Current Systems at Safeway Supermarket Inc - Case Study Example

Applied Information Technology Project Part2 This paper evaluates the current systems atSafeway Inc. to understand the existing gap in the implementation of technology to enhance customer experience and satisfaction. The paper then proposes the best information systems integration into the current systems for a unique customer experience, higher profits, and high quality customer experience. 2. Brief Company Background Safeway Supermarket Inc. was the work of M. B. Skaggs in Idaho town in America. At first, Skaggs bought a grocery store from his father since he wanted to expand while ensuring that the company customers received value for their money. By sustaining a narrow profit margin, the grocery proved to be successful and by 1926, M.B. acquired 322 Safeway stores and incorporated as Safeway Inc. the merger saw the incorporation of the grocery to Safeway Inc. before joining the New York Stock Exchange. As a form of improving the quality of products, Safeway introduced product quality assurance through a “sell by” date on the perishable products for the assurance of quality and nutrients labelling. As of 2013, Safeway Inc had an operating income of U.S. $17.219 billion and employed approximately 138,000 employees. According to Someville (n.p), today Safeway controls about $25 billion in private equity from New York Security Exchange. Since 1928, Safeway Inc. has been listed on the New York Stock exchange, and its headquarters are situated in Pleasanton, California. The retail store’s mission is to ensure that its employees establish loyal relationships with its clients, while its mission emphasizes the use of employees’ talents and passion to grant customers the best experience. Although Safeway Stores are in the process of merging with Albertsons Grocery Stores, their name while remain while business will proceed as usual under new management. Owing to the merger, some Safeway stores expect great improvements, including better customer services and cleaner stores. In addition, Alberterson reveals that its aim of acquiring Safeways was to put a shine on it through improved customer service and memorable customer experience. However, there is little hope that Safeways will remain given that Albertsons has a history of demising acquired firms such as Hayward-Based Mervyns that was declared bankrupt in 2008. Another controversial aspect of the merger is that Albertson is known for its stake in car, and guns and military and not supermarkets or grocery operations. 3. Business Problems The acquisition of Safeway places it in a company that has 27 distribution facilities, 2,400 stores, and 20 manufacturing plants. In addition, the merger has about 250,000 loyal and determined employees. The national and international presence of Albertson company includes the operation of Safeway, Vons, Shaw’s, Super Saver, Market Street, Star Market, and Amigos among others. In the United States, the company operates in the District of Colombia and 34 other states. The vision and mission of Safeways is to serve customers better and impact memorable customer experience in them. Up-to-date, Safeway Inc has heavily invested in information systems to improve its customer relationship management roles. Currently, Safeway maintains a customer relationship management system from IBM Retail. This system assists with all the company’s e-business solutions for Retail CRM with the most crucial module being the loyalty card program. In addition, the company recently launched an online grocery order and delivery service resource under the name of an online Nutrition Center. Although Safeway’s current services to customers improve customer life, they do not meet the quality levels expected for satisfaction of modern day customers. This means that the loyalty card program runs as an independent system that does not assist with the integration of customer experiences, including complaints, requests, feedbacks, and comments, as well as marketing campaigns, into the company’s strategy of offering the best services to customers. This way, although the loyalty card program was fairly welcome by the customers, it has not managed to keep up with the trend of increasing customer needs and and the demand for product diversity. In addition, the IBM Retail Solution has failed to grant the company its expectations of a user-focused grocery brand and in order to work around this, Safeway Stores has to invest in a customer relationship management system that offers a sales and marketing module, and a service module. The service module will ensure that Safeway’s customer experience improves drastically as their needs are met in a personalized way unique to Safeway. Furthermore, the company needs a system that will facilitate obtaining and analysing reports regarding its performance, such that it can spot the developing trends, evaluate patterns of sales, and creating campaigns to promote their new products. The implementation of the sales and marketing module at Safeway Stores is timely since the company only recently introduced the use of iBeacon Technology as a way of tracking consumers within inches of the place they are in within Safeway stores. The aim of this technology is to push promotions while encouraging consumer spending. The iBeacon instance at Safeway also aims at offering discounts to consumers who have downloaded and installed Safeway’s ‘just for you’ loyalty app and enters the store. The technology will offer the discounts to its shoppers the same moment they get into the store. The implications of lacking an effective customer relationship management system are many. For instance, the fact that the company lacks a well defined and integrated system to capture customer data and analyse it results in losses of huge financial rewards for the sales, marketing, and customer service teams (Soudagar, Iyer and Hildebrand 109). Consequently, Safeway Inc.’s strong grip on consumers in the grocery market has gradually grown weaker since customers lack unique services and products to associate with the store. As a result, the financial situation of the organization has weakened resulting in its ongoing sale process to the Albertsons. An addition, Safeway has to spend a lot of money maintaining the loyalty card program, given that this is a relaunch of the card after its initial take off was unsuccessful about a decade ago. Providing the consumer with points through the cards loyalty has also been an insufficient approach of attracting more customers to the stores and maintaining the existing ones. This has meant that the sales and marketing team at Safeway Grocery has focused on unnecessarily intense engagement in tiresome and rather expensive marketing campaigns to market the firm’s products and services. In addition, the management at Safeway only supervises the performance of the stores that have great sales implication to the organizaiton’s profitability but cannot easily access the details of the stores situated in various locations throughout North American and globally. The poor management and low performance of some of these stores can be associated with what prospects say is the likelihood that some of Safeway stores will be closed upon the successful conclusion of the merger. 4. High Level Solution In order to effectively manage its customer, sales, and marketing services, I propose that Safeway Inc. consider transitioning into a single and more effective CRM system from SalesForce. This will enable the organization to improve its customer loyalty and retention as well as attract new customers while ensuring that the customer experience is memorable and worth repeat purchases from the stores (Soudagar, Iyer and Hildebrand 120). The anticipated system must also meet different requirements by integrating numerous IT functionalities through a single organizational database while ensuring that employee requirements are also met using a single system. Although the intial cost of the single CRM system will be costly, the resulting benefits will result in increased sales owing to high quality customer experience and customer satisfaction tha translates into improved sales. Finally, with well organized and effectively planned campaigns, Safeway Supermarket will reduce its carbon footprint since the number of field visits made to visit and communicate to its target customers will drastically reduce. This way, Safeway Inc will become a more environment friendly grocery store. 5. Benefits of Solving the Problem Currently, Safeway will depend on its existing customer database, and the iBeacon technology from Apple. However, the company will require a CRM system (Laudon and Traver 3). For the existing card system, improvements will be made such that the card data is not manually entered into the system. Instead, a card reader will be used to provide card contact details. Besides using the iBeacon technology to offer discounts, Safeway will proceed to deploy iBeacon to improve in-store experience by sending the customer notifications whenever they are within the physical store. Though this technology is new at Safeway, it has effectively been implemented in other giant grocery stores including Giant Eagle grocery stores (Lunden n.p.). Within the retail stores market, Apple’s iBeacon offers a way of establishing constrant relationship with customers while leveraging fresh technology to drive more sales. Through this move, much pressure mounts on the traditional brick and mortar space by requiring retailers to remain innovative to sustain customers’ constantly growing interests. 6. Business/Technical Approach The benefits that result from these recommendations are broad. First, the use of iBeacon is favourable given that it is a Bluetooth Low Energy device that requires very little power to function. iBeacon devices use iOS 7 software that facilitates communication with its retail store app (iBeacon Insider). While the device is not in use, it sips energy while listening to any signal from an active beacon and send notifications to the users. In addition, iBeacon devices are hyper-local such that the installer pinpoints the location of a smartphone user just a few feet from their location. This way, iBeacon will enhance Safeway’s power of time-of-purchase and incredibly improve its sales. Furthermore, iBeacon integrates with databases like Google Maps or other marketing tools and are placed at central points of locations from where they detect users in the vicinity (iBeacon Insider). For a user to be detected, they have to have iBeacon app installed and be in close range for the user. The information from Google Maps enhances iBeacon’s capacity to offer more location targeted info like pushing offers on fresh vegetables the moment you get into a Safeway Grocery. Finally, all information, including discounts, rewards, and promotions are directed into a user’s phone in real time. For Safeway Inc. implementing iBeacon offers them an opportunity to interact with a device measuring 5.46-Inches diameter, Universal Serial Bus (USB)-powered, and a working frequency of 2.4Ghz. Another advantage of Salesforce is its integration with Salesforce.com, thus allowing innovation of mobile apps and E-Commerce. Consequently, invention into a high end CRM system will offer Safeway the opportunity to utilize high edge communications with consumers and mobile technology. The benefits are effective and targeted communications with consumers, enhanced outreach, and better customer data. This way, Safeway Inc will enjoy real time and focused content for communication with its clients, while dynamically and intelligently interacting with them. Although using iBeacon may seem to limit Safeway customers to using Apple phones, the truth is that the iBeacon technology allows mobile Apps for both iOS and Android to pinpoint mobile device locations, offer dedicate communications to devices, and interact with beacons within retail, physical, and other commercial spaces. 7. Business Process Changes Currently, Safeway Inc has several systems in place to support both the support and core business systems. These systems are IBM’s e-business CRM and retail that supports the company’s loyalty program and iBeacon technology. However, Badgett, Stancik and Kleinberger (3) customer satisfaction in the food industry is not enough for customers should have choices, more products, more convenience, numerous ways of making a purchase, and even unparalleled convenience. As companies in the grocery industry strive to succeed in an ultra-competitive retail industry, new sales formats are required, and so is the diversity of the products, new distribution channels, and alliances within the industry among others. In order to differentiate itself, Safeway Inc. has used a loyalty program to identify, establish, and retain its most profitable consumers through e-business principles presented by CRM (International Business Machines Corporation 2). In order to improve its fading customer base and lowered profitability, Safeway Inc should adopt electronic CRM. e-CRM uses web channel integration into the entire CRM strategy. This aimed sustaining consistency within all channels related to sales, support, and customer services, and initiatives on marketing. Through e-CRM, it will be possible to maximize customer satisfaction, revenue, and customer loyalty. Given that iBeacon is one of the digital technologies already present at Safeway, encouraging customer relationship growth through digital communications technologies such as social media marketing and using apps will improve products and service delivery, while increasing product awareness on any opportunities and leads. Through e-CRM, the customer services will include managing both offline and online conversations between consumers, and involving both potential and existing customers to establish lasting relationships. Effective use of social CRM will require social listening tools to monitor, analyse, and respond to conversations, while finding the best ways to be involved, generate leads, and influence sales. In marketing, e-CRM will facilitate improved communication with target customers while allowing timely and quick response (Schust 2-3). This will be facilitated by the integration of internal organizational resources with external marketing strategies to understand and meet customer needs. In addition, e-CRM will will provide foundation services such as web site effectiveness and responsiveness, customer –centered services; and value-added services like online training and education (Botha, Bothman and Geldenhuys 376). 8. Technology or business practices used to augment the solution As one of the leading CRM solutions, Salesforce enables organizations to manage their relationships and business strategies through the integration of business processes, contacts, and sales information within a single-cloud-based platform. Integrating iBeacon within Salesforce drives the solution’s effectiveness through integrating digital and physical trade settings, contributing more besieged customer communications, enhancing customer data, and creating better analytics. In addition, the integration between iBeacon and CRM is comparable to a natural integration. For instance, Radio Frequency (RF) proximity’s myBeacon is an end-to-end solution for applications ranging from outdoor, retail exhibitions, indoors, security, and tourism among others (Tomsett n.p.). The best part is that as iBeacon is integrated into CRM, all its interactions’ analytics and user statistics are produced automatically. With the myBeacon solution in place, there will be standardized apps accompanied by a Content Management System, which is accessible online. In essence, iBeacon technology allows Mobile Apps to understand their position on a micro-local scale as it allows mobile apps to listen to signals from beacons in the physical world and react for that reason. iBeacon analytics and user statistics are crucial for businesses to analyse and understand customer trends, preferences, and tastes. 9. Conclusion and overall recommendations Based on the discussion in this paper, e-CRM uses technology to support customer interactions without any mediation from humans. In this case, e-CRM will work effectively with the existing iBeacon technology from Apply and the loyalty card program. Through the integration of these e-CRM into Safeway’s systems, there expectation is increased direct-to- echannels for communication while allowing the use of iBeacon technology to guide customers while in-store, and technology to assist in selecting material relevant to educate them such as support, offers, and content information even when out-of-store. e-CRM will enhance the services provided by help desks and call centers given that these are the main ways through which customers communicate with the business, and are the points from which a call centre communicates with appropriate sections or persons to handle any arising issues. In addition, time spent by the customer searching for products both in-store and online will drastically reduce given the use iBeacon technology and e-CRM’s respectively. In addition, e-CRM will enable the company to gather 360 degree view of a customer’s activities including involvement in special offers, promotions, purchases, and returns. This way, it will be possible to personalize customer services, enhance revenue, establish effective maketing campaigns and elevate the customer service capabilities thrugh awarding and crediting loyalty activities at interaction point. 10. High level implementation plan 11. Summary of Project Migrate to a single e-CRM solution on the organizational level on a web-based platform from centralized head office location. Retain a CRM team of experts to review options provided for migrating to the new system Customize the CRM solution to meet the needs of each business unit that is sales, marketing, and services. Retain appropriate team of IT personnel to support the new environment Review the capabilities of selected application to determine which older Safeway system must be retained and how much longer Works Cited Badgett, Melody, Maureen Stancik and Herb Kleinberger. Why Advocacy Matters to Grocers: Surveyed Consumers give Retailers foof for Thought. IBM Institute for Business Value. United States: IBM, 2002. Botha, J, A, C Bothman and P Geldenhuys. Managing e-Commerce in Business. Cape Town: Juta, 2008. iBeacon Insider. What is iBeacon? A Guide to Beacons. 2015. web. 13 February 2015. International Business Machines Corporation. e-Business Roadmap for Retail Customer Relationship Management. United States of America: Retail Distribution Solutions, 2000. Laudon, Kenneth and Carol Traver. Management Information Systems (12th Edition). New York: Pearson Education, 2011. Print. Lunden, Ingrid. Shopkick Starts 100-Store iBeacon Trial For American Eagle, Biggest Apparel Rollout Yet. 16 January 2014. web. 12 February 2015. Schust, Peter. eCRM: Using the Internet for Customer Relationship Management at The TQU Academy. Munchen: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2008. Someville, Heather. Safeways new owner not afraid to make changes. 03 September 2014. 11 February 2015. Soudagar, Reza, Vinay Iyer and Volker Hildebrand. The customer experience edge : technology and techniques for delivering an enduring, profitable and positive experience to your customers. New York: McGrawHill, 2012. Print. Tomsett, Natalie. Ceterna’s Integration of Salesforce.com and iBeacon Drives Innovation of Mobile Apps and E-Commerce. 14 July 2014. 12 February 2015. Read More