Good news! My parcel from Home Delivery Network (HDNL) arrived on Saturday and here is the ICT tracking record to prove it! Only ? more to get.
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Big Firms’ Halting On Line Ordering in Scotland!
According to the BBC, some big firms (e.g. Tesco) have halted on-line ordering in Scotland because they cannot guarantee delivery before Christmas. Some others (e.g. M&S) have cancelled home delivery. Boots have suspended their next day service. What are their customers’ alternatives for Christmas shopping? Who will benefit? Who may take advantage? Note that these are major decisions by the retailers who anticipated high sales. Who made the decision to halt on-line ordering?
Diesel Case Study
Diesel is a global clothing brand and there is an interesting Times 100 case study available about its marketing mix, here. Useful to help your understanding of how an international company deals with the mix plus background information on the founder’s vision.
BICS: Self Employed Couriers Adv/Disadv
BBC Newsnight article mainly highlighting the pitfalls of being a self employed courier. For example, no employment rights and getting paid 50p to deliver a 7 foot Christmas tree! Click here.
Operations: E-Commerce Warehouse Distribution
I have “acquired” this article from the Higher Administration blog. Read it from a Business Management perspective and watch the video from BBC News Scotland here. Order picking basically means collecting items from the individual storage locations and putting them together to complete the order package.
Operations: J.I.T. & Snow
One reason given for shortages is that many firms now rely on “Just In Time” delivery, including the big supermarkets who now have sophisticated ICT based stock control systems. This is a term originally associated with factory production lines where parts e.g. car exhausts are delivered just in time for fitting into the new vehicles. The main aim of J.I.T. is to have minimum, ideally zero stocks. Thus saving the associated costs. There is a brief summary of J.I.T. and its advantages and disadvantages on tutor2u, click here.
Operations: Scotland’s Infrastructure – Snow Delays
The snow calamity is highlighting lots of issues relevant to this course. Infrastructure mainly refers to the motorways & roads network and we are now very aware of the chaos caused when we (and delivery vehicles) cannot travel around. A few days into the crisis, we are now hearing of shortages of food and fuel in some areas. Apparently, most of our bread is baked in Glasgow but the local supermarket shelves are empty. Few vans on the road and no doubt, some panic buying. Reporting Scotland reported tonight that some farmers have had to dump milk. Not all though!
Scotland’s refinery for fuel is at Grangemouth. It is working normally but again, due to the travel problems, many tankers are not making collections and deliveries. Hence diesel/petrol shortages at some local service stations.
For general information on the situation this evening as per the BBC click here. For delayed food supplies to the Highlands, click here .
The Real X Factor Winner?
Daily Mail 8/12/10 By PAUL REVOIR
The most lucrative TV show of all time: X Factor final could rake in record £25million in one night
This weekend’s X Factor final will be the most lucrative British TV show of all time, with ITV expecting to rake in £25million in advertising revenue.
The show could earn an astonishing £10,000 per second as 30-second commercial break slots sell for as much as £300,000.
Analysts predict the X Factor final will also be the most watched programme of the year with more than 20million viewers predicted to watch the Sunday night results.
X Factor fans will have to write off the whole weekend, with two-hour shows on both Saturday and Sunday.
As well as advertising cash, the money will also roll in from those phoning in to vote for their favourite act.
Over the course of the whole series, it is thought voting has netted around £6million. The closeness of this year’s contest, with Matt Cardle narrow favourite ahead of boyband One Direction and soul singer Rebecca Ferguson, is also set to boost revenues from phone votes.
American stars Cher and Christina Aguilera are expected to guest star on the shows
The X Factor’s money-spinning ability has soared and it is expected to smash through the £100million advertising revenue mark for the first time this year.
Advertisers thought to have been in talks about taking up the slots in the final include Microsoft, BSkyB, Pizza Hut and Hallmark.
The X Factor final is now regarded as the British version of the U.S. Superbowl in that it is the TV event of the year for advertisers.
Marketing: Promotion Chaos?
I told you I liked a bargain! Tesco offered to redeem their clubcard vouchers for double their face value on toys, clothes, christmas items and some electrical goods if presented by Sunday 5 December. I was very pleased with the toys I bought for you know who. However, according to a Daily Mail article of 7/12/10* it seems some customers were disappointed because of a last minute rush which caused store queues and the website to crash. So Customer Service have been inundated. A massive organisation like Tesco will get over this blip on this occasion. However, there are other examples of the consequences of a very attractive promotion causing near bankruptcy to a firm. The most famous was the Hoover free flights promotion way back in 1992 as per this BBC article. If you can think of any examples of promotions backfiring due to higher than expected demand, please share via the comments and/or in class.
*Daily Mail 7/12/10 By SEAN POULTER
Tesco customers swamp store’s call centres as Clubcard double-your-points Christmas promotion turns ‘into chaos’
Huge queues of frustrated shoppers at shops
Website could not cope with demand
Complaining customers causes phone line meltdown
Angry Tesco customers have swamped the store’s website and call centres with complaints over the way a Christmas loyalty card promotion was handled.
The Big Christmas Exchange deal offered to double the value of points and vouchers held on the Clubcards used by millions of customers.
Customers had until Sunday to claim the double-value vouchers offering big savings on products such as toys, clothes, champagne and the new Samsung Galaxy tablet computer.
Initially, thousands of people faced long queues in stores in order to convert their Clubcard points to vouchers.
Many gave up waiting and went to the store’s website to do the same, only to find it could not cope with the number of people trying to log on.
Last night, upset customers complained to the store’s call centres with the result that many people found it impossible to get through.
Tesco appears to have been caught out by the level of interest in the deal.
The promotion allowed every £5 in Clubcard vouchers to be exchanged for a £10 rewards token to spend on toys, clothing, baby and toddler products, glasses, selected electricals, and beauty products.
Every £10 in vouchers could be swapped for a £20 rewards token to spend on artificial Christmas trees and Christmas lights, Finest wine and champagne, beds, DIY, computers and phones.
Today consumer internet forums were inundated with complaints from Tesco customers who said they had been let down.
One told the moneysavingexpert.com forum: ‘System is so slow – keeps crashing.
‘Decided to purchase a magazine subscription out of my tokens. Every time I add a token it takes an age then says: “We were unable to fulfil your request”.’
Another complained: ‘Tried to exchange Tesco vouchers yesterday [Saturday] for Rewards Tokens. Awful, sooooo slow that I gave up in the early hours.
‘Set aside items to try again today but the site has crashed. Sent them a disappointed email and asked if the time limit was being extended to compensate. There will be a lot of other people in the same position.’
Tesco said: ‘We experienced a huge last-minute rush over the weekend.
‘This meant that some customers were not able to exchange their vouchers or had problems with the process, and missed the deadline of 5th December.
‘We are doing everything we can at our customer service centres to help those customers affected.’
NHS Procurement Central Warehouse, Larkhall
In 2007, the NHS opened a new warehouse facility at Larkhall to centralise the procurement and storage of equipment and consumables used in hospital wards throughout Scotland. Basically everything except pharmaceuticals. Orders are placed by hospital staff using a barcode system. In addition to centralised stockholding advantages, this strategic change is bringing purchasing benefits through economies of scale and more e-procurement. It should save the NHS millions of pounds. For more information about the warehouse click here.
