Business Investigation Report of City Convenience

This report investigates the business process of City Convenience and provides a technological solution to enhance productivity and revenue. It discusses the opportunities for the organization, the technology solution, and the integration of the current system.

Running head: BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Business investigation report of City Convenience
Name of student
Name of the University
Author note

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Table of Contents
1 Executive summary.............................................................................................................2
2 Introduction.........................................................................................................................3
3 Business opportunities........................................................................................................5
4 Technology Solution...........................................................................................................8
5 Current system integration................................................................................................10
6 References.........................................................................................................................12
Appendix A..............................................................................................................................14

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
1 Executive summary
This report has prepared by the business analyst and the report aims investigate the
particular business process of the Australian retail business organization City Convenience
along with effective technological solution to the managers of the business in order to
enhance the productivity and revenue of it. Like every convenience stores, also named as
corner stores, the Melbourne based retail store City Convenience effectively serving its
customers by providing verity of everyday items. The smart and effective marketing tactics
adopted by its managers help the organization to maintain its reputation in the competitive
market. The SWOT analysis of the particular organization shows the emerging opportunities
for it. Providing online shopping along with smart customer service can provide a great
opportunity for the organization in terms of expanding the business. The managers need to
focus on the technological solutions provided by the business analyst. Developing one online
shopping application can result positively in the sales margin it. Moreover, implications of
the automated self-checkout system can accelerate the fact of safe as well as time saving
shopping, resulting in gaining more customer attention. However, these can affect the
organization in many ways as introducing technological innovation to the organization can
change, alternate or else eliminate some of the activities. Furthermore, the suggestions of the
business analyst will add value to the business by improving many organizational activities
such as fulfilling the vital concern of increasing the sale by achieving comparative better
market position and customer loyalty.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
2 Introduction
Convenience stores are the small retail business stores, stocking a wide range of day-to-
day items that comprises with soft drinks, groceries, confectionaries, snacks items, toiletries,
magazines and many other items (Gardiner et al. 2013). Apart from providing these items,
some of the convenience stores are provided with the license of selling alcohols. City
Convenience is one of the leading Australian Convenience store located in the city of
Melbourne, Victoria. Like other convenience stores, it also provides a wide range of everyday
items to its customers (Cityconveniencestore.com, 2019). The customer base of this retail
organization comprises with entire Melbourne citizen. Regardless of any age, gender and
religion, City Convenience has been providing verity of products to satisfy its customers. The
effective marketing strategies taken by its marketing managers help this retail business to be
different from its competitors by gaining comparatively more profit and customer loyalty.
Your business is gaining competitive advantages in the market due to its pricing policy
and the focus on target market along with the marketing tactics. The organization has gain
popularity for providing effective customer satisfaction. However, City Convenience can
improve business process of extra service provision by forming new tactics and introducing
technical innovation to it. In this report, the business opportunities for the discussed retail
organization will be elaborated by conducting an effective SWOT analysis of it. Moreover,
the business analyst also provide a technological solution to the business which will gain
benefits for the organization. The activities that will be affected by introducing the
technological solution will be emphasized here.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Figure 1: BPMN diagram
(Source: Created by Author)

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
3 Business opportunities
The ongoing opportunities for the Australian leading retail organization City
Convenience will definitely provide grate results in the revenue as well as expand the
business globally (Sundström and Radon 2015). SWOT analysis is the internal organizational
environment analysis that will help to improve the business strategies in a great way. The
SWOT analysis that will identify the opportunity for your business is as follows;
Strength
 Increasing requirement of the
household as well as everyday items
is helping the organization to gain
more profit
 The store location is attracting many
customer resulting in high sale.
 Low start-up cost and high profit
 Tremendous marketing tactics
helping it to gain competitive
advantages
Weakness
 Constant competition from other
similar kind of retail organizations
such as, EzyMart 24/7, CBW
Express, 7-Eleven Melb Queen St,
Coles supermarket and Woolworths.
Opportunities
 Increase the number of items
 Provide comparatively improved
customer experience
 Expanding the number of stores
 Exclusive product providing
Threat
 24/7 opening of the supermarkets
 Online delivery provided by the
supermarkets

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
 Providing online service to the
customers
Table 1
(Source: Created by Author)
From the above SWOT analysis, a brief idea about the ongoing opportunity for the
particular organization is clear. There is a high opportunity for increasing the customer
service by providing online delivery as well as introducing automation to the business such
as, self-billing, self-checkout and many more. The retail industry is evidencing the trend of
online shopping; hence, introducing this particular concept can be advantageous to this
organization in a more positive way. The new technology will surely exploit the business by
attracting more customers, which in result will increase the annual revenue of the discussed
retail organization. These discussed opportunities can be aligned with the above discussed
business process of extra service provision to the customers. In today’s technological era,
individuals have the craze of online shopping as it saves their time. Apart from helping to
improve the customer experience, introducing automation can provide cost effectiveness to
the business. The issues in the business of City Convenience can be better known from the
fishbone diagram given below;

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Figure 2: Fishbone diagram
(Source: created by author)

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
From the above fishbone diagram shows that, absence of the online shopping application as
well as the time taking traditional billing can be the causes of downfall of this business and
this particular problem can be successfully addressed by adopting the new technology to this
retail business.
4 Technology Solution
Regardless of any industry, organization or any other field, technology has shown its
effortless participation everywhere making work easier as well as simpler. Furthermore, use
of technology inside the organizational workplace can shape up the productivity (Clodfelter
2013). Discussing about City Convenience, to gain productive advantage the managers of this
retail organization need to focus on introducing technology to the business. Every retail
business including City Convenience mainly focuses on the customer satisfaction (ZHU, LI
and TANG 2013). As discussed above, the online shopping trend within individuals
regardless of any age, resulting less physical shopping. Absence of online shopping
application of City Convenience sometime become an impeding factor for its customers
especially for them who do not want to visit the store for shopping. Hence, as a business
analyst, i recommend to the managers to develop one online application by seeking help from
the software experts, to provide online shopping experience to the customers. This idea will
helpful in gaining more profit for the organization. Addition to that, the customers, visiting
the online stores can take advantages of the Self-checkout as it provides the mechanism of
processing own purchasing (Fernandes and Pedroso 2017). This automation comes with the
advantages of self-billing that will eliminate the time of waiting in a long queue. Hence, I, as
a business analyst will suggest the managers to implement the technology of self-billing and
checkout on the store to provide a better shopping experience to the customers. These

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
suggested technologies will definitely become advantageous to the particular retail business
and fulfil the desired business needs.
I recommended that your business should change the process of billing and checkout
system and replace it with the automated technology, which will reduce the shopping time of
the customer as well as provide them an extra ordinary shopping experience (Elizabeth Lloyd
et al. 2014). The chance of theft can also nullified using this technology. Furthermore, the
idea of delivering products in doorsteps of customer will attract and convince more customers
to choose City Convenience as their ultimate shopping destination (Jiang, Yang and Jun
2013). Discussing the overall impact of technology within the organization following can be
conclude;
 The self-checkout automation will change the process of traditional checkout as well
as billing (Kaushik and Rahman 2015).
 The idea of the customers, not to visit the stores will be altered by the introduction of
online shopping application.
 However, the stock management will stay same, as the manual monitoring in that
particular field is more effective.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Figure 3: BPMN diagram
(Source: Created by Author)
5 Current system integration
The concept of system integration is typically defined as the method of linking different
IT systems together to perform specific tasks (Hung, Chen and Huang 2014). The part of
your business our recommendation address is replacing some manual work by automation.
The new technological solution can majorly affect this area, as the manual involvement in the
process of traditional billing will be eliminated (Jackson, Parboteeah and Metcalfe-Poulton
2014). The automation process surely accelerate the business activity, yet the chance of
discarding manual work can results in unemployment and become one impeding factor to it.
However, the fact of no machine can properly operate without human monetization, makes

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
the factor of unemployment a little debatable. Moreover, exist some organizational activities
such as taking managerial decision, forming business tactics and store keeping that are
connected to the technological innovation; however, these activities will not change. Taking
this discussion forward, the concept of introducing online shopping application will bring
effective change in the profit as well as the sales margin as it will also include those
customers who shows minimal interest in coming to the stores for shopping (Holmes, Byrne
and Rowley 2013). Making an overall analysis of the whole, the integrated system will surely
advantageous to the organization as well as drag more number of customer attention towards
itself resulting higher revenue and profit percentage. To gain comparative competitive
advantages in the retail industry, the managers of Australian retail business organization City
Convenience should keep an eye to the recommended technological solution and implement
suggestions.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
6 References
Cityconveniencestore.com (2019). cityconveniencestore.com. [online]
Cityconveniencestore.com. Available at: http://www.cityconveniencestore.com/ [Accessed 4
Apr. 2019].
Clodfelter, R., 2013. Point-of-Sale Technologies at Retail Stores: What Will The Future Be
Like?. In IT Policy and Ethics: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 584-
608). IGI Global.
Elizabeth Lloyd, A., YK Chan, R., SC Yip, L. and Chan, A., 2014. Time buying and time
saving: effects on service convenience and the shopping experience at the mall. Journal of
Services Marketing, 28(1), pp.36-49.
Fernandes, T. and Pedroso, R., 2017. The effect of self-checkout quality on customer
satisfaction and repatronage in a retail context. Service Business, 11(1), pp.69-92.
Gardiner, B., Blake, M., Harris, R., Gee, C., Charaktis, S., Choong, C., Lade, R., Duff, L. and
Palermo, C., 2013. Can small stores have a big impact? A qualitative evaluation of a store
fruit and vegetable initiative. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 24(3), pp.192-198.
Holmes, A., Byrne, A. and Rowley, J., 2013. Mobile shopping behaviour: insights into
attitudes, shopping process involvement and location. International Journal of Retail &
Distribution Management, 42(1), pp.25-39.
Hung, S.Y., Chen, C.C. and Huang, N.H., 2014. An integrative approach to understanding
customer satisfaction with e-service of online stores. Journal of Electronic Commerce
Research, 15(1), p.40.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Jackson, T.W., Parboteeah, P. and Metcalfe-Poulton, S., 2014. The effects of consumer
personality types on the attitudes and usage of self-checkout technology in the retail sector
among 18-22 years old. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 6(2), p.15.
Jiang, L., Yang, Z. and Jun, M., 2013. Measuring consumer perceptions of online shopping
convenience. Journal of Service Management, 24(2), pp.191-214.
Kaushik, A.K. and Rahman, Z., 2015. An alternative model of self-service retail technology
adoption. Journal of Services Marketing, 29(5), pp.406-420.
Sundström, M. and Radon, A., 2015. Utilizing the concept of convenience as a business
opportunity in emerging markets. Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies, 6(2),
pp.7-21.
ZHU, R.N., LI, J. and TANG, B.Y., 2013. A reference model for network-based interactive
marketing for community convenience stores. Journal of Natural Science of Heilongjiang
University, (1), p.6.

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BUSINESS INVESTIGATION REPORT OF CITY CONVENIENCE
Appendix A