Information Technology in Countdown Supermarket

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Information Technology
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

2INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Introduction:
Countdown is a supermarket situated in New Zealand which is a full-service supermarket
chain and subsidiary of the Progressive Enterprise which itself is subsidiary of the Australian
Woolworths Limited. This is a larger than the other average supermarkets placed in New
Zealand. The first store of Countdown supermarket started its business in 1981 and by the year
of 2016 it has almost 184 (countdown.co.nz, 2018). This is considered as the largest and the only
single supermarket chain which runs in New Zealand with a number of stores. But despite of this
the rival four square chain has the largest number of premises which includes smaller retail
stores in the rural areas of New Zealand.
By the year of 2017 there were almost 184 Countdown supermarkets which operates in the North
and the South Island of New Zealand. The organization consists of various operations whereas
the major operations are handled by the Progressive Enterprises head office which is situated in
the city of Mangere, Auckland. This stores have been distinguished into 10 major areas. Each
area consists of an Area Manager and along with this all this areas are supported by the National
Operations Manager (countdown.co.nz, 2018). But in previous days the areas were separated into
North and South regions and each of them are having 5 areas. Besides this the pricing and the
specials were separated into two major regions and this included the North Island and the South
Island. The northern region has been further divided in sub-divisions and this includes the Upper
and the Lower. Besides this Countdown Supermarket has also been associated with providing
New Zealand a wide range of online grocery delivery service by making use of the online
grocery shop.

3INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
IT Vision of the Organization: Countdown Supermarket:
Along with the increase in globalization of the retailing industry while considering them
in terms of their points-of-sale and their points-of-supply. Along with this the spending upon the
information technology (IT) by the Countdown supermarket has increased in a significant way.
The role that is played by the IT has an increasingly important role in the management of
complex operations inside the supermarket (Laudon & Traver, 2013). Supermarkets might not be
needing any type of IT like the service-oriented businesses but certainly this does not mean that
they cannot make use of the computers in their daily activities. Like many other supermarkets
countdown supermarket has also adopted complex computer systems which is associated with
allowing them to regulate many of their daily practices. This initially helps the business leaders
to obtain more information which initially helps them in taking decision along with adaptation of
automatic processes. All this helps the supermarket in saving money as well as money.
Gap Analysis:
Knowledge about the Market, along with the control of data and information acts as the
major key responsible for the purpose of obtaining a competitive advantage in the retail industry
of New Zealand. In today’s world it has been seen that the Markets are growing in continuous
way and besides it is becoming more complex day by day (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Besides
this the simple process of retailing in Countdown has initially started the deployment of more
advanced retail information systems for the purpose of coping up with all the transactions that
are involved in the various processes of Countdown.
The main reason lying behind the need of the new IT infrastructure by the retailer
Countdown has been listed below and the reasons are numerous.

4INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
 The new IT infrastructure would be helping a lot in increasing the Countdown
supermarkets ability to respond to the various kind of evolving marketplace by making
use of the speed as well as the flexibility in an efficient way.
 Would be helping a lot in collecting and analyzing the data of the customer, along with
enhancing the process of differentiation.
 Would be helping a lot in working in an effective way; supermarkets need one system
working across all the stores (or even across the national borders) for the purpose of
making sure of the fact that the stocks are used in most effective way so as to improve the
business processes.
The new IT strategy and problems faced by the strategy and Benefits:
The data warehouse and the technology can be considered to be an application of the
DSS or the Decision Support Systems which is considered as one of the latest trend. OLAP or
Online Analytical Processing decision making method are to be done according to the demand
in the process of multi-dimensional view of the different type of information to the data that are
stored in the warehouse for the purpose of providing the decision makers with a wide range of
business analysis (Avgerou & Walsham, 2017). “Data Warehouse Environment Supermarket
Invoicing System Architecture” is to be adopted. The “Traditional Invoicing System” is to be
built with the single database-centric data organization model, along with this the decision
analysis has also been not capable of meeting the system requirements which are present in the
database but with the usage of the data warehouse technology along with the development of the
problem which has been discussed above has been associated with providing a powerful tool and