Strategic Information System Analysis and Recommendations: Woolworths

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the strategic information system (SIS) employed by Woolworths Supermarket. It begins with an introduction to SIS and its importance, followed by an examination of Woolworths' organizational background, including its structure and market position in Australia and New Zealand. The report delves into operational problems faced by the supermarket, such as employee issues, team performance, technological limitations, and communication gaps. It then explores the system acquisition method, specifically the use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and its benefits, including a sales flowchart illustrating the sales process. The report identifies control problems within the system, such as product quality, customer relationship management, and employee retention. Finally, it discusses accounting software packages, market size, competitors, and offers relevant recommendations for improving Woolworths' SIS and overall performance.

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

1STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Part A.........................................................................................................................................3
Organizational background of the Supermarket:...................................................................3
1. Organizational Structure of Woolworths Supermarket:..................................................3
2.0 Operational Problems in Woolworths Supermarket:.......................................................5
3.0 System Acquisition Method:............................................................................................7
4.0 Flowchart of Sales:...........................................................................................................8
5. Control Problems in the System:........................................................................................9
Part B........................................................................................................................................10
1. Accounting Software Packages:....................................................................................10
2. Market size:...................................................................................................................11
3. Market Leaders and the competitors of the Woolworths Supermarket:.......................12
4. Relevant Recommendations for Woolworths Supermarket:............................................13
Conclusion:..............................................................................................................................13

2STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
Introduction:
The system of the information can be described as the system that is organized to
collect, optimize and store to communicate with any kind of data or any kind of information.
Data operation is gets easier and simple for the any kind of data in the information system
them. The information system produces the information as per the requirement whenever it
needed. Of the Information system, the strategic information system is one of the important
system. The strategic information system mainly deals with the strategies of any organisation.
It is one type of information system that is used for the successful implementation and for
achieving the goals of the organization (Laudon and Laudon 2016). From this strategic
information system the advantages are gained effectively those are competitive in nature. For
the businesses most of the business organization uses the strategic information system. The
products and the services that are produced by the supermarket is delivered in the market
with much lower cost and with much better efficiencies than the other supermarket in the
market (Piercy 2016). The strategic information system target the specific section of the
market Strategic information system is the most major feature of the information system.
In this literature review the topic of the discussion will be the strategic information
system and the information system that is used for the accounting purpose of one of the
popular supermarket in the Australia, which is thee Woolworths supermarket. This super
market is very famous and the supermarket is located in Australia. In the further study the
organizational structure of the supermarket and the various operational problems with the
super market will be discussed. The proper and the relevant method of the system acquisition
and the flowchart of the whole organization will also will be described further in the literature
review. Various control problems with the supermarket for the fraud with the system is also
will be mentioned. The next part of the literature review will describe the details about the

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software package used for the accounting that are used in the organization with the
matchingdetails. Then in the review the top competitors and the leaders of the market are also
mentioned and discussed their market share. At last the conclusion of the whole literature
review is given.
Discussion
Part A
Background of the Organization of the Supermarket:
ThisSupermarket that is Woolworths is one of the most renowned grocery store in the
region of Australia and the New Zealand. The supermarket provides various products and
services to its customers and for that this supermarket is widely accepted by the people of
Australia than the other supermarkets. This supermarket is inaugurated in the year 1924 with
the collaboration with another supermarket, for forming a near control for all the accounting
of all supermarkets in the Australia, ‘Coles’is responsible (Woolworthsgroup.com.au. 2018).
Coles takes the 80% of the whole market of grocery in the Australia. The main purpose of the
Woolworths supermarket is to sell groceries to the people of Australia. The groceries that the
supermarket provide is consist of packed food, vegetables, and fruits. Apart from these items
the supermarket also sells baby foods, foods for pet and all other stationary items. The
Woolworth super market has its branches mostly everywhere in the region of Australia and
New Zealand. In the Australia & New Zealand near about one thousands stores are located by
the name of Woolworths. Among the thousands stores near about nine hundred stores are
supermarkets and rest of the other are the convenience stores. These all thousand stores is
under the one brand name that is Woolworth. The share of the Woolworths supermarket is
always on top among the market leaders. A slight downfall has been seemed in the recent

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market share though (Woolworthsgroup.com.au. 2018). The reason for the downfall are
described in the further paragraphs.
1. Organizational Structure of the Supermarket:
In any organization the organizational structure can be defined by the
procedures of the different activities of any organization. The different
procedures are consists of task allocation, coordinating and supervising to
achieve the proper objective or the proper goal of the organization. The
organization is effective, efficient and flexible in order to achieve the
competitive advantages in a successful way (Pearlson, Saunders & Galletta
2016). The organizational structure can be formed in various ways which
would be helping the organization in determining the operations along with
the mode of performance .Organizations employee allocations is also the
responsibility of this structure. The organization Woolworth consists of two
parts and they are shown in the figure provided below.

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Figure 1: Management Structure of the Woolworths Supermarket
Figure 2: Woolworths Supermarket Corporate Structure
The above figures that are provide are related with the demonstrating the structure of
the management and the prganizations strycture of the corporate that Woolworth
Supermarket of Australiais is having. In the organization there exists several management
bodies which are associated with the management and ensuring the success of the
organization. (Kersiene & Savaneviciene 2015).
2.0 Operational Problems within the Supermarket:
In the market of the groceries the Woolworth market is more successful than the other
supermarket in the country. Though the supermarket is successful and widely accepted by the
customer of the supermarket, several issues are raised within the system which the system
cannot avoid. The issues have been discussed below:
i) Issues with Employees: the major issue that is raised with the Woolworths
supermarket is the employees’ issue. Inside the super market there are conflict

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within the employees, the issues of trauma that is personal and supervisor
issues of the issues are raised. This problem can able to shake the whole
organizational structure of the company (Brewster 2017).And the problem
with the employees within the organization is increasing regularly.
ii) Problem with the teams: to increase the performance of the organization of
the supermarket the teams that are divided must be work effectively and
efficiently. The departmental teams of Woolworth should operate properly in
order to enhance the success of the organization (Cassidy 2016). The scene is
not the same as desired. As the company is almost 100 year old in these year
the company had to face several non-functional issues like this and most times
are wasted to mitigate these issues.
iii) Traditional Technology: this is another problem which is related to the
operation of the organization. As the company is old so the technology are
used in this company are mostly older that affects the productivity of the
company. The supermarket still uses the traditional technology methods and in
these zone they face major competitions from the market (Short et al. 2013).
iv) Wrong strategies: Adaptation of wrong strategies is one of the major
operational problem faced byWoolworth supermarket. Many times the
strategies that are implemented by the organization does not sufficient enough
to fulfil the requirement or unable to meet the objective in long term (Haines
2016). For these wrong strategies the company faces several losses.
v) Communication:This is another importantproblem faced by the organization
while performing various operationswithin the Woolworths supermarket.Due
to lack of communication a gap occurs between the customers and the
organization. For this reason the new customers fell hesitated while

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communicating with the authorities of the Supermarket (Dibrell, Craig and
Neubaum 2014). Many times the decisions or the strategies that are taken by
the organization is not spread to the all the employees and this leads to
communication gap between the staffs of the company. This lacks the
cooperation between the staffs.
vi) Lack of resources: as per the demand of the raw materials the supply is not
made. This affects the suppliers are not getting their products and they get
disappointed with the grocery store (Channon and Jalland 2016).. Then they
opt another supermarkets and y this the supermarket loses its customers.
3.0 System Acquisition Method:
Enterprise resource planning or the ERP has been taken by the Woolworth
supermarket for their business. Enterprise Resource Planning can be categorised as a part of
business which is associated with the management of the software, along with helping the
organizations to integrate the various business application in a proper way which would not
be having any kind of complexity (Seethamraju 2015). The various activities that are
conducted by the organization can help in the collection, storage, management and
interpretation of the data or the information. the customer relationship management that is is
one of the most needed requirment for any business that is associated with“management of
procurement”, “financial management of finance”, “management of HR”, “production
management”, “management of logistics” and many more. All these are combinded with the
the enterprise resource planning. Woolworth supermarket is associated with dealing with
various kind of business process as well with various kind of activities. The enterprise
resource planning had the major impact on the businesses. The ERP maintenance is tough
and very much costly, the Woolworths though still utilizes this software to their business

8STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
because it have a huge benefit on the business (Seo 2013). The productivity of the
Woolworths is increasing and the productivity also becoming efficient.
Figure 3: Benefits of Enterprise Resource Planning in Woolworths Supermarket
The above figure provides a clear view of the benefits that are given from the
Enterprise Resource Planning that is the organization is enjoying in the business. The
business processes which have been discussed above is integrated with the ERP.
4.0 Sales Flowchart:
The flowchart of the sales for the organization shows the processes of the sales of the
organization. The flowchart that has been provided below depicts the steps that are included
in the sales and also each and every individuals who are involved in the processes (Andraši,
Domitrović & Roman,2014). The outcomes of the particulars are gained by the processes that
are close to the goals of the organization. The flowchart which has been provided below
shows the sales process of the Woolworths supermarket:

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Figure 4: Flowchart of Sales Procedure
The above figure helps in understanding the various sales related process that the
organization Woolworths Supermarket is having. The flowchart consists of five steps and the
steps includes the Customer which is the first component. Once the booking is done by the
customer, the sales process comes which is the second component. The third component is
the Contract, in this step the agents are associated with seeing and reviewing the order. Once
completed they provides the then approval. Legal aspects are included as the fourth
componentwhich involves the checking of the fact is the order is legal. Lastly, the final
component is fulfilment where the order of the customer is fulfilled.
5. Control Problems in the System:
The control problems which are faced by the organization Woolworth supermarket
has been provided below:
i) Quality of the Product: One of the highlighting control problem is the problem
with the quality of the different products and the different product services. It is the

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responsibility of the organization to focus on the quality of the product in order to solve their
problems. Along with this it is their responsibility to keep a balance between the quality of
the productand the quantity of the product (Flanagin et al., 2014).
ii) CRM: The next problems is regarding the maintenance of customer relationship
management.in order to maintain a perfect CRM the organization should adopt certain
strategies that would be helping them a lot (Khodakarami & Chan 2014).
iii) Employees Retention: Followed by the problem of CRM is the problem related to
the retention of the efficient employees as the organized in focused on retention of this
employees. Good and efficient employees should be included in the organization in ordr to
increase the productivity (Das & Baruah 2013).
iv) High Price: When compared with the price of the grocery products of different
grocery stores it has been seen that the price of the products in Woolworth is relatively high
than the other stores.
The frauds that are related to the super market is given below:
i) Payroll Frauds: in like every organization this fraud is there that is pay roll fraud
and in this report Woolworths is not an exception and it also have to deals with payroll fraud.
ii) Fraud of Double Checking: This type of fraud can affect the revenue as it is
directly involves with the account.
iii) Frauds in the supply material: the amount of the raw materials that is on the
demand and that are supplied is not same and thus open the opportunity for the fraud.

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Part B
1. Accounting Software Packages:
The accounting software are providing and bringing the simplicity to the businesses. These
packages substantially integrated and maintained the business processes. The Woolworths
supermarket do not have any faith over the modern technologies and still used the traditional
technologies from the beginning of their organization (Salome & Chukwunwendu 2014). Thus
the organization did not take any accounting software packages for their organization. SAP is
the core part of the ERP. The significant advantages of the SAP includes decreasing of the
existing costs, streamlining of various processes, increased rate of efficiency, improvement in
the productivity and many more.
Figure 5: Hosting services of SAP in the supermarket
The above provided figure is shown the various different hosting services that the
supermarket is providing to its customers and these services al so include some several
features likedata center management, service desk provided sales, management of network

12STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
access and the SAP basis operations and the data services and services of system
management.
2. Market size:
Market size basically describe the position of the company in the market.
Figu
re 6: the position in the market
As the super market is faces lots of problem there is a downfall in shares that can be
seen in the above picture. The shares just dropped to below 5 from the high 15.
3. Top competitors and the leaders of the market for the supermarket:
One of the top competitors of the super market are Aldi, Coles and IGA.

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Sales
Other Supermarkets 8.10%
IGA 9.80%
Aldi 12.50%
Woolworths 36.30%
Coles Group 33.20%
Figure 7: Top Competitors of Woolworths Supermarket
The above graph is described the shares of the market of all the top competitors for
the Woolworths supermarket. In the chart it is clear that the Woolworths is leading the market
share by having 36.30% market share which is the maximum share among the all
competitors.
4. Recommendations: Woolworths Supermarket:
Though it is the leading supermarket in the Australia but it has some issues and the
issues are discussed earlier. To mitigate
i) Downfall of Shares: The downfall of the shares is one of the major problem faced
by Woolworth. In order to tackle this problem it is recommended to make new and full proof
strategies.
ii) Higher Price: The second problem due to which the customers are losing their
interest over the organization is the higher price of products and for the services. In order to
tackle the problem related to high price it is recommended that the organization should think

14STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEM
of reducing the price of the products and make it affordable for the customers by maintaining
the same quality of the product.
iii) CRM improper application: customer relationship problem is the major issue for
thje businesses like these. For tackling this problem it is recommended that the organization
should focus on the CRM in order to mitigate the problems.
Conclusion:
From the above literature review, it can be concluded that the strategic information
system impacts huge only in the betterment of a business. To add more feature and more pace
for the growth in the business the strategic information system is applied. The strategic
information system includes the decision support system for successfully deploying the
strategies of the information system. In this literature review the selected organization is the
Woolworths supermarket that is in Australia. Flowchart and the market share of the
supermarket is also discussed in the review. Control problems and the mitigation techniques
also mentioned. After using the different software packages of the accounting the business
the super market is heavily benefited. SAP and ERP mainly used in the Woolworths super
market.

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