Information Technology's Role in River Island's Business Success

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This report analyzes River Island's use of IT for business success.

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................3
Overview......................................................................................................................................3
Strategies undertook....................................................................................................................3
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................5
Competitive environment............................................................................................................5
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................8
Porter’s value chain analysis.......................................................................................................8
Strengths and weakness of River Island organization...............................................................10
Task 4.............................................................................................................................................11
Deploying of information technology in River Island...............................................................11
Innovation in business...............................................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14
List of Figures
Figure 1: Porter's five forces of competition...................................................................................7
Figure 2: Porter's value chain analysis.............................................................................................8

Introduction
As in business organizations, information and technology are gaining serious importance and
have a great hand behind the successes of those organizations. Information technology is full on
capable of providing various business solutions and also provides various innovation
opportunities like smart applications, improvised data storage systems, and faster processing etc.
Focusing on the optimized business planning, in this report, we will discuss the different
environments of workflow in River Island organization in which the information technology has
gained so much importance by providing the business solutions and opportunities. By increasing
the effective marketing strategies and global sales, how information and technology maintain
systematic management along with better decisions will also be discussed in this report. Taking
the case of River Island, we will also develop problem-solving skills and analyze the strengths
and weaknesses of the chosen organizations and will suggest various innovative ideas to enhance
their business positioning in this competitive environment.

Task 1
Overview
In order to analyze the need and importance of information and technology in business
organization, River Island is the chosen business organization which have a global network with
60 years of experience in the retailing market and which deals with various expertise partners
and professionals for meeting the user’s requirements like occasional wears, outlooks, amazing
clothing choices with trending branded bags and shoes. Bringing the original and the trending
fashion across the streets served River Island as one of the leading fashion retailing organization
all over. Having almost 350 stores across Ireland, UK and also have global reach throughout the
Asian countries, the Middle East and Europe, the products offered by River Island include Men
and women fashionable products with a variety of sectors like outdoor outfits, indoor outfits,
costumes for swimming and role plays, jumpsuits and playsuits, denim, homewares and all the
new arrivals of the dedicated market.
Strategies undertook
In order to deliver the best products to the customers and to survive in this competitive market
for managing the inter-relations between other partners, several strategies have been involved in
delivering these strong returns. These strategies help in maintaining the economic as well as the
business cycle in the geographical term across the world (Rouse, 2018). These strategies greatly
involve the information and technology in building the concerned area of market leading
business organization.
Taking into account the chosen organization that is River Island, in order to become the global
market leading retailing platform, and to build their strength for being a fashion franchise,
information and technology have stood behind to meet the consumer’s needs, managing the
competitive environment, and achieving success and delivers to the shareholders.
 Using information and technology for creating and developing their six online websites
which are operating in four different currencies and provide deliverables to the customers
with ease of less time consumption and better feasibility.
 By digitizing the retailing procedures through various technology partners and opting a
private cloud for maintaining the database and security reasons for extensive investment

and transactional information for the products of the clients to gain a competitive
advantage in the global market.
 Moving towards the digitization environment, payment technologies through payment
gateway user end applications and building their own business and payment application
serve the people to make them use with less friction and cost.
 Working over the internal IT infrastructure throughout the organization, a new modern
network has been designed for trading the products and connect all of its stores, centers
and offices through a new enterprise multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) solution for
handling the entire database of the organization for analyzing various problems in the
trading and the solutions to those problems and focusing on the weak checkpoints of
River Island (Evans and Knight, 2014).
Being one of the strong fashion heritages, River Island organization is growing its reputation
worldwide. For building long term business relationships with their suppliers and clients,
communication for the brand values, working processes and expectations are the keen aspects.
So, through the IT services, River Island is providing their customers with various fashionable
wearable outfits along with shoes and bags. The consumers can buy those products through their
retail stores and also through the growing demand of information and technology field, the
consumers can also access these services via their 6 websites and also user end applications for
making a purchase or to add on some feedback for the products.

Task 2
Competitive environment
In order to build a successful reputation and to attract the customers to buy the products, the
organizations have to deal with the competitive environment across the surroundings and have
that tackling capability to overcome the concerned situations.
Taking into account Porter’s forces analysis of competition in case of River Island, there can be
five forces of competition heading to the organization. These forces are:
 Rivalry
 Supplier power
 Buyer power
 Barriers to enter
 Threat of substitutes
Taking into account the given forces related to River Island organization, the competitive
environment has been explained on the basis of these forces as follows:
 Barriers to entering: This force identifies the key barriers in the particular sector so that
the other organizations can also enter in the concerned sector. As River Island is a
renowned adorable and stylish fashion brand supplying the wearables to its customers
and also maintained six websites for online trading. There are few barriers for the other
organization to get entered in the concerned area but maintaining the trading and business
strategies as compared to River Island is difficult. Fewer barriers to entering results in
profit falls but only entering in the profession is not sufficient. One has to deal with the
circumstances and situations accordingly. As the sector of online trading of clothes
require high amount of investment and using the online portal requires government
regulations, so entering the trade in this concerned area is not that much easy.
 Buyer’s power: The power of the buyers for bargaining the products is another key aspect
of the given forces in this competitive environment. But as River Island have maintained
their website and online application for trading which doesn’t allow the buyers to bargain
any product. In this case, designing and maintaining the websites for online trading
serves best to tackle this force in this global market (Morrison, 2012).

 Supplier’s power: The supplier’s power denotes the bargaining strategies of the suppliers
at the retail stores for purchasing the products in less dedicated amount. Hence, this will
far away decrease the profit scale to the organization. Through IT services provided by
River Island by their websites and the online trading application, they should deal with
suppliers through online options. The suppliers demand the products through the online
portal of the organization where there will be no option left to them for bargaining.
Hence, at the supplier’s power force, this IT system will provide River Island with a
benefitable service for trading with the suppliers online.
 Rivalry: This threat of competition allows the other organization to be in the market if
they also provide all the suitable and possible wearables as compared to the River Island
provided to the consumers. Producing the same quantity may be possible but producing
the same quality as done by River Island is quite much impossible for the other
organizations in order to tackle the competitive environment. When the rivalry is intense,
then the other organizations may attract their customers with wonderful price offers and
deals on their products. This will definitely cut off the profits of River Island. Hence, for
overcoming this problem, several offers and deals along with digital and social media
marketing may increase the possibilities of proper growth of River Island. In this way, the
information and technology along with great offers and deals create a way of progress in
that scenario (Martin, 2018).
 The threat of substitution: By this aspect, if the substitute of the products can be used by
the customers then this will create a profitable threat to the organization. In this case of
River Island, clothing is one of the important products of livelihood, so there not exist
any substitute product, but there can be substitute websites and applications for online
ordering the cloths from other organizations like amazon etc. which also supplies same or
more number of choices and offers to the customers. So, focusing on the website and
applications along with the brand quality of the products, River Island can overcome this
threat of competition.

Figure 1: Porter's five forces of competition
Taking into account the information technology, it can be said that it's not the information and
technology that will help the business organization to overcome the competition and gains
advantage, it’s the way of using information technology innovatively. Franchising the brand of
River Island through creative and new ideas will definitely help the organization to build a long-
lasting reputation in the market. By having the knowledge of business problems and technologies
to build a successful solution like launching a user end application for ease of ordering, social
media marketing, digital marketing etc. all help in improving financial performance and
competitiveness in the global market (Ramey, 2012).

Task 3
Porter’s value chain analysis
Taking into account the concept of business management strategies that will further increase the
value of the products by the organizations to its customers, Porter's value chain analysis comes
into the scenario. This analysis would be done in order to identify the value chain of the
concerned activities performed by the River Island for creating a valuable reflection of the
products among the customers. The various activities of Porter’s value chain are shown in the
figure below:
Figure 2: Porter's value chain analysis
Taking into account the information and technology in case of River Island organization to
distribute the fashion and lifestyle products of wearables to the customers with ease of time and
cost several activities have been involved.
The primary activities which support the information technology which enhance the products’
values among customers are:
 Outbound logistics: The activities related to sending the finished products from the
industry to the distributors or retailers of the River Island stores comes under this

category. Providing the retailers, the products through online means of website reduce the
supplier’s power of bargaining for the products. Providing the customers with best
quality products will further increase the value of the products concerned in the case of
River Island organization.
 Marketing and sales strategies: As marketing pushes the revenue of the organizations at
an extreme point by increasing the sales of the products among the customers. Social
media is a powerful weapon in this current developing environment which have a direct
impact on the number of sales of River Island. Using information technology by
amending the six websites of River Island with the social media platform and marketing
the website as well as products through those platforms will further increase the sales of
the organization. Seeing the website adds on social media build a positive attraction and
curiosity among the customers about the products offered. In this way, information
technology helped River Island in increasing the value of the concerned products among
the customers.
 Service: Having a good post-sales service is also important for maintaining the values of
the products among the customers. The websites of River Island are that much effective
that the users can review and give feedback for the wearables. Getting data analysis of the
customer’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and working on the dissatisfaction areas of the
customers will help River Island increasing their reputation and value of the wearable
products (Bhasin, 2017).
Forming the basis of River Island organization and supporting the primary activities, there exist
some secondary activities in this value chain analysis. These secondary activities also are known
as supportive analysis because they provide support to that of primary activities in order to
maintain the value chain of the products of River Island. These supportive activities are
discussed as:
 Firm infrastructure: These activities enable the internal activities and the daily operations
of River Island in order to create the value of the organization and its products. Taking an
example of administrative handling and financial management through the relative
database and focusing on the weakness of the organization by analyzing the weekly
growth by data analysis tools and handling the transactional data with security methods

like developing a private cloud for storage and security of the sensitive data will
definitely increase the sales by focusing on the concerned weak areas.
 Technology development: Based on the new technologies, development in products and
services will further improve the sales’ value of the products among the consumers. In
front of the stores of River Island and the suggestion list on the website, the new pieces in
demand can be shown through analysis the market demand. Although, the website of
River Island is too easy to navigate with all the technological advancement needed in the
websites nowadays will increase the customer’s experience to visit on the website and
make a purchase (Smith, 2017). Hence, in this way, the technological advancements in
the business increase the concerned services and further the values of the products
offered.
Strengths and weakness of River Island organization
While comparing the River Island organization for its unique and fashionable wearables with
other organizations like New look, Topshop etc. in the high street fashion game, there can be
several strengths and weaknesses of River Island.
The relative strengths of River Island are given below:
 Six well-developed websites with very easy navigation for the customers.
 Almost 350 stores widely across the UK, Ireland, Asia, and Europe.
 More attractive window display of fashionable products on window screen on website
and stores.
 Products can be displayed internationally through the websites to the customers outside
the zone
 Access the customer’s data easily through their online portal
 Easy to remarket and retarget the customers through website maintenance and
suggestions
 Strong collaborations of River Island with other franchises and partners (Crawley, 2016).
 Social and digital connectivity with the customers for implementing marketing strategies.
 Strong customer’s base created
Apart from several strengths, there also exist many weaknesses about River Island for increasing
their product services for the consumers. These weaknesses are:

 Fewer discounts and deals offer on products
 Business through websites (E-commerce) is highly competitive
 Website crash (Ferreira, 2018)
Task 4
Deploying of information technology in River Island
As computer technology have been used all over in all the organizations whether any retailing
company, food industry or any banking sector. But the advancement of information technology
area, the organizations may deploy the technology like cloud computing or any other big data
technology for storage, retrieve, manipulate or transmit any data through applications of a
network of computers or servers. Thus, information technology plays a vital role in enhancing
business strategies and customer’s involvement. Without information technology, the business
may stop.
In the case of River Island organization, information technology is a valuable part of the business
for trading their products among the customers and dealing with suppliers and retailers. Using
information and technology will innovate the business activities like smart applications for the
end users, super sophisticated websites for dealing with clients, faster processing of digital data,
faster processing and many more (Quinonez, 2014). For emphasizing these opportunities, River
Island has to shift towards cloud computing technology through either private or public cloud.
Deploying private cloud in the organization will provide them a vast storage option for storing
the tremendous increased data about the organization, customer’s information, suppliers and
retailer’s information, store’s data etc. By analyzing this raw data can be beneficial to the
organization in multiple ways like determining their weak points in this competitive
environment, determine the customer’s area of interest according to the wearables provided by
River Island and many more.
Innovation in business
 As innovation through websites and applications provide the clients with a platform to
buy products online which is more efficient than normal stores. The already developed
websites of River Island have to be get collaborated with the application designed for
better efficiency.

 As social networking is very much beneficial to organizations because most of the youth
generation always seems online on social media. Social media is a powerful platform for
marketing nowadays. So, using social media through website collaboration will help
River Island to increase more customers and overall profits.
 Using a cloud computing network whether private or public cloud rather than the
computer network seems more beneficial for River Island. Cloud computing technology
provides vast storage with security encryption techniques to secure sensitive data about
customers as well as an organization (MacKechnie, 2018).
 Using data analysis tools throughout the database of the organization help River Island to
discover their weak points in the competitive environment and by focusing on those
points, the organization can easily resolve those weaknesses by some innovative ideas.
 Through data analysis, River Island organization can easily target the customer’s interest
and will be able to increase its profit and revenue by focusing on those targets.
 Real-time monitoring over the sales and marketing information can be made possible
while implementing information technology in the business premises of River Island.
 Based on solid market research, information technology let the River Island organization
to make good and beneficial decisions.
 Through the online portal, surveys of online customers feedbacks can be done more
easily by implementing information technology in business.
 Cloud computing technology helps in accessing the enterprise-based software from
anywhere by any device. Hence information technology has also improved human
resource management (BusinessVibes, 2015).
If the River Island want to become the topmost organization for providing fashionable and latest
stuff wearables to the customers, these modifications and innovation have to be deployed in the
business premises to improve the profits of the organization. These innovative ideas will be
proved that much efficient that the sales of the organization will become double or triple within
some range of time. One major point about this information technology innovative ideas is that
only deploying these solutions do not give that much satisfaction but deploying and maintaining
these technologies to bother the demands and increasing the sales is necessary.