Planning and Control by ASDA: Checkouts Queues Managements - Coursework Example

?PLANNING AND CONTROL BY ASDA: CHECKOUTS QUEUES MANAGEMENT By number and of INTRODUCTION: ASDA is one of the largest retail organisation in United Kingdom. The organisation was acquired by Wal-Mart, largest retail organisation of the world, in the year 1999. Since then, ASDA has been operating in the retail industry of UK as a subsidiary of Wal-Mart (Berg & Gray, 2011). According to the retail industry report by Arch (2010), ASDA is enjoying 16.5 percent market share in the grocery industry of UK. The retail organisation mainly works to provide the target customers with different products related to food, clothing, grocery, and other related items. In this report an attempt has been made to understand and analyse the planning and control at ASDA. For this purpose, the checkouts queues management and associated policies and practices have been identified and analysed. In order to comprehend that whether all policies are implemented by the retail stores or not, the focus of report has been specially on the Manchester Hulme branch of ASDA. SYSTEM APPROACH AND BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN RETAIL BUSINESS AND SUPERMARKET: According the systems approach and business process management, operations of the organisations consist of different processes which work to convert the input into output (Jeston & Nelis, 2008a). The processes are different activities and tasks performed by the organisation in order to support the conversion of different resources and inputs into the final products of outputs (Zairi, 1997). (Barlow, 2005) According to the system approach of the business, any business can be defined on the basis of three important elements: input, processes, and output. Along with this, in order to make sure that all there elements are integrated and coordinated and the business system is effective and efficient and there is an ongoing transfer of feedback and information across all activities (Jeston & Nelis, 2008b). In the context of the supermarket or retail organisation in general, the inputs can be classified as the products being supplied from the suppliers along with human resource i.e. sales personnel, the processes include retail operations like assortment of products on the shelves, storage of the items, providing the customers with sales advices, customer service, etc., and the output is the purchase of the products by the customers which in turn provides the retail organisation with revenues and profits. PLANNING AND CONTROL AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AT ASDA: Owing to the increasing competition and changing consumer preferences and technological environment, ASDA has been giving high importance to the overall operations management of the retail organisation. One important aspect in this regard is of appropriate planning and control by the top management of the organisation. Organisation has several retail outlets at different locations and this huge numbers of retail stores make it more difficult to control the overall operations. All important decisions and policies are formulated and undertaken at the ‘ASDA house’ which are then implemented at all retail outlets. In order to come up with effective and efficient strategies and policies, ASDA utilise different information systems and Enterprise Resource Planning systems. These systems integrate the operations of all retail outlets operating different locations of United Kingdom. With the help of these systems, all data and information are available to the top managers of ASDA to take necessary decisions and formulate different plans. There should be proper control mechanism and system in order to ensure that all plans are being implemented in effective and efficient manner. Without a proper control mechanism it is difficult to keep a track of the policies and plans. Along with this, an appropriate control mechanism and system allows the organisation to identify and loopholes in the policy and improve it further. Also, this process of planning and control should be continuous in order to respond to the changing factors and incorporate new elements in the policies (Bowhill, 2008). Management of ASDA is well aware of the importance of an appropriate control mechanism, and for this purpose make sure that weekly reports about the performance of all retail stores are provided to the decision making bodies at ‘ASDA house’. The information systems and ERP also facilitates in this process and provides the top management with all required information about the progress and performance of the retail outlets. The operations of ASDA consists of different important business processes starting from sourcing and inventory management to sales and customer relationship management. It is not possible to evaluate the planning and control of the retail organisation in all these business processes and operations within this report. Hence, in order to better comprehend the practices undertaken by ASDA in the field of planning and control, the focus have been shifted towards the checkouts queues management and queuing theory in this report. As, checkouts queues management has been gain considerable importance in recent past because of changing preferences and needs of the customers. Also, there has been significant amount of advancement in different technologies and management systems in order to manage the queues and waiting time. Checkouts Queues Management: One of the most important elements of the operations management at any retail outlet or supermarket is of checkouts queues management. Long waiting lines for the processing of orders can result in frustrating the customers which in turn will result in low sales and unsatisfied customers. Most of the retail organisations are taking comparative advantage over other similar organisations by reducing the overall customer waiting time. The changing culture, environment, and social setup have resulted in making the customers more time conscious and they demand quick and on time services. People tend to prefer the supermarkets where there is less waiting time. The major reason behind the increasing trend of online shopping is that e-commerce or online shopping is less time consuming. For this reason there are increasing people who are shifting towards the online shopping as compared to the traditional shopping, despite of other issues associated with the online shopping (Aldin & Stahre, 2003). Shopping experience is the most important element in the retail management. Customers, today are getting more busy and are interested in saving as much time as possible in the daily routine. For this reason, almost every other retail organisation is taking considerable measures and formulating effective strategies in order to provide the customers with best shopping experience. The most important element in this regard is the checkouts queues management. ASDA, being the subsidiary of the world’s largest retail organisation i.e. Wal-Mart, has been taking different measures and steps in order to reduce the waiting time of the customers. Management of ASDA believes on continuous improvement and for this reason tries to continuously improve the process of checkouts and reduce the waiting time of the customers. Policies undertaken and New Systems Implemented by ASDA to Manage the Checkouts Queues: ASDA has been focusing on providing the customers with the best possible shopping experience at all retail outlets. For this reason, the top management is always in the process of analysing the existing practices and operations and identifying the methods for further improvement. For instance, in the year 2009 ASDA announced through a press release that the retail organisation invested around 3 million pounds in order to implement the new technology of ‘Queue Cue’, which enabled them to reduce the waiting time of the customers on the eve of Christmas (ASDA, 2009). In addition to the money, retail organisation allocated several other resources in order to make sure that customers do not have to wait long during the shopping for Christmas. The ‘Queue Cue’ is also known as the ‘giant hand of ASDA on stick’, was first tested in the ASDA’s retail outlet in Wembley. After successful trial in the retail outlet, the ‘Queue Cue’ was implemented in all retail outlets of ASDA. This technology can be described as a traffic control mechanism and the hand directs the shoppers towards the empty checkouts, this in turn allowed speedy and quick service. Before implementing this new technology, ASDA conducted a complete research about the shopping behaviour of the customers. Because of this new technology, ASDA was able to reduce the waiting time of the customers and provided them with quick service even on the busiest day (ASDA, 2009). This is just one example of the effective checkouts queues management by ASDA. The retail organisation has been utilising different technologies in order to understand the shopping behaviour and using this information to come up with different time management and traffic control systems and methods. The strategies for the checkouts queues management are made at the ‘ASDA house’, which are then implemented in different retail outlets and stores. In order to keep the overall shopping experience consistent in all retail outlets, the top management at ‘ASDA house’ formulate policies and provide targets to different retail stores. At the same time, in order to keep check on the performance of all stores, timely reports about the performance of the stores are presented to top management. For this purpose, strong management information system has been implemented by the organisation. The results of mystery shopping and other information regarding the store performance are communicated to the store managers along with future implications. Recently, management of ASDA has announced the launch of a whole new queue management system (Halliwell, 2012). The retail organisation was working on the development of this new system for past two years and at the moment will try this new system at thirty stores for the period of six months. This new system, known as ‘Queue Clarity’, utilise the stereoscopic camera in order to count the customers who enter into a store (Halliwell, 2012). After counting and analysing the numbers of customers, the figure is transferred to a dashboard being operated by the store staff at the shop floor. This dashboard identify the number of tills checkouts which had to be opened in order to provide quick services to the customers and reduce the chances of large queues at the tills checkouts. According to the retail organisation, several million pounds have been spent in order to implement the new checkouts queues management system in the retail outlets. At the same time, the management of ASDA claims that by the implementation of this new system they will be able to outpace the queuing waiting time of Tesco which is 2 minutes and 19 seconds. The queuing waiting time of ASDA at the moment is around 2 minutes and 33 seconds (Halliwell, 2012). Actual Practices at the Shop Floor of different Retail Outlets of ASDA with Special Focus on Manchester Hulme Branch: It is important to identify that whether the policies set by the top management are properly implemented at the stores or not. In order to make sure that the management of ASDA has been able to plan and control the whole process in effective and efficient manner it is important to explore that policies are being practiced accordingly or not. For this purpose, special focus have been given to the Manchester Hulme branch of ASDA. The shop manager or supervisor make sure that whole staff and employees in the store follow the policies designed for the management of the checkouts queues, as this will enable the store manager to deal with the queues of the customers effectively and efficiently. At the same time successful implementation of the queue management policies will enable the retail outlet to reduce the waiting time and keeping the queues minimum in order to provide the customers with the best possible shopping experience. For this purpose, the retail outlet has implemented filtration method in order to minimise the size of the queues and reducing the waiting time. There are self service checkouts for the customers who have less than 20 items in their basket. At the same time, there are also tills available for the customers with less than 20 items in their basket, who wants assistance or help. Other tills are operated by the staff of the retail organisation without any limitation or restriction of products or items in the basket. In total, the retail outlet has 20 staff operated till checkouts and 20 self service checkouts. At the peak time i.e. 4:30 pm to 10 pm all tills checkouts are opened and operating. In order to make sure that all tills checkouts are operating and available, the store management makes announcement on the loud speakers asking the operators of checkouts on the shop floor to report at their respective tills checkouts. However, when there is less customers and the shop floor is calm the operators of tills checkouts conduct other duties and responsibilities at the retail outlet. According to the policy of ASDA, there should be only one customer being served and another waiting at all tills checkouts queues. So, customers are guided towards the checkouts in order to reduce the queues and waiting time. ASDA has been able to reduce the waiting time in the queues by formulating and implementing different effective policies. All policies are first tested and tried at some selected stores before implementing them at all stores. With the help of highly efficient information systems, ASDA has been able to plan and control the checkouts queues management in an effective manners. ‘ASDA house’ is connected with all retail stores and get daily data about the performance of the stores. This information and data on one hand allows the top management to control the practices being followed by every store and on the other hand provides the top management with important insights to plan for further strategies and actions. Apart from this, in order to motivate the retail outlets to give high performance, the staff of the retail outlet which delivers high performance is provided with different incentives and benefits. The issue with dealing with Queues had been a serious challenge for a while in the ASDA stores and supermarkets. Nonetheless, ASDA follows the rules set in place and practice all the policies on the floor on daily routine. This has indeed helped them manage the flow of customers and deal with queue every day. Due to the continuous effort of the workers under the guidance of the management, ASDA has been able to improve its customer services as compared to the old set up of the supermarket. ASDA has been able to respond quickly to the changing needs of the customers and for this reason is one of the top retail organisations of UK. The proper planning and control polices of the ASDA with regard to the checkouts queues management, the retail organisation has been able to attract and retain more customers. If this would not have been the case, the company would have to face significant losses due to the unsatisfied and unhappy customers (Prigg, 2009). CONCLUSION: Top management at ASDA is capable of formulating effective plans and ensuring that these plans are being implemented at all retail stores located at different locations. There is highly efficient planning and control system at ASDA which is supported by different information systems and technologies. This can be concluded on the basis of the analyses carried out about the checkouts queues management by the retail organisation. All policies and plans related to the checkouts queues management are formulated by the top management at ‘ASDA house’ which are then followed by the employees and staffs at all retail stores. This in turn allows the retail organisation to provide the customers with high quality and on time customer services. List of References Aldin, N, & Stahre, F 2003, ‘Electronic commerce, marketing channels and logistics platforms-a wholesaler perspective’, European Journal of Operational research, vol. 144, pp. 270-279. Arch, Z 2010. Retail Overview. Available from [Accessed 07 February 2012] ASDA, 2009, ASDA raises check-out flag with revolutionary ‘Queue Cue” to speed up service. Available from http://your.asda.com/press-centre/asda-raises-check-out-flag-with-revolutionary-queue-cue-to-speed-up-service [Accessed 7 February 2012] Barlow, J 2005, Excel Models for Business and Operations Management, John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey  Berg, N, & Gray, D 2011, ‘First look at the ASDA Supermarket’, Store Magazine. Available at http://www.stores.org/STORES%20Magazine%20July%202011/first-look-asda-supermarket [Accessed 7 February 2012] Bowhill, B 2008, Business Planning and Control: Integrating accounting, strategy, and people. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, West Sussex, England. Halliwell, J 2010, ‘Cameras roll as ASDA looks to halve queues’, The Grocer, Available from http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/topics/technology-and-supply-chain/cameras-roll-as-asda-looks-to-halve-queues/225090.article [Accessed 7 February 2012] Jeston, J & Nelis, J 2008b, Management by process: A practical road-map to sustainable business process management, Butterworth-Heinemann, London. Jeston, J & Nelis, J, 2008a, Business process management: practical guidelines for successful implementations, 2nd Ed. Butterworth-Heinemann, London. Prigg, R. 2009, ‘Queue management targets the last stage of the purchasing process’. Retail customer experience. Available from http://www.nationalshoppingservice.com/public/press/docs/www.retailcustomerex.pdf [Accessed 7 February 2012] Zairi, M 1997, ‘Business Process Management: a boundary less approach to modern competitiveness’, Business Process Management Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 64-80. Read More