers towards them. They also need to be low down the extra charges from online store.

Strategic Information System and Accounting Software Packages in Coles Supermarket

According to Fan, Xue and Zou, (2014), system acquisition method is one the defined technique which numbers of organizations use to successfully gain all their pre-determined goals and objectives of organization. Therefore, Coles Supermarket uses Oracle to refurbish their data ware house system and also to get adjusted to tackle the digital transformation of modern days. After the modifications, Coles implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c that operated on Oracle Linux and Oracle Exadata Database Machine which helps to improve their query performance in four to six times and also become more customer focused (Jary & Wileman, 2016). With the help of using Oracle, Coles have improved their data warehousing and CRM system. After that, from the decision of management operation, Coles implemented a single view option for both their customers and members and also implemented different loyalty management mechanisms with the help of Oracle real-time decision offerings. However, after that both the sales growth and shares of Coles Supermarket gain better position by the renewal of their data warehouse and from the implementation of SAP model for ERP planning.

Understandable view of the sales-flow in Coles Supermarket. The whole sales process is shown from this figure along with all needed details. It also supports to understand all different types of ambiguities within system along with their mitigation processes (Gaur & Kesavan, 2015). This mentioned flow chart is mainly consists of 5 parts which are like: Contracts, Sales, Legal, Customers and Fulfilment. In the first step of flow chart it needed customer to create their order form along with it submission. After that, by following all mentioned steps the whole process gets completed.

Various issues and problems occurred in Coles Supermarket are mainly due to the continuous adaptation of their market trends (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). Both rise and downfalls of any types of organization is mainly inter-related with all types of stakeholders, customers, associated partners, CRM and Marketing team, finance department etc. All these rise and falls are mainly affected the brand name and customer trust which is one of vital part in the whole process. Hence, these issues are needed to be resolved earliest because it is leading the organization to its failure. The foremost thing, Coles needed to be improve is the involvement of all their stakeholders properly with the process work. Improvement of service process is become the best answer to this type of issues (Blount et al., 2016). The implementation of better Customer Relationship Management is a vital answer to all problems of occurred in Coles. This type of management helps to maintain better relationship with all customers of supermarket without facing any types of issues.

Recommendations for Coles Supermarket

Accounting Software Packages help an organization to achieve its supreme popularity and also helps to achieve more effective and easier business actions and activities (Boulianne, 2014). Apart from that, all the faced difficulties of various business operations get lessen with the help of accounting software. There are different types of issues and threats occurred in business due to unavailability of accounting software within Coles. However, Coles have not picked any types of advanced and modernized technologies; rather they re-implemented a new SAP model. With this implementation, it helps to offers Coles of not increasing their operational costs but the increment of production in organization. In addition to this, all SAP models are utilized to increment efficiency and improvement of production of system.

The market pose of the Coles Supermarket is evidently shown from the above figure. It also depicts that how the market share of Coles get decreased gradually and comes from 36% to 33% whereas Wools worth maintained to stay in 39%.

Though, Coles Supermarket held its place among the supermarket leaders in Australia but needs to pave more ways to achieve its desired point. It also has some strong competitors in market like Aldi, Woolworths, IGA etc. It also discussed about the high range in prices of all their products which is more similar within all four organization. Hence, Coles have large number of investment; therefore, the chance of competition is more to keep in position.

It provides us the clear picture about the competitive market of Coles Supermarket with others whereas Woolworths is greater range.  However, it also shows both more Coles and Woolworths are the market leader by holding more share rate. In addition to this Coles Supermarket gain more competitive advantages in contrast to others Arvidsson, Holmström & Lyytinen, 2014).

Coles Supermarket faces numbers of problems to operate their business system. One of the most important problems is disgrace of sales rate with respect to others. However, the market share also become down due to which customers are also started to avoid Coles. For this rapid declination in Coles, the sole most reason is high price. The foremost and vital recommendation for Coles is to urgent reduction of extra costing on their products and also needs to propose numbers of exciting offers etc. On other side, another reason of their downfall is the lacking of skilled employees and use of redundant software. To overcome this type of issue, Coles need to hire more skilled employees in different new software and also need to change their age old software.

Conclusion

Thus, concluding the topic it can be said that the Coles is one of the major supermarket in the world and provides some of the best customer satisfaction. The organisation structure is divided in many sub parts making it easy for the manager and the boards to control the entire system of the management and thus providing the best results. Further some of the problems that the organisation faces, One of the most vital reasons for all these issues is the ending of server and storage infrastructure solution due to the management awareness of uptime and reliability concerns. Further the system acquisition method used by the organisation is one of the most advanced processes for gaining the predetermined goals. The organisation can easy take control of the entire market if the control system problems are dealt with in a proper manner. The wools worth is the nearest competitor of the organisation, but Coles can easily take down them with proper management process.

References

Arvidsson, V., Holmström, J., & Lyytinen, K. (2014). Information systems use as strategy practice: A multi-dimensional view of strategic information system implementation and use. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(1), 45-61.

Blount, Y., Abedin, B., Vatanasakdakul, S., & Erfani, S. (2016). Integrating enterprise resource planning (SAP) in the accounting curriculum: a systematic literature review and case study. Accounting Education, 25(2), 185-202.

Boulianne, E. (2014). Impact of accounting software utilization on students’ knowledge acquisition: An important change in accounting education. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 10(1), 22-48.

Cassidy, A. (2016). A practical guide to information systems strategic

Coles.com.au. (2018). Coles Supermarkets. [online] Available at: https://www.coles.com.au/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2018].

Fan, J., Xue, L., & Zou, H. (2014). Strong oracle optimality of folded concave penalized estimation. Annals of statistics, 42(3), 819.

Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (Eds.). (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.

Gaur, V., & Kesavan, S. (2015). The effects of firm size and sales growth rate on inventory turnover performance in the US retail sector. In Retail Supply Chain Management (pp. 25-52). Springer, Boston, MA.

Jary, M., & Wileman, A. (2016). Retail power plays: From trading to brand leadership. Springer.

Romero, D., & Vernadat, F. (2016). Enterprise information systems state of the art: Past, present and future trends. Computers in Industry, 79, 3-13.

Simon, D., Fischbach, K., & Schoder, D. (2014). Enterprise architecture management and its role in corporate strategic management. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 12(1), 5-42.