MGMT Boutique Inc. is a high-end retailer that operates a chain of boutique stores in significant hotel properties along the west coast of SanGre Island, including the famous fivestar Castle Height Hotel. Operating in eleven (11) locations, the company offers chic brands like Roberto Cavalli, Pain-de-Sucre, Versace, and Etro Milano. It is well known for its eclectic collection of designer swimwear, fine linens, cotton, and silk apparel for warm days and sultry evenings. A fine complement of shoes, hats, and handbags with hand-picked custom jewelry is included to embrace the very essence of luxurious fashion. The locations connect over a MetroE-wide area network (WAN) that FLOW provides. Each store hasa local Point-of-Sale (POS), replicated to a central hub in the main office. Replication occurs onceevery 15 minutes, so the head office is virtually up-to-date, in real-time, and can see, at a glance,transactions in each store. Customers shop duty-free, paying in local Grees (G) or USA dollars. Duty-free sales do not attract a15.0% VAT tax. The list price, seen on the shelf, is the price paid. For customer convenience, thecompany offers a limited range of duty-paid items. Again, customers can pay in either currency, or theprice listed on the self is still the price paid. However, this price now includes 15.0% VAT. Customerspay by cash or card, charge the expense to their room, and settle the bill later. As a reporting requirement for a duty-free establishment, customers' POS details are routinelycaptured. This information has proven helpful for analyzing behavior, and the company also tries tocapture the exact details of duty-paid transactions. As a rule, duty-free transactions will be done in USdollars, while duty-paid transactions will appear in G dollars.Before Metro-E, the company did not have a distributed POS, and sales reports from each site weremanually combined in Excel for analysis. Now, the company even allows the purchaser to accessreports and use her softphone when on business trips through VPN connectivity. Metro-E, VPN, andinternet access have changed everything. Before the introduction of the Metro-E system, MGMT Boutique Inc.'s sales reporting process involved manual data collection at each boutique store, followed by aggregation of sales data into spreadsheets or reports by store managers. These compiled reports were then transferred to the main office either via email or physically. In the main office, an employee manually consolidated all received reports into a master Excel spreadsheet. Once consolidated, data analysis was performed to identify sales trends and popular items, followed by the generation and distribution of reports to relevant stakeholders. This manual process was time-consuming and prone to errors, lacking real-time insights due to the absence of connectivity among the store locations. From the above analysis, discuss TWO (2) findings about the analysis from the operational management level that can be used to justify the Metro-E and VPN solutions.
MGMT Boutique Inc. is a high-end retailer that operates a chain of boutique stores in significant hotel properties along the west coast of SanGre Island, including the famous fivestar Castle Height Hotel. Operating in eleven (11) locations, the company offers chic brands like Roberto Cavalli, Pain-de-Sucre, Versace, and Etro Milano. It is well known for its eclectic collection of designer swimwear, fine linens, cotton, and silk apparel for warm days and sultry evenings. A fine complement of shoes, hats, and handbags with hand-picked custom jewelry is included to embrace the very essence of luxurious fashion.
The locations connect over a MetroE-wide area network (WAN) that FLOW provides. Each store has
a local Point-of-Sale (POS), replicated to a central hub in the main office. Replication occurs once
every 15 minutes, so the head office is virtually up-to-date, in real-time, and can see, at a glance,
transactions in each store.
Customers shop duty-free, paying in local Grees (G) or USA dollars. Duty-free sales do not attract a
15.0% VAT tax. The list price, seen on the shelf, is the price paid. For customer convenience, the
company offers a limited range of duty-paid items. Again, customers can pay in either currency, or the
price listed on the self is still the price paid. However, this price now includes 15.0% VAT. Customers
pay by cash or card, charge the expense to their room, and settle the bill later.
As a reporting requirement for a duty-free establishment, customers' POS details are routinely
captured. This information has proven helpful for analyzing behavior, and the company also tries to
capture the exact details of duty-paid transactions. As a rule, duty-free transactions will be done in US
dollars, while duty-paid transactions will appear in G dollars.
Before Metro-E, the company did not have a distributed POS, and sales reports from each site were
manually combined in Excel for analysis. Now, the company even allows the purchaser to access
reports and use her softphone when on business trips through VPN connectivity. Metro-E, VPN, and
internet access have changed everything.
Before the introduction of the Metro-E system, MGMT Boutique Inc.'s sales reporting process involved manual data collection at each boutique store, followed by aggregation of sales data into spreadsheets or reports by store managers. These compiled reports were then transferred to the main office either via email or physically. In the main office, an employee manually consolidated all received reports into a master Excel spreadsheet. Once consolidated, data analysis was performed to identify sales trends and popular items, followed by the generation and distribution of reports to relevant stakeholders. This manual process was time-consuming and prone to errors, lacking real-time insights due to the absence of connectivity among the store locations.
From the above analysis, discuss TWO (2) findings about the analysis from the operational management level that can be used to justify the Metro-E and VPN solutions.
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