Software Tools for Effective Decision Making in the Australian Retail Industry

This report discusses the importance of software tools for effective decision making in the Australian retail industry. It focuses on two commonly used software tools - inventory control software and retail management software - and their features. The report also includes a collective reflection on the group process involved in completing the project.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The global retail industry has gone a drastic shift in the last decade. When it comes to
Australian retain market, with increase in consumer demand and base, the mentioned industry
has gone under huge expansion in the recent years. In order to maintain as well as enhance the
expansion of the industry, it is highly crucial for the managers and leaders of the mentioned
industry to make effective decision for the organization within a limited amount of time. The
high competition between the organizations in the Australian Retail market has made it difficult
for organizations to sustain in the market in case they lack effective decision making capability
(Dehghanpour et al., 2018). In this era of technology, it has become highly crucial for
organizations to implement business intelligence tools in order to make effective and rapid
decisions for their business. The purpose of this report is to make both medium and large
enterprise managers in the Australian Retail industry aware of two of the chief software tools
that supports corporate decision making. Along with this, this report will also contain collective
reflection on the group process, outlining team formation, communication, task allocation, peer
review and conflict management.
Brief discussion of 2 features of commonly used Software Tools that support decision-
making
Inventory control Software
The current digital revolution is transforming each and every aspect of the Australian
retail industry. According to Momber, Wogrin and San Román, (2016), technology has certainly
became influential in the mentioned retail industry and the influence of the same is still growing.
According to a current survey, with the help of effective decision making tools, the total retail

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market will reach nearly up to 28 trillion dollars till the end of 2020. In the following paragraph,
two chief types of retail software that has the potential to help the managers to make effective
decisions for the organization have been discussed.
The most popular software type that is used by a large number of popular retail
organizations like Woolworths is the Inventory control Software. Inventory control software is
referred to a system that handles all aspects of managing the inventory of an organization that
includes tracking, managing, organizing product sales, other production processes as well as
material passages (Yang et al. 2018). The mention type of software tools, in majority of the time
are found to work with Radio-Frequency Identification along with wireless tracking technology
for supporting inventory tracking and control. Two major examples of inventory control

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Software that are majorly used by retail organizations are Zoho Inventory and Logiwa. One of
the chief features of the mentioned software is that it helps the managers to conduct through
planning s well as product stock prediction. The inventory, management software enables the
managers of retail organizations to plan ahead since the system has the ability to track the
product status along with extracting historical information for forecasting the sales of the
company. The inventory management software has the potential to prevent delivery delays. The
software solution even enables the consumers to see the status of their orders while tracking the
order movement.
The second crucial feature of the mentioned software is that it provides deep insights of
the business and thus helps the manager to make effective decisions. This feature of the
mentioned software allows the managers to generate sales history, as well as order reports on the

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basis of consumers, location, products and others. The inventor optimization facility helps the
same to optimize the internal operation of the company and the credit for the same goes to the
automated demand forecasting. The accounting system of the inventory control software tools
like Zoho inventory also possess accounting system that not only automate invoicing but also
provides greater visibility over costs as well as profits with multi-currency pricing and more.
This provides the managers a clear understanding of the internal environment of the organization
and helps the same in making effective decisions.
The second crucial software tool that helps the managers to make effective decisions is
the Retail Management Software. Two mostly used Retail Managemnt softwares are Netsuite
and Lightspeed. One of the key features of the Retail management software tool is that it
generates extensive reports about sales, purchases as well as inventory positions in order to
enhance strategic decision making (Algarvio, Lopes & Santana, 2015). Moreover, software tools
like Lightspeed also helps the managers to use advanced consumer search using both
demographic as well as purchase history, records comprehensive customer purchase history, and
exports results instantly.

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All these facility helps the leaders of the retail industry to target the potential consumers
and thus enhance the quality of the products based on their specific requirements. Moreover
majority of the Retail management Software comes with dashboards. The dashboard facility
further helps the management to make effective decisions by keeping the key figures in front of
them. Real time performance data can be used for optimizing inventory allocation, trading as
well as staffing. According to Trubint, (2016), decision making of mangers is primarily
hampered due to lack of streamline while running store. The Retail Management software tools
like Speedlight, eliminates the issue by providing multiple services along with streamlining the
process. For instance, everyday tasks like managing as well as buying inventory, checking out of
consumers as well as keeping track of the finances can be manage easily with the help of Retail
management software. Hence, the mentioned software toss not only makes the design making
process of the mnagers easily but also reduces the time of making effective decisions
Collective reflection
Considering the fact that the project was a group project, as per the instruction given by
the professor, each group should contain a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 students. Our
project group was comprised of 3 members. Each of the members was allocated with each
portion of the task on the basis of their comfort level and understanding. The task division and
allocation plays a highly crucial role in success of any project since, appropriate task division
reduces the likelihood of one individual completing the task for the whole group as well as
taking over the credit of others learning.
The task allocation was done by one of our team members and no conflicts regarding the
allocation took place within the team. Both personal as well as professional relationship and

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understanding between the team members were effective and thus the chances of conflict were
low throughout the project. The entire task was divided in to three parts. The first part included
researching commonly used software tools that are used in the Australian retail market.
The second task included listing as well as illustrating a minimum of two features of the
already found 2 software tools. The third task was comprised of writing down a collective
reflection on group process, outlining team formation, communication, task allocation and peer
review and conflict management. AS a team member, I had been allocated to perform the third
task. During the formation of the team, I understood the importance of decision making.
According to researchers, the formation of any team is consisting of 5 stages, namely, forming,
storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. These steps are followed in majority of the
organizations during team forming in order to develop a high performing team. In order to
enhance the performance of the organization, it is highly crucial that an effective communication
is established and maintained between the team members.
According to Ustundag and Cevikcan, 2017, leaders are considered to be the one who are
supposed to set the tone of a team. In spite of the fact that in order team no one was specifically
the leader, we used to encourage each other in case of any kind of adverse situation. Not only
this, while working together we always believed in providing honest feedback on the team
project. Not only that we always demonstrate feedback as well as new ideas, even when they
were contrasting our own opinion. Finally, we also tried to recognize as well as reward honest
and opinion through appreciation. Another mention worthy factor that enhanced our ability to
develop effective bond between u s is effective coordination with each other. Mino conflicts due
to difference in opinion were there. However those conflicts were managed effectively buy

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communicating with the individual, focusing on the behaviour as well as events instead of
focusing on personality.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that in this era of technological advancement, it
is highly crucial for the organizations established in the Australian retail industry to invest on
effective software tools for decision making purposes. Two of the chief softwares for decision
making includes the retail management software and the inventory control software. While the
retail management software helps the managers to control a good number of tasks at a single
time, the inventory management helps the same to handle all aspects of managing the inventory
of an organization that includes tracking, managing, organizing product sales, other production
processes as well as material passages.

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Reference List
Algarvio, H., Lopes, F., & Santana, J. (2015, May). Multi-agent retail energy markets: bilateral
contracting and coalitions of end-use customers. In 2015 12th International Conference
on the European Energy Market (EEM) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Dehghanpour, K., Nehrir, M. H., Sheppard, J. W., & Kelly, N. C. (2018). Agent-based modeling
of retail electrical energy markets with demand response. IEEE Transactions on Smart
Grid, 9(4), 3465-3475.
Momber, I., Wogrin, S., & San Román, T. G. (2016). Retail pricing: A bilevel program for PEV
aggregator decisions using indirect load control. IEEE Transactions on Power
Systems, 31(1), 464-473.
Trubint, N. (2016). Determining an optmal retail location by using GIS. Yugoslav Journal of
Operations Research, 16(2).
Ustundag, A., & Cevikcan, E. (2017). Industry 4.0: managing the digital transformation.
Springer.
Yang, J., Zhao, J., Luo, F., Wen, F., & Dong, Z. Y. (2018). Decision-making for electricity
retailers: A brief survey. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 9(5), 4140-4153.