Course Project Essay

The purpose of this course project is to point of reference the ongoing issues skirt my companies, REI (Recreation Equipment Inc.,) line of descent focalization issue and to see if we stop mention a software program better suited to the companies needs. The goal is to find mathematical harvest-tides pronto and efficiently. Customer satisfaction is key to driving sales and profit in any company. As a result a software resurrect is certainly needed in redact to compete with another(prenominal) companies in the same industry.Name of the CompanyREI is a privately held corporation that is continue by its atoms. In fact it is considered to be one of the largest consumer henhouses in the United States. It relys on the members to rag profits each year and get outs them the chance to both vote and hang on the board of directors. REI does not report to shareholders and since its founding in 1938 has never done so. Sales exceed $1 gazillion dollars each year and due to that ongoing success the company can pay dividends to the members of the company each march.Also, contributing to the success of the company. Inventory circumspection is extremely important as you can pretend in order to keep the members happy. REI makes it a point to track down items even if that promoter calling other hive aways around the country. The reason for this is pricing and member loyalty. magical spell the Andersons(original founders of REI) originally established the co-op structure in order to underwrite reduced prices for its members, REI today models itself instead as a full-service retailer, with a meshing site, including order-on-the-web and free delivery to a nearby store, rather than as a low-price retailer. (wikipedia)Business Problem StatementThe issue that I would like to address based on the retail business of REI is that of inventory management. Time is of the aroma and having accurate counts is crucial to securing an item for the node so that they do no t leave your business and go elsewhere. REIs current inventory management governance is good but could be better. As it stands now the inventory system is automated through the POS system. This means that when something is sold through a event store it is automatically uploaded through the companies database so that all stores crosswise the nation are up to date on whats available at that store. However, the issue is that if a customer in our store wants a product that we do not have available, instead of being able to play into the system and see who has that product and order it nowadays, we have to physically has the customer to fill out a standard name, address and if a member their member number. Then we call the store have them locate the item, pay the customers payment information and place the order for the item(s). As you can imagine this takes a lot of era in some cases and can bite a customer away.Especially, if they waited several minutes for the person on the oth er end to locate the product and then come back and grade they cannot find it. This goes on until the item is located at a particular store. Time and resources wasted, as well as money lost. This current system does not work. It does not improve efficiency and costs the company a good percentage of sales in some instances. My proposal is to find an inventory management system that would provide accurate inventory and allow products to be ordered directly from the pos system without having to call store to store and place the order manually. Much like how we can order directly from our distribution center, that is how we would order on a store to store basis. oecumenic Benefits for Company/AudienceBy taking this approach I look at that not only will the company itself benefit from the changes but the customers and employees as well. From the company side of things, they would see a higher profit delimitation from customers who would consider placing more orders. They would also se e a drop in costs as far as employee payroll is refer and telephone costs. Customers benefit by now having slight time spent waiting for an item to be located, instead being right away available. When this occurs they are more inclined to come back and make resembling purchases instead of going elsewhere because turnaround time is much speedy with less hassle and uncertainty on their part. Employees would be able to focus more on customers in their store and less time on phone lines or tracking down products. This eliminates customer dissatisfaction in stores and allows sales to grown since more customers would stay and workshop as oppose to leaving angry for lack of help.