Introduction
Joys’ Casuals is a retail establishment that sells discounted fashionable clothing, shoes, handbags and apparels for men and women. It is located in the suburbs of Needham, Boston, Massachusetts. The firm has hired five employees (Two full-time and three part-time). The firm has one retail outlet and a basic website that has few products listed therein and the clients have to visit the outlet in person to purchase the items. This is a challenge as the business is not able to reach consumers easily compared to its rivals who use online and e-commerce to reach more customers and thus increase their business revenue. Some of the rivals in the industry with a competitive edge over Joy’s Casuals include; Zappos, Kohl’s, and Macy’s among others
The Clothing and apparel industry is very competitive and thus the firm has expansion plans targeting online market and franchising to achieve a competitive edge and consumer-focused over their rivals. Due to these reasons, the proprietor will need to integrate the physical outlet with the online platform. This integration is not easy as a lot of consideration has to be factored in to streamline the business processes and ensuring that customer privacy and security concerns are addressed. This will be achieved by ensuring data protection internally and that business suppliers of both goods and technology to be adopted will adhere to the prerequisite confidentiality.
The firm should use business intelligence and business analytics or cloud computing to achieve the goals of promoting growth through online presence. Business intelligence and business analytics tools are used by companies across all industries irrespective of their size to make sense of their data. They collect data both historical and current and use statistics and software to analyze data providing insights to business owners to make informed decisions. This will help Joys’ Casual to secure consumer’s data and allow the proprietors to monitor the business remotely.
Cloud computing allows users to customize applications, network-related resources and service consumers based on their demand and it provides consumer data storage and computing services securely and most conveniently. This will help the firm to store data on the internet rather than in a stationary server or storage gadgets. This makes the information available to the user at from any place.
Business Requirements
The current physical retail outlet and the basic website are limiting for the firm to provide a competitive edge over the rivals. Also, the current location does not provide a proper reporting to that the management can use to make an informed decision and lacks a robust consumer data storage system making it difficult for the firm manage the consumer’s information. With the adoption of the aforementioned technology advancement, will help in addressing these pitfalls and the firm will meet its goal of business growth as well as being customer-centred, provide a mechanism where all data is safely secured and will help in providing relevant information to the proprietors so that they can make informed decisions.
Joy’s Casual aims to generate more revenue by attracting more consumers providing a more efficient and effective shopping experience managed by excellent consumer support. By using technology and integrating business with e-commerce, the firm will reach a large pool of consumers.
To implement an effective and efficient technology system, the firm should consider the following requirements and factors; function to be addressed i.e. inventory management, shipping management, payment modes, customer data management, reporting and management tools, online shopping platform and order checking system among others. Joys’ Casual should use a secure socket layer encryption (SSL) to protect consumers and company data. The company should also install a firewall system that will protect the data from cyber-attacks. To avoid processing transaction and transferring data over a public network, the company should use a virtual private network (VPN) to enhance protection.
Competitors and Technology
One of the Joys’ Casual competitors is Kohls. Kohls has physical outlets across the country and uses e-commerce to reach their consumers. They sell clothing and apparel, kitchen appliances and electronics and they use business intelligence and business analytics to analyse data and provide information on trends thus helping with inventory management. The company has handheld gadgets that are integrated with business intelligence and business analytics system and help the employees to find products in different stores. This technology has also been integrated with the point of sale machines that facilitate ease in the sale of goods.
Another Joys’ Casual’s competitor is Zappos which is an online retailer of clothes, shoes and accessories for men, children and women. Zappos uses the cloud-based service to reach its clientele which had resulted to immerse success to the firm. The consumer support and clientele base have grown over the years which led to the organisation to divide the firm into different departments to maintain quality consumer experience.
Both Kohls and Zappos have achieved immerse success by the adoption of technology to reach their clientele and to offer quality consumer support and experiences through online shopping. As a result, Joys’ Casual should incorporate technology aforementioned into its operations to achieve business growth and attract more clientele around the globe.
Business Intelligence and Business Analytics will help Joys’ Casual to achieve its goal thus the firm should adopt this system. This system will manage shipping and inventory functions by assisting personnel to manage remotely and provide relevant information for reordering points. It also provides a reporting system that is very vital for decision making as it can track business operations and gather necessary data. The system will help in managing the physical store as the system provides remote access to the store’s data. Moreover, the company should implement cloud computing. This system will help to store consumers’ and company’s data in the cloud-based serves that are easily accessible from any geographical location at any time while using either a computer, smartphone and tablet. It will also manage shipping and inventory by analysing data stored in the cloud. Data security and privacy are very important to the success of a business. With these technological systems, the company will benefit from eminent security breaches thus protecting consumers’ and company’s data.
By adoption of the two technological tools i.e. business intelligence, business analytics and cloud computing will help Joys’ Casual to achieve its goal of increasing online presence and increasing quality needs which are customer-focused.