Analyzing Innovation Management at Sainsbury's: Report and Findings

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Sainsbury's innovation strategies within the UK retail market. It begins with an introduction to the company, its history, and its current market position. The report then delves into Sainsbury's present functionalities, including its diverse range of services such as grocery, banking, and property ventures, highlighting its commitment to customer satisfaction through quality products and online services. The core of the report examines the concept of innovation in today's retail organizations, discussing how companies can leverage innovative techniques, such as self-checkout systems and click-and-collect services, to enhance customer experience and gain a competitive advantage. The report further explores Sainsbury's specific innovative approaches, including its partnership with Zapp for mobile payments and its use of self-checkout systems, while also acknowledging the challenges associated with these innovations. It concludes by offering recommendations for incorporating innovation into Sainsbury's operations to ensure future success in a dynamic market. The report emphasizes the importance of research and development, employee training, and technological advancements for maintaining a competitive edge in the retail industry.

Managing Innovation

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTON.............................................................................................................................1
Present functionality of Sainsbury..............................................................................................1
Innovation taking place in today's retail organization's..............................................................3
Ways to incorporate the above defined measures of innovation into Sainsbury........................6
Recommendation.........................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11
ILLUSTRATION INDEX
Illustration 1: Managing innovation.................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTON
Businesses are continuously rising with a positive determination of heading towards the
dynamic functionality of their activities. It thereby recommends them to focus upon the
fulfilment of certain emerging needs and present desires of their customer's. In similar regard,
Innovation is an ongoing demand of today's business for rapidly heading towards the prosperous
path of success (Aalbers and Dolfsma, 2015). Especially to operate into the open market of UK
with a highly competitive business scenario, it is vital for the existing firms to promptly manage
their momentous presence. Innovation here duly works as a strategic tool for the management
bodies with a responsive approach of constantly developing new products and services into their
business activities. It altogether helps the firm to get an instant approval of their client's and
consumers where they come with more interest and enthusiasm to try those newly invented
services. It in turn directly raises the profitability ratio of the firm that directly leads to enhance
their future prospective.
The present report is in similar context of demonstrating the ability of innovation into
Sainsbury PLC where it primarily showcases its present work structure with its ongoing
functionalities. Sainsbury coexists a renowned name in the retail industries of UK where it was
preliminary founded in the year 1869 and now with an existence of almost 147 years
(Abdourazakou, 2016). It is presently operating in around 1312 locations with total 161, 100
number of employees. It holds approximately 16.9% of shares in UK market with a profound
recognition of being the second largest supermarket of UK, headquartered at London. Lastly, it
together concentrates on the current advancing changes into its prevailing market with a
prominent recommendation of incorporating it into Sainsbury.
Present functionality of Sainsbury
Sainsbury is a famed name in UK with a broad portfolio of its largely extended services
of supermarket that duly deals into grocery and some other operations of general merchandise.
Being founded in 1869, it has an existence of exactly 147 years which is now operating with
around 1200 stores of its own (Altuna and et.al., 2015). It also deals into a joint venture with
“Land Securities Group PLC” through which its Sainsbury bank provides a wide range of
products for insurance and other quality banking services, etc. Another is “The British Land
Company PLC” to name another portfolio of Sainsbury property for providing estate land
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properties to some interested parties. Sainsbury therefore duly respects its customer's and thence
tries to maintain a valuable and trustworthy relationship with them. It can also be determined
through their work surrounding where they continuously opt for perpetually enhancing their
services to duly match with the driving expectations and requirement of their customers.
The current business strategies of Sainsbury clearly evidence certain major objectives of
the firm with a strong belief of utterly knowing their customers into a well mannered
prospective. It thereby has a powerful vision of being the most reliable retailer of the globe with
numerous customers at their part. For which, it significantly aimed at a steady goal of easing the
life of their customer's than they could have ever imagined of (Archibald and Archibald, 2015).
It thus offers a great quality products to their customers by together serving them at its best
affordable price. The cited firm also facilitates an online service of providing goods at the
doorstep of their customers with an option of ordering it at any place. For which it strongly
believes in making a huge differentiated approach of serving with a precious determination of
maintaining a sustainable plan of work throughout the course. The sustainability plan of
Sainsbury also showcases its effectiveness of competently facing the challenges by gradually
meeting some upcoming opportunities (Bieraugel, 2015).
It thus focuses upon the below specified points of heading towards the maintenance of a
feasible work surrounding. It mainly includes providing a healthy lifestyle to lead with,
beginning with unity and prioritizing environment for which it has together been recognised as a
greater place to work by its employees. Presently, Sainsbury is known for its prominent strategy
of being a price leader among all retail organizations of UK where it profoundly uses a fine
scheme of building distinguished goods and services for its consumers (Corral de Zubielqui,
Jones and Statsenko, 2016). However, from an innovation point of view, it together thrives for
opting a digital revolutionary approach of aptly providing its services to the customers by social
mediation. Here it has recently partnered with Zapp for providing its customers an ease of duly
making a secured and payment for their orders. Zapp is believed to be a giant mobile application
which provides a superior service of making a quick payment of goods and services by the users
duly associated with its service partners (de Londras and Dzehtsiarou, 2015).
Another inclusion of innovative services of Sainsbury includes its momentous presence
into a self checkout system for their clients and customers. Self checkout service is basically
recognised as a self payment system where the buyers can individually generate an invoice of
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their purchased goods and later make an applicable payment for it. The cited firm has therefore
constructed over 430000 units of self check out payment at their respective centres (Djahimo,
2015). It is however a SACAT machines with both its advantages of saving the time of
customers by together lowering the labour costs of the firm with certain disadvantages of being a
low reliable product. It is due to its incompetency of provoking for some shrinkage or shoplifting
techniques to some assailable users by together threatening the interaction between staff and
customers (Frow, Nenonen, Payne and Storbacka, 2015). Another existing service of Sainsbury
is an alternative measure of providing a click and collect conceptualisation to its users where
they can primarily make an order of goods and later collect it from their nearby warehouse at
their accessible time.
Both these services are largely attracting numerous customers to opt for their extended
services of enlarging their comfort level up to a broad extent. Therefore, with an equivalently
wider determination of easing the task of its service users, it is constantly thriving for some more
significant formulations specified into the below carried phases (Košmrlj, Širok and Likar,
2015). It thereby focuses on opting for more varied activities of inculcating newer inventions of
different schemes and content for its service users. It therefore aims at building a respective
approach of fore-mostly recognizing the present ongoing scenario of innovations into the
business activities and altogether what other measures can be incorporated along with it for
ultimately attaining a successful future of the firm (Rakhimova, 2015.).
Innovation taking place in today's retail organization's
Innovation is the latest mean of thriving one's business towards a prosperous future of
development. It therefore praises the firm's to constantly adopt certain requisition of making
changes into their business activities which altogether reflects a long lasting benefit to them.
Managing innovation is therefore considered as a strategic methodology through which the
companies can instantly transverse some definite new performance commencement. Thus, it
mostly reflects for approaching towards a continuous practice of meeting the innovative
techniques and procedures (Rampersad, 2015). It is therefore considered as a strategic tool of
administration with a constant determination of companies to build an impressive evidence of
processing new products and technologies. The innovation is therefore based upon some
common principles of harnessing the intellectual levels of the workforce, accelerating great and
productive leaders at the workplace and finally by building an assemblage for working together
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to create a valuable sense of belongingness towards the timely attainment of organizational
goals. Management innovation is an abbreviated term which has a broader meaning of moving
from the traditional approach of building products towards a newer conceptualisation of
indulging into a modern outlook of management practices via some unique principles of work
(Schepers, 2015). It thereby focuses mainly upon changing the managerial work of setting
objectives and building plans by orienting the requisite efforts for controlling the ongoing
activities to be coordinated with their needful measures.
Next is on collecting and assigning the resources by acquiring an applied knowledge onto
it and lastly by structuring and upbringing relationships to identify and develop newer talents. It
however requires understanding the needs and demand of outside constituents to balance out the
required formulation. Big organizations generally segregate the process of adapting the trend of
innovation into two major dimensions where firstly it aims at reinvent the procedures of
management. The basic procedures of management includes its strategic appliances of planning,
budgeting the capital resources, managing projects, assessing the performances of its employees
via hiring and promoting them to a next recognisable position (Sun and et. al., 2015). It therefore
prompts for the development of executives through the internal communication matrix of a
proficient management. Contradictory to that, the secondary level of innovation focuses upon
constructing an operational invention of altering the company's business processes which mainly
relies on modifying the services of acquisition, provision and utilities of customer support, etc.
Therefore, most of the retail firms like Sainsbury should priorly aim for adapting an operational
invention of their using a differentiated formulation of constructing their products and services
for the consumers (Trott and et. al., 2015). Such noted retail firms are mostly working into the
similar aspect of bringing some definite innovative changes into the work culture of their
organization's.
However, such successful changes are only possible with an obligatory measure of
hugely investing into the research and development (R&D) programs of the organization with an
equivalent necessity of promptly training and developing their staff members in order to avoid
any sort of complication. It therefore reflects a counter part of making large investments of funds
for innovation with an optimistic approach of enhancing the firm's profitability ratio on another
hand (Tsaih and Han, 2016). However, the successful organizations duly opts with a positive
formulation of innovation which together recommends them to go for the investment option of
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revealing funds with a cost effective methodology. This seems as a major reason behind their
successful recognition that duly refines a strategic approach of carrying the requisite activities of
business. In today's competitive business scenario, technological advancement is the seeming
possibility of hiring the prosperity of one's business. It duly measures the upcoming innovation
in technical methods for inculcating it into the daily operations of a business. UK coexists with
an open market condition which has duly increased the nature of competitiveness among the
existing enterprises (Vasin and Gamidullaeva, 2015). Therefore, it is vital to deal with a
competent approach of inculcating an innovative work culture for appropriately handling such
rising competition and rivalry among the firms. In similar regard, the retail firms has
significantly moved towards using some innovative methods by duly changing their technologies
in certain requisite arenas.
It promptly defines an inclusion of self payment system, click and collect concept and
personalized shopping methods. These varied measures have also shown a tremendous response
by the service users who are nowadays evenly fascinated with such online tricks and techniques
of usage. It in turn offers the firms a lot more benefits of saving their expense where especially
the click and collect method is entirely concentrated towards serving the firm with a cost
effective measure of servicing their customers. It is because this technique helps the firm to
lower their cost by directly allowing its customers to primarily place an order and later collect
their goods from a nearby warehouse (Wu, Lii and Wang, 2015). The firm here takes a sole
liability of maintaining a proper and prior packaging of the goods which can be collected
anytime by the customers as per their own convenience. In the secondary method of personalised
shopping, the shopper can simply make a list of products that one is interested to purchase and
later allot that list to a representative at the shop. This will be later followed by a home delivery
of sequent goods at buyer's doorstep where the agent will together collect its related payment.
Lastly, the self payment methodology which is a common yet beneficially proven
concept which provides the shoppers an exclusive service of self check out. It significantly
reduces the labour costs of a firm by together saving the valuable time of the customer's and
thence has a responsiveness from its numerous users. An innovation is therefore seen as a
beneficially proven method with a smart and apt formulation by the indulging firm's (Culver,
2016). Another prevailing innovative approach is an inclusion of product trackers via bar code
readers where the customers can easily amend their final decision of buying products. It is where
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the customers can firstly determine the cost of their opted product by later viewing an ongoing
offers of discount on it. It will again work for the decrement of labour cost for the firms where
the customers will also be able to build a non influential decision of their own on the basis of
their amiability.
Ways to incorporate the above defined measures of innovation into Sainsbury
This particular section is to broadly specify certain requisite amendments of enhancing
the innovation capability of Sainsbury in regard to extent some newer formulation servicing its
client's and customers. Furthermore, rising the innovation capability of a firm largely depends on
some predefined measures of its occupied intrinsic and extrinsic resources. Therefore, here the
cited company is purely focused to thrive an operational innovation of its services that not only
means to alter the existing services but together aims at opting for a completely new work
procedures of serving its client's and customer's (Quinn, 2016). On a similar context, Sainsbury
is already leading its path at certain innovative methods of providing a self payment system,
along with a click and collect concept for its service users.
It has together related its service with a Zapp mobile application which duly allows its
customers to themselves make their payment after purchasing goods. These specified services
are duly enlarging its acceptance by numerous number of consumers who are equivalently
fascinated by its varied measures of services. Along with it, Sainsbury can together opt for
building an open innovation concept of raising its existing services with a major demand of
increasing their competency. An open innovation ranges the firm to opt for an applied method
with more significant approach of utilizing both internal and external ideas of its coexisting
paradigm (Rosenthal, 2016). An open innovation basically works upon enhancing the
technological capability of the firm and thus settled on the below identified stages.
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A foremost measure is to identify the stated goals of the firm by together finding an apt
arena of applying the innovative method with a requisite procurement. Rendering ideas is the
next level where the firm is thereby obliged to match the ongoing trends and demands into its
prevailing market area. It also includes the firm to consider the recent desires of its customers
with a consistency of building an apt product or service for them. This is then followed by
designing an exactly identified product or service for the users which later continues with some
definite measures of ultimately constructing a liable good for the consumers and testing with a
perspective of making necessary evaluation (Abdourazakou, 2016). It thereby helps the firm to
determine the succeeding approach of the existed product by together flaunting its
responsiveness by the users. Therefore, this specific stage of evaluation is a prominent method of
making an apt comparison of acquired results with its standard set of outcome that duly helps the
firm to redesign or convert its product or services into the predefined requisite standard.
Sainsbury too uses the similar concept of launching an innovation products or services
into its work criteria. However, it yet hasn't enclosed a newer concept of personalised shopping
method for its consumer's. A personalised shopping method enormously allow the shoppers to
simply create a list of their needed goods and products by later handling it over to the
representatives at the shop premises of Sainsbury. In this method, large number of customers will
be duly attracted by this particular service where the cited firm will together provide a home
delivery service to its users by delivering their ordered goods at the doorstep together with a cash
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Illustration 1: Managing innovation
(Source: Aalbers and Dolfsma, 2015)

on delivery option (Archibald and Archibald, 2015). This will also help the firm to balance out
their workforce where they can here use the minimized labour from its digitally radical area.
Another method is an inclusion of product tracking object at almost all the sections of its retail
stores. This section will consist of a bar code reader which will duly help the consumers to
acknowledge the price of that product with an ongoing offer on it. The main purpose of this
subsidiary element of bar code reader is to largely calculate an exact price of the selected goods
after applying the current offer on it.
This will directly help the buyer to easily determine their total costs of purchasing goods
without any insolvency of their economic decision. This particular method will randomly help
them to take certain prominent and effective buying decisions of their own without any prior
influence of the sales representatives. This method will therefore save the company's labour cost
where it is responsible to hire and appoint less number of physical resources at their shop
premises with a prominent existence of effectual digital services at their workplace. Therefore, it
will also reduce the chaos of its human resource department where it is solely responsible to
handle the activities of numerous number of employees (Bieraugel, 2015). Rather, opting for a
complete digitalised approach will together work towards a betterment of the firm and its related
prospects. On another hand, Sainsbury will together need to use some profound technique's and
action plans for serving with a completely revolved digitalised work environment. This will also
require the firm to engage some major number of skilled and capable employees who are
competently able to handle and manage the requisite operations of advanced machineries, etc.
Recommendation
Sainsbury is undoubtedly a well recognisable name into the retail sectors of UK where it
has prominently positioned as the second highest position among their existing supermarkets.
However, it is equivalently crucial for the firm to maintain this positive impact by competently
heading towards an acquisition of a leading orientation. Innovation is here recognised as a clear
substance of enhancing the organizational growth prospective of a firm. It clearly defines the
organizational objectives by together providing a competitive advantage to a firm. On similar
aspects, Sainsbury is too recommended opting for a principle formulation of indulging into the
implementation of Trendsetting methodology where the core responsibility of the firm is to
primarily study the prevailing market trends (de Londras and Dzehtsiarou, 2015). Such approach
will then directly reflect onto the requisite measures of following the latest desire of its services
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users. This promptly defines Sainsbury to opt for a similar methodology of work for satisfying
the upcoming demands of their client's and customers. From the above carried study of managing
innovation, technology innovation has been ascertained as a foremost constituent of competently
leading into today's challenging business environment.
Therefore, Sainsbury here too needs to operate into the similar testimonial of digital
revolution with an inclusion of certain new services like a concept of personalised shoppers and
product tracker with bar code reader. It however needs the cited firm to opt for a major number
of technically skilled employees who can promptly handle such arising methods of innovation
into the firm. On another hand, it can also involve some timely drill sessions of training and
development for its existing staff members to enhance their cognition level into the similar
aspect of operating into its pioneered culture (Djahimo, 2015). Lastly, the cited firm is duly
advisable to potentially manage its economic statue. Here Sainsbury is solely obliged to inculcate
some effective machineries with an abstracted software to severally operate into the above
defined measures. It will therefore needed to be operated within a completely segregated portion
for each of its newly launched function.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the whole report that, with an aim to establish competitive
presence in market, it is essential for the firm that it should perform innovative changes in the
products and services which is being offered by it to the respective buyers. This is because, if
given thing will not being done by the corporation at that time it becomes very difficult for the
enterprise like Sainsbury with regard to mark unique and effective presence in the market where
it is operating its operation. Furthermore, it has also being examined that there are number of
innovative changes taking place in the retail market. This includes self payment system, click
and collect method along with personalized shopper etc. These all innovative changes helps in
establishing the unique identity of firm in comparison to its rivalries. Hence, it also enables the
enterprise with regard to establish its unique brand image in market in an effectual way.
Furthermore, by entailing innovation in the services which Sainsbury offer, cited firm can
enhance the satisfaction level of its buyers. Hence, due to this overall benefits can be gained by
enterprise in the form of increased profits and sales. However, in order to bring the innovative
changes firm will require the team of competent and talented personnel. It is by complying with
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the given type of activity only, firm's capability to bring innovative changes in the services will
be enhanced.
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