COURSE TITLE: LOGISTICS SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS
SUBMISSION DATE: 9TH November 2012
TERM: AUTUMN 2012
1. What are the benefits of 7-Eleven’s Retail Information System?
1) Increase sales opportunities and gain profits i) Retail Information System can amass information about customer demand, pricing, and interest in new products, such as Diet Pepsi, Zero Coke, Slurpee. Analysis of the data shows which items are selling well in which stores, which items customers are most interested in, seasonal demand for items and which items are most profitable to sell in the first place. Then, 7-Eleven can depend on the above data to order the exact quantities of products & get the maximum of profit.
ii) Insights gleaned from the data also help 7-Eleven develop new products such as its fresh-food offerings that attract new customers and increase transaction size. For examples, now some 7-Eleven have the fast food counter to sell the fast food like fish ball, dumplings. It is very popular and meets the needs of the market.
2) Reduce excess inventory
Through the Retail Information System, management uses this information to identify sales trend, improve product assortment, eliminate slow-moving products from inventory, and increase same-store sales by stocking products that are high in demand. It can avoid the excess inventory and save the inventory cost includes the expensive rental expenses.
3) Easy to control the inventory
Retail Information System provides store managers with information on daily, weekly, and monthly sales of each item to help them determine which items to order the exact quantities they need for their stores. Managers use this information plus their on-the-spot knowledge of the neighborhood to make final order decision. Further, 7-Eleven’s orders for fresh food items are aggregated at 7-Eleven headquarters and transmitted to fresh food suppliers and bakeries for preparation