Woolworths Supermarket Strategic Information System

This paper discusses the strategic information system of Woolworths Supermarket, including its organizational structure, operational problems, ERP system acquisition, sales procedure system flowchart, and accounting software development and adoption. It also identifies the market size, competitive advantages of market leaders, and challenges encountered in the development of accounting software packages.

Running head: WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Woolworths Supermarket Strategic Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Executive Summary:
This paper describe about the strategic information system of the Woolworths supermarket.
The structure of the organization will be discussed and identified the operational problem
they have experience through the organizational structure. It will contain the system
acquisition method that would be helpful for the organization. The paper contains a simple
flowchart for the sales procedures system. Moreover, it will identify the problem of the
system used by the organization and discuss about the most possible fraud that can occur. In
the later part of the report, the development process of the account software packages will be
provided and discuss the adoption of the package in the organization. It will contain the
market size of the current organization. The market leaders will have competitive advantages
and current gaps and challenges have been encountered. At the end of the report, the paper
will be concluded with proper recommendation.

2WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Part 1:.........................................................................................................................................3
1. Woolworths Organizational Structure................................................................................3
2. Operational Problem with the Structure of the Organization.............................................4
3. Proposed ERP System Method for Acquisition:................................................................5
4. Sales Procedure System Flowchart:...................................................................................5
5. Identifying Problem with the ERP system and possible fraud:..........................................7
Part 2:.........................................................................................................................................8
1. Development and adoption of account software package..................................................8
2. Market Size......................................................................................................................13
3. Identify competitive advantages of market leaders..........................................................13
4. Accounting Software Challenges Encountered by the user and customer:......................15
4.1 Recommendation and Suggestions:...................................................................................16
Conclusion................................................................................................................................17
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................18

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Part 1:
1. Woolworths Organizational Structure
Woolworths is an Australian supermarket owned by Shop Direct Group and was
founded in the year 1924. The marketed and supplied products of Woolworths include
cosmetic and beauty products, clothing, electronics, furniture, housewares, jewellery, FMCG
at lot more. The Woolworths manages and supplies trusted and recognised brands such as
Freefrom, Macro, Fresh and Gold that deliver a world class experience to all levels of
customers. Woolworths is the high-street retail chain that operates in more than 800 stores
and has 111,000 employee working in the company. The structure provide a hierarchy where
at the top is the Non-Executive Director, Chairman followed by the Group Managing
Director and CEO. Under the CEO comes the Chief GM project Refresh Stage, Director of
the Supermarkets, Chief Logistics, & Information Officer, GM Human Resources, Chief GM
Freestanding Liquor & Petrol, Director General Merchandise GM Big W, Chief Financial
Officer, GM Business Development, GM Mercury Program, GM Supermarket Operations,
GM Corporate Services, GM Woolworths Academy, GM Big W, GM Property, and GM
Dick Smith Electronics. The hierarchy structure has been shown in the figure below:

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Figure 1: Woolworths Food Group Organization Structure
Source: Author
2. Operational Problem with the Structure of the Organization
The position that Woolworths has achieved was dominated by the Australian government.
They restricted Woolworth to keep the price of the product higher. The growth in the sales
was very slow. The staff included in the structure are morally week. Currently Coles is the
biggest rival of Woolworth (Woolworthsgroup.com.au., 2018). In the operation, the company
has plan some strategies for growth. The product has to sell in less price, when the concern
being share to the director of the supermarket still there was no response regarding the price
issue. The production team were working on the matter of the price issue. Unfortunately, the
external environment mostly affect in dominating the Australian retail market were the
government of Australia has restricted the Woolworth to keep higher prices for their product
in collaboration with the Coles. This has led to major weakness in the growth level of the
company.

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3. Proposed ERP System Method for Acquisition:
ERP is the is most likely system acquisition method that would be used for the
organization. The entire organization need to plan to implement the ERP system. With the
use of ERP system it is easy to understand and negotiate with the vendors about the
requirements of the user based on their terms and conditions. The ERP acquisition process
has four phases, the first phase begins with initiation, second phase with selection, third phase
with final choice and the forth phase is negotiation.
4. Sales Procedure System Flowchart:
Figure 1: Sales Procedure System Flowchart
The flowchart shows the basic procedure of sales in the Woolworth supermarket. The
customer takes the decision to pick or purchase the order, determine the quantity of the order,

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assemble the item. Once the item has selected it will assemble and the box and package will
be done for the items after successful payment through credit, debit or net banking.
Figure 2: Integrated Sales Order Procedure
Source: Author

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Figure 3: DFD of Sales Return Procedure
Source: Author
Based on the revenue cycle the activities of the sale procedure is shown in the diagram above.
The cycle generate two revenue, Sales and Finance. The business activities perform in this
cycle are basically
Sales order entry
Shipping
Billing
Cash Collection & Ledgers update
5. Identifying Problem with the ERP system and possible fraud:
The problem in the ERP system is the inaccurate order of the customer, with poor credits
the sales are done to the customers, the stocks are out, and cost in carrying.
Shipping Process: In the process of shipping errors occur and there is a chances that
the order might be stolen by the inventory.
Billing Process: In the process of billing, errors may be found in the bill, customer
would not be able to receive the bill. It may even happen that the user could not access the
customer’s account properly.
Cash Collection: During the collection of the cash, there is a chances of losing data
of the account due to some error. This can threaten the existence of the company and an
inaccurate response to the customers enquires.
When the confidential information of the customer is disclosed, it dissatisfies the
customers and the organization has to face loss of sales in the future. The customer does not

8WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
come back to purchase any product from the organization because the relation with the
customer has break and lead to legal sanctions and fines. This result in reduction of profit. It
may even accidentally happen that the important data have got erase as the disks and tapes
were not label properly. There are lots of sensitive data in the ERP system and users are allow
to access the data encryption for transmission and storage.
Part 2:
1. Development and adoption of account software package
Account Information System (AIS) is an application software basically use for recording
the process of transaction in accounting. The application may include some module that
namely the financial report module, payroll module, balance module, payable module, and
receivable module. Mostly the in-house business creates accounting software or the third
party developer might have deliver it. There is a variation in the package of accounting
software based on the cost and complexity. A competitive edge has been brought by the
modern business to use the process of managerial decision for the functional module.
Accounting software has undertaken a remarkable change in the Woolworth organization of
Australian due to their technology advancement. With all these historical development,
adaptability, use and challenges, the research paper has discussed in the literature review
about the use of practicing accounting in the business. The literature has also explored the
current size of the market and identify the market leaders among the competitors for
competitive advantages that has adopted the packages of accounting software in Australia. In
the final section of the literature review, some suggestions and recommendation will be
provided based on the current gaps challenges that has encountered during the development
and improvement of the accounting software packages (ABC News, 2018).

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When tracking back to 1959 about the origin of accounting software at that time IBM
develop 9PAC for the first time, which was a report generation language that stores and
access the data structure from the relational database. With the development and designing of
accounting systems for a specific requirement, the companies decided to invest for the SAP
RF to handle the business operations for the process of taking faster financial decision. The
Australian Teleware product publisher acquired the Intuit Company and had changed its
name changed to MYOB Limited (Anon, 2018).
Accounting software was adopted quickly by the organization. In one of the study that
was conducted by the New Zealand Company for the accounting software had involved
almost 1622 small businesses. With result to this, it was found that Australian small business
was ahead of adopting the accounting software in comparison to any other countries
(Citeseerx.ist.psu.edu., 2018). With the adoption of the accounting software system, the
tedious use of paperwork has been reduce. The process of accounting starts with cash book,
trial balance, sales ledgers, petty cash ledgers, purchase ledgers, adjusting entries, and
financial reports. Previously in manual accounting there was a need of lot of paperwork and
bookkeepers. The system of accounting software is quick and easy to use for inputs of correct
accounts. This will help in generating reports automatically. The major factor that leads to
adoption of accounting software is effectiveness and efficacy for the growing business.
MYOB as an accounting software system has been develop for the Woolworth organization
were the below steps were followed for sales transactions and other processes

10WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Step1:
Step 2:

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Step 3:
Step 4:

12WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Step 5:
Step 6:

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2. Market Size
The market plan for any product successfully work to justify the development product
and its condition in the market trends. The Woolworths market size is increasing yearly if the
pie chart is check. The growth is up to 37.6 % with comparison to all other supermarkets. It
has continuously smash Coles in the sales growth as it had a massive profit in the first half-
year. The profit is of $969 million sales growth for the core supermarket business
(Forbes.com., 2018). At the FY17 end the organization is trying to move from turnaround to
the transformation. Even the chief executive of Woolworths Group stated that there is a good
progress of transformation on the sales growth and strategic initiatives. There is a full-year
loss for Big W that the Woolworths expects. This loss could be between $80 million to $120
million if compare with the loss of $150.5 million which was in the year 2017.
3. Identify competitive advantages of market leaders
In Australia, the increasing competition for the accounting software market where
mostly in the small and medium size business of which the biggest players are the Intuit,
Xero and MYOB (Files.eric.ed.gov., 2018). It is a cloud computing accounting software.

14WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Currently Xero is the biggest accounting software marketing share in Australia that has
emphasize the cloud accounting software. The gaps for desktop accounting software has been
identified by this company and faced some challenges whose units are not autonomous
(NewsComAu. 2018). The department of the accounting are entrusted in processing,
collecting and maintaining the books of accounting. However, desktop accounting software
challenges could not be reconcile for other department accounting software as it was
containing some incompatible formats and duplication. Therefore, it become tedious, errors,
inconsistency and time consuming for annual accounts. The main source of challenges was
the use of data redundancy and the desktop accounting system. In many of the Australian
business for the integrative capabilities they use cloud accounting software.
Xero is an accounting software that use the SaaS model and for a third party customer
and vendor it provide a free API for integration of single unified ledger application in the
cloud. The capability of using SaaS has provide an application to users for operating on cloud
infrastructure that can be operated through some thin user interface (Forbes.com. 2018). The
landscape of IT has been transformed with the integration of Cloud Computing that has
brought faster time-to-market, enhance the effectiveness of the cost, demanding scale and
innovation.
Furthermore, the major concern for cloud accounting software users were the lack of
security in the system. Even with the use of exiting measures of security like firewalls, user
feel insecure that unauthorized foreign parties can somehow access their sensitive data and
information. The concern behind this issue is because there is a lack of security standards in
cloud computing and the provider of cloud use technologies and proprietary security standard
of their own (Hatch, 2018). The risk of cybercrime also increases for the cloud computing
that is associated with the information assets. Later the cloud computing software challenges
were solve through Identity Management (IDM) that take certain measures for service

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authentication and based on user characteristics and credentials. In Cloud, the approach to
Information-centric security has been extended that can control data and security. For any
computing environment, it is necessary that the data are describe and self-defended.
Information-centric security can be made possible through the framework of Trusted
Computing. According to the author, or any computing systems, predicate encryption is
required that allow software to compute and run on a cipher-texts environment
(NewsComAu., 2018). For the competitive advantage, security of the information, efficiency
and effectiveness of the cost has been measured further for cloud accounting software which
is the most versatile system.
4. Accounting Software Challenges Encountered by the user and customer:
Cost:
It is not that easy to implement the accounting software. As one of the author has
mentioned that for the cost of accounting software, a system requires a minimum standards of
RAM, hard drive memory and speed of processor (Pc.gov.au., 2018). There are also some
additional costs in consumption of the software use that creates a technical support and data
for back-up. Moreover, the software allow number of users and add-on features for monthly
subscriptions. Thus, increasing the cost of packages of accounting software that has
challenged the small scale firm who has to bear the cost of such accounting packages.
Time:
While creating an invoices and expenses through a software, the processing time is
more as compare to the one that is recording the same in the ledger or an excel sheet.
Furthermore, with the time progress, accounting speed goes high when the employee are
habitat to the accounting software usage. Based on the context, the author has even

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mentioned that accounting software implementation may even slow down the operation of the
business temporarily.

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Usage Difficulty:
The cloud based accounting software do not have their own designing nor are they
based on any conventional system which is the major problem for the user. Those staff who
are accustomed with the traditional method of accounting might definitely face problem
while using the software (Sci-hub.tw., 2018). Thus, it is advisable that the business frim
should arrange some additional training facility for all those staff who are going to use the
accounting software. However, there is a quite high chances to commit an error during the
implementation of initial phase
Threat of Cybercrime:
The business confidential information might be at risk as the major problem is
associated with the cloud accounting software as it is connected to the internet. With this the
risk of cybercrimes increases. Even the business bank account is linked to cloud accounting
software and the owner can access the bank account through this software from anywhere.
However the most threating part here is that the risk of cybercrimes increases like phishing,
malwares and many more which can lead to a biggest issue for the employees as well as the
company.
4.1 Recommendation and Suggestions:
For implementing accounting software based on cloud certain recommendation has
been provided for the business firms that are as follow:
Optimization the Cost:
The firms can compensate with the price associated with the cloud accounting
software purchase and use. This can be done by focusing on the cost control and reduction.
The business firm has to identify the non-value activities that are added to the business

18WOOLWORTHS SUPERMARKET STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
(Techsoup.org. 2018). The non-value activities can be eliminated by reducing the resource
wastage.
Training Session:
The staff can attend some training session to gain the knowledge about the software
and its uses in their account maintenance. With these technical skills they can easily use the
cloud accounting software. Hence, it becomes important for the staff of the company to get
trained and know how to feed data into the software.
Installation software of Anti-virus:
The Woolworth organization are advice to purchase an anti-virus software and install
it on the computer system. The data of the customer would be safe and secure. The
confidential information available in the system will not get loss with the use of this anti-
virus software and the risk will be reducing and the online accounting software will be safe.
Conclusion
With the study, it has concluded that from a simple program to a computing system
that is complex there have been a remarkable development history for accounting software.
This has solve the challenges that were associated with the desktop accounting software.
Moreover, some strategies were applied to deal with the security threats that was face in the
cloud computing.

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