LensCrafters Management - Essay Example

Operations management Operations management LensCrafters is a California-based company that deals with prescription eyewear and prescription sunglasses. The company has strategized on selectively expanding to countries such as Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, and Canada. It is essential to highlight that besides the use of multiple stores, the business emphasizes on one-stop shopping. This means that customers can attain the products they need after one hour. Emphasizing on the satisfaction experience performs a profound role in instilling efficiency in the supply chain. Efficiency requires that services occur at the least cost possible. Incurring least costs involve employing opening up more stores and having employees who serve clients in the quickest way possible. This, consequently, enhances the customer experience. 2 Operations management is an inevitable part of an organization as it involves the movement of goods from the producer, the retailer, and finally to the consumer. Ensuring customer satisfaction while simultaneously striving after efficiency is a huge challenge to operation management activities. Operations management entails the processes and scientific methodology through which products are created and delivered effectively to customers. This is because customers define the existence of a business. The way in which an entity produces and channels products to customers creates the difference between a delightful and an unpleasant customer experience. In the end, produced goods should be available to the market on time and be of the desired quality. Effective operations management, therefore, is crucial to providing high-quality goods that customers demand within a desired period. In designing goods and services, operation managers should value the opinions of customers. A proper market research necessitates that a company asks customers what they need before designing products that appeal to general consumer preferences. Physical characteristics such as dimensions, color, and materials are customer specifications that a company translates into making final goods. It is crucial, however, for a product to undergo prototype testing in order to ensure that customers’ specifications are feasible. Customer experience also depends on the service delivery and system design. This includes the facility’s location, the servicescape, organizational structure, technology, and information support systems. Location affects a customer’s travel costs and time. Besides, the servicescape should entail an enchanting physical impression that promotes customer experience. This is because such designs enhance the brand of a product. Technology currently provides a huge challenge to operation management activities. This is because it increases the expectations of customers and alters the landscape of competiveness. Technology may also diminish an employee’s capacity for creativity and empowerment. It is essential for a company Notable tools of operation management influence a customer experience. It is essential to underscore the fact that a service upset normally occurs in businesses. A service upset entails ether real or perceived problems in terms of service and nature of products (Cordón, Hald, & Seifert, 2013). It is fundamental for a business to develop effective ways of correcting and responding to service upsets. Service-providers listen carefully to customers and determine their feelings about services and products. Thereafter, the involved entity should respond empathically to a concerned case. Solving the problem entails elements such as an apology and discount coupons. Service recoveries that occur after a short time greatly improve a customer’s experience. 3 LensCrafters exploit such requirements towards ensuring value creation, quality, and customer satisfaction. In the integrated service delivery system, the company carefully selects its locations, layout, servicescape, job designs, service processes, organizational structure, and technology. It is essential to highlight that the company evenly spreads its stores around the cities. It locates its stores in high traffic areas such as shopping malls (Collier & Evans, 2013). In this sense, it precisely targets its desired market. Proper location of stores ensures that customers use limited time and costs in accessing products and services. The store layout helps create an impression of professionalism and quality. This is because the store is open, spacious, carpeted, and clean. The stores display their merchandise in open areas while investing in modern furniture in service areas. In ensuring customers trust the professionalism of their services, LensCrafters invests in modern equipment in the laboratories, shiny machines in the lab, luminous lights, and technicians wearing white lab coats. The store conspicuously displays cases and eye examination areas. The fitting stations occur in areas that enable open interaction between customers and service providers. Certifications and optomerity degrees hanging on the lab’s walls are an indication of the employees’ professional ability. The typical service commences when the customer makes an appointment with an optician. The store has three service areas that divide in terms of whether the customer is a man, a woman, or a child. A customer service representative greets a customer as one enters the store and directs the client to the appropriate service area. A large glass panel separates the retail area and the optical laboratory. In this sense, the customer makes sense of the whole delivery process. In the lab, the customers receive eye examination and makes selection on frames and fit. The service design ensures that the customer inspects the final product before accepting an eyeglass. In the end, the customers receive the eyeglasses and pay for the same. LensCrafters ensures that their employees-lab technicians, sales associate, and doctors of optometry-acquire both service management and technical skills. Such workers should have adequate professional training that ensures they handle their work according to customers and industry standards. In addition, human resource training imparts friendliness and knowledge on emotions of customers. 4 Performance measurement is an indispensable process in the service delivery and design. It regards the monitoring of essential programs, processes, and systems. This includes the processes concerned with the collection of data, which are crucial towards designing metrics. Performance measurement is part of the management process that ensures service delivery participates towards meeting overall company goals. There are not types of measurements in a company. This includes financial, customer and market, time, quality, innovation and learning, sustainability, and flexibility. Financial measurement and customer and market measurements are crucial to LensCrafters service delivery and system design. A service delivery design should be an optimizing process that maximizes profits and eliminates on excess costs. This forms the traditional purpose of offering a business. A good business should be able to harness as much profits as possible. Profound profits, however, are only possible through a well-managed operation system that consume as least as possible. These measures include return on investment (ROI), revenues, operating profit, liquidity measurements, and asset utilization. In analyzing modern system designs, it is essential to engage marginal financial measurements that accord a deeper analysis into the functioning of a process. Measures such as ROI help investigate whether investing in different system designs yield different outcome (Cordón, Hald, & Seifert, 2013).. Customer and market measurements are also crucial towards improving the system design. A system delivery and design that does not aim towards customer satisfaction eventually cripples the brand and stifles subsequent profits of a company. A physically appealing system helps retain customers and enhance the brand of a company. Besides, a proper service delivery ensures that the customer receives a service at the least opportunity cost. It is essential to assess customer satisfaction by investing in interactive platforms that avail suggestions of customers. Besides, customer complaints and claims are crucial metrics of evaluating customer satisfaction. In addition, a company should measure its customer retention capacity by measuring the number of customers who regularly come back for given services. This relies on a profiling system that tracks the regularity of customers in seeking particular services. A system design that satisfies customers should possess the flexibility that enable it adapt to market needs and the competitive landscape. Customer measurement is a qualitative evaluation that stretches beyond physical validations. 5 LensCrafters uses the ACCUFIT digital measurement system in ensuring that customers achieve the right prescriptions for their lenses. In as much as customers may know their aesthetic preferences, knowing one’s eye lenses and fit deserves proper technology. The ACCUFIT technology system measures the shape of one’s face and determine the best types of frames for a customer’s faces. Besides, the technology helps identify the size and location of one’s pupils thereby transmitting the images to a computerized system. A customer, therefore, observes the different kinds of frames and lenses that apply to one’s optical characteristics. This gives value to the supply management chain since it minimizes on errors that may require costly correction. In turn, it enhances the efficiency of an operation management system as the company minimizes on costs of repairs and correction of errors. The company invests in an Oracle database system. In this sense, the company links all the data systems through a Wide Area Network (WAN) (LensCrafters, 2013). The management harnesses all the information occurring in various stores. In an operations management process, different managers can interact in adding value to the chain. The system also monitors the movement of customers within stores thereby helping the management project demand and market requirements. The supply chain, therefore, only gives the products that the market needs. Besides, the company utilizes a Java-coded point-of-sale system. The POS system monitors inventory levels in the stores and determine if there are available resources for the production of a required number of lenses within a given time. This also allows for the provision of alternative lenses. The POS system delivers operational benefits to sales’ employees and enables convenience to customers. References Collier, D. A., & Evans, J. R. (2013). OM4. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Cordón, C., Hald, K., & Seifert., R. (2013). Strategic supply chain management. New York, NY: Routledge. LensCrafters. (2013). Eyecare and service. LensCrafters. Retreived from http://www.lenscrafters.com/lc-us/collections?sid=ProdStylDDE2-COLL-US-112413. Read More