Information Technology: MIS & Customer interface: Availability of Material and Variability
Question ??
1. Who is in the Wireless Café’s upstream supply chain? Identify ingredients the chef uses to prepare meals for guests. Then, use a tool like Visio, Word or PowerPoint to draw a diagram like that in Figure 10.2 that shows a possible flow of a selected fresh ingredient and its accompanying information through the supply chain to the Wireless Café.
2. What are some potential problems in the supply chain? Remember, an oversupply of lemongrass is just as problematic as an undersupply. What kinds of information can be used by the Wireless Café management to prevent these problems?
3. It is clear that as mobile applications become more robust and more widespread, restaurants, including the Wireless Café will incorporate mobility in their portfolio of applications. Prepare a memo to Jade and Jimmy with your advice on how they should strategically position the Wireless Cafe vis a vis m-commerce.
Answer the question frame is:-
As in the case of any services oriented, the café is also faced by a specific set of problems. Being a small café in nature it is also its own generic set of questions that are specific and needs to be addressed .Thus in this section of the problem we will first go ahead to indentify the problems and then will move ahead to solve these issues. Some of the problems that a café is besotted with can be put down as below
i)Variability in demand: A café has variability in demand throughout the day as a result it is flooded with customers at one point of day and is almost empty at some point of day. The problems of under capacity and over capacity is also very peak. The over capacity is specifically constrained to specific small durations of time as in the morning hour just before office , during lunch hours and during after office hours. The capacity issue compounds into a over and under utilization resources as well. The café’s staff at some point of time is severely hard pressed for time and some point of time spends their time as lazily as possible. Moreover this capacity issue also compounds into issues of material availability.This material availability also at times leads to loss of customers as specific orders present in the menu are not always and at all times available to the client.
ii)Wireless Connectivity The wireless connectivity in the café is specifically designed for a specific number of members to log in. Thus under peak hours it happens that the connectivity cannot be provided to all the clients possible .Thus again it creates a set of irate clients which again work against the café’s reputation.
iii)Menu:The menu has got items which are not always ordered at all points of time .Thus either to support the items it becomes necessary to store items that have a high degree of perish ability and thus go waste. Moreover this also leads to under stocking of items which leads to cancellation of whole set of orders .
iv)Payment :The POS machine used at the machine also limits transactions. Having a single POS machine prevents faster processing of order.
v)Menu Upgradation:The menu items are not upgraded on a regular basis thus the USP of the café is lost at times which needs to be rebuild with a popular menu selection
vi)Reservations Cancellation: During inclement weather conditions there are severe reservation cancellation. Although a certain amount of money is deducted on reservation cancellation however it is always not enough to cover all the expenses incurred.
vii)Employee Turnover: Due to severe fluctuation in demand ,the employees are in a severe stress during certain periods and are completely free during certain period. Thus it always happens that unable to handle of this nature the business is faced with high employee turnover.
i)The demand variability problem can be taken care of by introducing price discrimination. During peak hours the café could charge a certain basic admission fee on its client .The admission would dissuade non serious customers from being in the café. The demand variability problem can also be solved by bringing in quick reservation schemes which will ensure better management of demand. To shift some of the demand to the lean period one can also introduce schemes like happy hour or other customer incentive schemes
ii)Data monitoring: The problems of demand fluctuation can also be solved by trying to form a trend out of customer footfalls. The timings of the day in which footfalls severely increase can be gauged out of the data. Depending upon the data collected and the analysis done out of it steps could be taken to tackle the issue
iii) Reservations:The reservations fees can be hiked to prevent untimely cancellation. In order to understand the optimum reservation fees ,the average bill value of all the reservation customer should looked into.This average bill value should form the reservation fees.
iv)Menu: In order to better understand the customer interest ,the ordered menu details over a period of two months should be looked into. Depending upon the ordered items some items of the menu can either be culled or some items of the menu be added by looking into what kinds of food items they are ordering for, depending upon the data cut look out we can find out whether there is a preference for vegetarian items ,or for non-vegetarian and if non-veg then which class of non-veg foods is preferred by the clients.Thus depending upon the preference set the whole menu and the inventory could be stockpiled
v)Employee Turnover: This problem is the most difficult and the only way to reduce the concern is to improve working condition. This can be done by either increasing the salary by studying data about compensation in the local market or adding a dearness component to the salary depending upon inflation rates.
We should not forget that we are in an era , where technology has become an integral part of our lives. Interestingly Wireless Café has always embraced technology as evident from its wireless internet usage available within its café premises for its customers .However ,we are in an era where a next step towards mobility should be quickly embraced to tap into enhance mobility and thus gain an competitive edge. One of the first steps towards increasing mobility could be taken would be to bring in smart phone apps for table reservations. Use of these apps would make sure that reservation is made much ahead of actually the customers coming into the café ,thus the variability issue would be easily taken care of and the staff would also be better prepared to handle the customers.
Added to this the café should also invest time to build an intelligent MIS system that would make sure that inventory and staff are in sync with the customer footfall. An intelligent MIS system would aid the café in economizing the raw material requirements as well as manage vendors in terms of vendor code,vendor shipment ,vendor products and most importantly vendor credit days.Thus the cash cycle for the entire business would be ably taken care off.
The café thus be positioned as a modern outlet that provides not only good food and ambience but a place where one can connect to and carry on with business as well. The customer interface of the café can be improved by taking regular feedback from the clients and incorporating them by looking into the data set regularly
ME51
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