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A LOYALTY CLUB BECAME AN IT WINDOW TO SUCCESS

TESCO is an innovator in technology; clear examples are as follows;
• Computerized checkout systems
• The implementation of the first UK supermarket loyalty program in 1995,
The Tesco Club Card.
• TESCO and banking
• Tesco.com
Digital Store Fronts
Online Grocery Shopping

One of TESCOS most outstanding traditions is its vigorous pursuit for expansion, signs of this date back to its foundation at the start of the Second World War when it reached an eye-opening number of stores, 100. Tesco has differentiated from its competition by having low prices but this strategy was impaired by laws, but Tesco found a loophole by introducing Green-Shield trading Stamps, a loyalty program, which has later put down by law thanks to lobbying by its competitor.

Finally in 1995 an electronic investment of £300 million over 3 years gave birth to “the blue card” a loyalty program aimed to provide discounts and privileges to the customer. This IT investment gave TESCO something unimaginable, INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUSTOMER. It gave a window to what the customer buys and wants letting TESCO increase its profits by concentrating in its customer’ needs. Then investing in Teradata that amplified the view of its customers. This resulted in a huge advantage over the competition placing it over its competitors and becoming UK’s biggest retailer.
GO InformationTechnologies !!!!

I refer to TESCO as a bank because a great advantage of having ties with the banking system gives a zero friction to a lot of products thanks to technology innovations. It started with cash back and then went to double point purchases, credit card loyalty, and other usual banking products.



Another I.T. investment that put TESCO inline with innovation and the Internet era was tesco.com Practicality for working moms or singles can be a good market. They also ventured into selling books, electrical appliances, and even cloths. This provided the company with not that big of a revenue but a complementary product to there business that in the future can bring bigger percentage. You can recharge cellphones, pay for your groceries, buy an airline ticket, almost anything in tesco.com

ERP Implementing vs. staying divided, if you dont your r out of the game!!

Implementing ERP?

What is ERP? I get confused with so many abbreviated phrases EBIT (Earnings Before Income Tax), FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond Any Recognition), OK (Zero Kills), but wait I’m a manufacturing engineer and this I know = Enterprise Resource Management. It is a system that centralizes all the company’s information, if we were talking about a car factory this system would have all the departments linked. This is done to control, standardize, synergize, and ultimately reduce costs.

It is a very painful and complicated journey to get into this system. There’s a Hershey’s case study of how they went wrong with the ERP implementation. You have to gather the information, input it into the system, teach the users (employees) to use and maintain the system, and at the end you might see the profit. The vision of a perfectly implemented ERP would be the CEO of a company checking the back orders from sales, the prototype design of the new car, the day capacity of the assembly line, the inventories, all a click away, and all lower management inputting and sharing information to work more efficiently. I have never seen it work 100%, but it’s a nice dream that soon will be possible with the right technology that would make it simpler and less tedious to do.

That was the manufacturing context, since this is Information Systems related lets talk about IT ERP. ERP is quite old already and its popularity has decreased because companies start implementing it and get stuck or just don’t get results. BUT now its alive again, OPEN SOURCE ERP. Yeahhhh!!!! Its easy, adaptable to any business and its already offered by many. I would have to see it to believe it.

2005 A hard year for DELL

Dell Hell!!!
Learn this: SOCIAL MEDIA IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!! This article gives a good explanation of what the Dell Hell mistake cost the company and what the company learned. A company growing like crazy (rising earnings per share) with an impeccable reputation for customer service and satisfaction, suddenly gets battered by a single customer communicating through a blog his dissatisfaction. Dell was shortsighted by neglecting such a powerful, influential tool as a blog post. It took the founder of the company, Michael Dell, to return as the director and take matters into his owns hands to fix the huge mess. Of course he could not do without a 14 year employer and blogger called Menchaca that by admitting the company’s mistakes consequently stopped the media harassment and gained the respect of fellow bloggers like Jeff Jarvis that formerly helped destroy Dell’s reputation.

I could picture myself being the Dell’s Customer Service Manager watching my stock value plummet just because some fxxxxing unsatisfied customer wrote a blog post that reached Financial Times and Business Week. I would start packing my office and get ready for the boot.

In October 2005 we can see Dell’s reaction by investing and restructuring the costumer service department. This is a sign of how it is fixing the cause of the problem, but the most important fix is the MEDIA, that’s the one that going to help DELL. In this other article we can see how Business Week is writing about how Dell is fixing its problems but at the end of the article you can see the negative comments posted by unsatisfied customers. Is there a way to control this? I doubt it, but you can add positive comments or influential comments from IT critics or influential bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis.

Another point is the size of the company. DELL sells countless number of PCs and satisfied customers are not commenting how wonderful there computer is. It’s the unsatisfied customers that have a powerful voice, especially in social medias where info spreads exponentially.

Lets keep on blogging!!!!! If I had a big company, especially if IT related, I would be friends with bloggers.

Future of Facebook

Facebook in 2012?

It’s a huge database of people; where they are from, where they went for high-school, college, masters, where they are, where they have been, when they were born, when they graduated, when they traveled, when they are going to travel, who they are friends with, who they love, who’s there family, who likes them, what they like to do, what makes them happy, I could go on for ever and that’s just what I think I have showed there.

This is a result of the market, what we felt like putting there, it made us visible, it made us connectable to others, SOCIALIZING!!!!!! What a powerful word, it gives us a sense of belonging, its an easy way to sell ourselves, its an easy way to go look for interesting people, I enjoy ours of looking at other’s pictures, comments, gossip, hehehehehe!!!

A friend of mine who is constantly going to internet conferences told me a secret (now public) he was told by person from “facebook”; CIA pays facebook for its data base. This was quite alarming to me when first heard but later I reasoned and seemed perfectly reasonable. Then I heard it was also available for companies when evaluating potential employees. This at first worried me for all those indecent pictures I had put of having euphoric fun which I erased shortly after. The final point is: facebook connects us in the most intimate way, I feel naked.

I dont think most people will get tired of exposing themselves or stop using such an easy way to communicate as facebook. There is a chance of another social network to come up with a different way to communicate with old friends, see what they are up to, or plan visits to their hometowns. Asmallworld.net is a more exclusive social network that brings a only invite membership, which invites are only possible after a period of time, but it is in no way comparable to facebook numbers.

I cannot picture a mayor privacy lawsuit against facebook. There are so many social networks complememnting each other. So I see facebook continuing to grow as it is now and some how connect the whole globe in one network. It has already overpassed google visits reaching 7% of market share.