IIBMS MMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS – Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store chain and the third-largest retailer in the United States, was caught by surprise in the 1980s as shoppers defected
IIBMS MMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS – Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store chain and the third-largest retailer in the United States, was caught by surprise in the 1980s as shoppers defected
www.answersheets.in
info.answersheets@gmail.com
+91 95030-94040
Information Technology Management
CASE – 3 Precision Buying, Merchandising, and Marketing At Sears
The Problem
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store chain and the third-largest retailer in the United States, was caught by surprise in the 1980s as shoppers defected to specialty stores and discount mass merchandisers, causing the firm to lose market share rapidly. In an attempt to change the situation, Sears used several response strategies, ranging from introducing its own specialty stores (such as Sears Hardware) to restructuring its mall-based stores. Recently, Sears has moved to selling on the Web. It discontinued its over 100-year old paper catalog. Accomplishing the transformation and restructuring required the retooling of its information systems.
Sears had 18 data centers, one in each of 10 geographical regions as well as one each for marketing, finance, and other departments. The first problem was created when the reorganization effort produced only seven geographical regions. Frequent mismatches between accounting and sales figures and information scattered among numerous databases users to query multiple systems, even when they needed an answer to a simple query. Furthermore, users found that data that were already summarized made it difficult to conduct analysis at the desired level of detail. Finally, errors were virtually inevitable when calculations were based on data from several sources.
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store
The Solution
To solve these problems, Sears constructed a single sales information data warehouse. The replaced the 18 old databases which were packed with redundant, conflicting, and sometimes obsolete data. The new data warehouse is a simple repository of relevant decision-making data such as authoritative data for key performance indicators, sales inventories, and profit margins. Sears, known for embracing IT on a dramatic scale, completed the data warehouse and its IT reengineering efforts in under one year—a perfect IT turnaround story.
Using an NCR enterprise server, the initial 1.7 terabyte (1.7 trillion bytes) data warehouse is part of a project dubbed the Strategic Performance Reporting System (SPRS). By 2003, the data warehouse had grown to over 70 terabytes. SPRS includes comprehensive sales data; information on inventory in stores, in transit, and at distribution centers; and cost per item. This has enabled Sears to track sales by individual items (skus) in each of its 1,950 stores (including 810 mall-based stores) in the United States and 1,600 international stores and catalog outlets. Thus, daily margin by item per store can be easily computed, for example. Furthermore, Sears now fine-tunes its buying, merchandising, and marketing strategies with previously unattainable precision.
SPRS is open to all authorized employees, who now can view each day’s sales from a multidimensional perspective (by region, district, store, product line, and individual item). Users can specify any starting and ending dates for special sales reports, and all data can be accessed via a highly user-friendly graphical interface. Sears managers can now monitor the precise impact of advertising, weather, and other factors on sales of specific items. This means that Sears merchandise buyers and other specialists can examine and adjust, if needed inventory quantities, merchandising, and order placement, along with myriad other variables, almost immediately, so they can respond quickly to environmental changes. SPRS users can also group together widely divergent kinds of products, for example, tracking sales of items marked as “gifts under $25.” Advertising staffers can follow so-called “great items,” drawn from vastly different departments, that are splashed on the covers of promotional circulars. SPRS enables extensive data mining, but only on sku- and location-related analysis.
In 1998 Sears created a large customer database, dubbed LCI (Leveraging Customer Information), which contained customer-related sale information (which was not available on SPRS). The LCI enables hourly records of transactions, for example, guiding hourly promotion (such as 15% discounts for early-bird shoppers).
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store
In the holiday season of 2001, Sears decided to replace its regular 10% discount promotion by offering deep discount during early shopping hours. The new promotion, which was based on SPRS, failed, and only when LCI was used was the problem corrected. This motivated Sears to combine LCI and SPRS in a single platform, which enables sophisticated analysis (in 2002).
By 2001, Sears also had the following Web initiatives: an e-commerce home improvement center, a B2B supply exchange for the retail industry, a toy catalog (wishbook.com), an e-procurement system, and much more. All of these Web-marketing initiatives feed data into the data warehouse, and their planning and control are based on accessing the data warehouse.
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store
The Result
The ability to monitor sales by item per store enables Sears to create a sharp local market focus. For example, Sears keeps different shades of paint colors in different cities to meet local demands. Therefore, sales and market share have improved. Also, Web-based data monitoring of sales at LCI helps Sears to plan marketing and Web advertising.
At its inception, the data warehouse hand been used daily over 3,000 buyers, replenishers, marketers, strategic planner, logistics and finance analysts, and store managers. By 2004, there were over 6,000 users, since users found the system very beneficial. Response time to queries has dropped from days to minutes for typical requests. Overall, the strategic impact of the SPRS-LCI data warehouse is that it offers Sears employees a tool for making better decisions, and Sears retailing profits have climbed more than 20 percent annually since SPRS was implemented.
Questions
-
What were the drivers of SPRS
-
How did the data warehouse solve Sears’s problems?
-
Why was it beneficial to integrate the customers’ data-base with SPRS?
-
How could RFID change Sears’s operations?
Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest department store
Welcome to Answer sheets
We at Answer sheets offer all types of online academic assistance, be it homework help, coursework help, case study help, Assignment help, Project Reports, Thesis, Research paper writing help.
And for each service, each subject and each topic, we dedicate an expert writer who has knowledge in that specific field of study. Experience impeccable academic writing service like never before.
Our experts understand that the time of the customers is very precious. The professors of universities and colleges are very rigorous about the submission deadlines of projects or assignments. Hence, the key objective of our case study help service is to deliver the assignments to the customers even before the promised submission deadlines.
We keep the quality measures for all papers which mean we will provide best essays. Our editing services are also excellent. Before submitting any essays, we will check whether the papers writer well or not. The high standards of academic writing will exceed your expectations. With our quality service, we have satisfied more number of people across the world and also work with different universities in Australia, UK, USA, Dubai, Oman, etc.
At our Answer sheets services, our experts are familiar about the formatting styles that are followed in the academic world. Our experts have a great knowledge about the formatting styles such as MLA, Harvard, APA, Turabian, and many others. All types of formats for the case study help are available at our case study help services. In addition, our experts can solve the case studies as per the instructions of the customers.
The experts of our Answer sheets services are highly qualified and professional. We have CAs CFAs & PhD on our panel who have years of experience in the writing of case study / Assignments.
At our Answer sheets services, our experts never plagiarize the content from the other sources for the solutions of case studies. We have strict policies regarding plagiarism at our organization. We have never faced any complaint so far regarding plagiarism from our customers. We use new technologies and modern plagiarism checking software’s to detect plagiarism from our papers.
Case Study Solutions, Assignments done by MIB, CA, PhD, & CFA
The experts of our Answer sheets services are highly qualified and professional. We have CAs CFAs & PhD on our panel who have years of experience in the writing of case study. In addition, our experts have the expertise of how a case study should be done by using the information that is mentioned in the case study. All the experts of case study help services are competent and they have all the skills that are required in order to solve a case study. A case study that is solved by our experts looks professional and will surely fetch great grades.
O % Plagiarism
At our Answer sheets services, our experts never plagiarize the content from the other sources for the solutions of case studies. We have strict policies regarding plagiarism at our organization. We have never faced any complaint so far regarding plagiarism from our customers. We use new technologies and modern plagiarism checking software’s to detect plagiarism from our papers.
Best Price Guarantee
You get premium service at the best market price. Our best price guarantee ensures that the features we offer cannot be matched by any of the competitors, in case they do – “We will beat the price”.
Confidentiality
We keep our clients’ personal data confidential. In addition to this payment, info is protected, so you no need to worry about any factors. Feel free to refer to the support team for more information and get some essential details related to the payment methods. Our company aims to keep all your details safe; our advanced security standards will exceed your expectations.
Benefits:
Quality Control and Simplicity
We only focus on the quality and offer best quality essays for all time. So you will receive well-crafted and 100% unique content. Need some alterations? You have great chances to get the essays for free.
Direct Communication and Support:
You can easily control the writing process based on your needs; we help you a lot. You can approach our writers directly and requesting drafts. Our dedicated team of experts is available to offer responsive support for 24/7. So just contact us, we ready to help you.
IIBMS MBA CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS MBA CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS EMBA CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS EMBA CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS DMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS DMS CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
IIBMS MMS CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS,
IIBMS MIB CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS,
EMBA IIBMS CASE STUDY SOLUTIONS.