Improving Otc Cycle at Woolworths Online Store

Question: Discuss about the Improving Otc Cycle at Woolworths Online Store. Answer: Introduction The key factor to the success of any company is its zeal to constantly develop and sustain in the market providing quality products and ensuring customer satisfaction. To achieve this the company should have the capability to change according to the market and revise the way it functions. All the functions of a company follow one or the other process that has been designed to optimize the cost without a compromise in the quality and produce reliable goods or services. A process design determines how things are carried out in an organization. The design has to be able to improve the various operation performance objectives such as cost, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility. Innovative ideas and creative thinking can help increase the performance of every aspect in a process (Laguna, 2013). One of the most commonly used process in any company is the order to cash cycle. This cycle has been successfully implemented in one of Australias most renowned supermarket chain, The Woolworths supermarkets. About the company Woolworths supermarket chain is owned by the Woolworths limited. It operates with 961 stores across Australia. The supermarket chain is well known for its tag line The Fresh Food People. One of the leading stand out of this market chain is that they obtain 96% of fruits and vegetables from Australian farmers and 100% of their meat products from Australian growers there by becoming one of the most indigenous company is Australia. Woolworths supermarkets has opened up to online retailing and the most recent idea to step into the world of mobile applications has put the company in the limelight (Wang, 2015). The groceries can be booked online and can be delivered to the customer or the customer has the option to pick them up from stores. Online stores provide the flexibility to order on the go there by engaging more customers. Customers who dont have the time to visit supermarkets or have a large number of groceries to be delivered or those who like to order in the convenience of their home find online stores as a better choice (Jiang 2013). Order to Cash cycle Order to cash cycle is the business process used to take customer requests for product bookings, delivering them to the customers and receiving cash in return (Korotina, 2015). A simple order cash cycle is shown below. When a customer requests for a product, it is called an order. The supplier takes this order and creates a booking and requests the concerned department to prepare this order. The order is packed according to the requirements of the customer and is sent out for delivery. An invoice along with the products is provided to the customer and the payment for the same is received. In case of online retail invoice and payment can be done along with the order placement. Order, pack, deliver, invoice and payments are each sub processes and can be done in several ways (Nelson, 2012). The next section describes how each of this sub process is carried out at Woolworths and how each of it can be tweaked to improve the five main performance objectives. Current process in Woolworths and steps to improve it Order Interface Current process: Woolworths supermarkets is an online retail store, hence takes orders on the website or the mobile app. Their operating website is https://www.woolworths.com.au/ . Such stores lack the ability to provide the customer with the touch and feel of the product. The customer relies on the user interface and the images of the goods provided, to decide whether or not to buy a product (Su, 2013). It is extremely crucial that the interface provided is simple and user friendly. The current Woolworths interface though good at what it does is not efficient enough for easy user navigation Improving performance objective (Dependability): Since the interface is the first thing the customer will notice when logged into the website, it needs to be appealing to the customer (Zhang, 2013). The menu needs to be replaced with words rather the pictures as the images of fresh fruit, fresh vegetable. Organic food, herbs all look alike. Also, the search bar should be much quicker in obtaining the correct results only thereby increasing the dependability of the website. Selecting the products Current Process: The products are categorized based on their type. Each product has an image with their rate and can be added to the trolley. Improving performance objective (Quality and dependability): Each product should have an additional feature that displays the number of times this particular product has been brought by customers. This feature enables the customer to choose wisely when there are multiple variants of the same product, thereby allowing the customer to depend on the website while making a choice (Bianchi, 2012). This indirectly certifies the quality of the product as well. List Current Process: The website allows the customer to save a product to a list making it as a default product that customer regularly buys. This is restricted to three products Improving performance objective (Speed, dependability and flexibility): The customer once logged in should be allowed to create multiple lists that can store up to 100 products. Once a customer is used to shop online for groceries and is constantly being delivered with quality products, they tend to return and purchase frequently (Lee, 2016). The ability to create a list helps the customer in saving the products that he buys regularly there by increasing the speed of purchase. The website saves this list for the customer and hence the customer can depend on it to retrieve the list rather than preparing one every time. The ability to change the contents of the list allows flexibility. Recommended products Current process: The current website only provides the list of products that are on a discounted price Improving performance objective (Dependability): The website should provide recommendations depending the products regularly ordered by the customer (Mosteller, 2014). Tracking the orders and lists of customers and displaying frequently brought products or products that are usually brought together will provide the customer with more options. In case the customer forgets to buy the something there is a high chance that he will find that product in the recommended list. Storing purchases and customer information Current process: The website currently doesnt store customer purchases. Improving performance objective (Speed, quality, cost): The website should be able to store a master data of the customers addresses along with the products purchased by them (Rollins, 2012). This will give the company detailed information regarding which products are sold in which area. The supermarket can hence recommend products on the website faster depending on the area of the customer. Also, this data would help the company stock the products that are sold quickly there by decreasing their cost in other forms of sales forecasting. Once the company is aware of the frequently brought products it can work at how to improve the quality of these products there by satisfying the customers. Feedback Current Process: Woolworths has not implemented feedback requests. Improving performance objective (Dependability): As mentioned earlier, the major issue with an online purchase is that the customer lacks the touch and feel of the product. Also, when a customer comes to a store to purchase he has the opportunity to select groceries that he thinks are of quality. It is not practical to accept returns on groceries as this would just increase the cost due to delivery and pickups. The best way to deal with these situations is to request customer for feedback (Berlin, 2013). A feedback form can be sent to the customer after every delivery asking him to rate the products. This would help the company in understanding which products of top quality and which products need to be improved. Packing Current Process: The current process of Woolworths is highly efficient. The company has been in the retail market for a long time and has found a reliable way to quickly procure and pack the various items requested by the customer. Each employee in the warehouse is given an invoice and they have to pack the complete invoice Improving performance objective (Speed): The order has to be divided into categories and employees should be stationed for each category. Employee receives the order number along with the items belonging to his category alone. The employee packs these products and tags them with the order number (Jostler, 2013). All the products are collected at one place and are regrouped based on the order number. This solution improves speed of packing but compromises on dependability as the chance of order mix ups are high. Delivery Delivery slots Current Process: The website allows user to choose slots for delivery. Each slot is of three hours. This means that the delivery of groceries can happen anytime in these three hours. The first slot is 6:00 am to 9:00 am which can be an issue for a working customer if the delivery happens 15 minutes before the end time. Improving performance objective (Flexibility): In urban areas people prefer slots in the early morning or late evening as the number of working population is large (Chen, 2016). Hence more number of slots with a shorter intervals of 2 hours when introduced attracts more customers. Slot change Current process: The delivery person calls the customer only when he is close to the area of the customer. The customer may reschedule the delivery on call as he may not be available though he booked the slot. This leads to unnecessary cost. Improving performance objective (Cost, Speed): The website should have the facility to reschedule orders without cancelling them. This will ensure that time and money are not wasted into trying to make a delivery when the customer is not available (Casazza, 2016). The route of delivery can also be modified to ensure faster deliveries. Express Delivery Current process: Woolworths currently does not provide the option of express delivery. Improving performance objective (Speed, dependability): Express delivery is an option where the products can be delivered to the customer within an hour or two depending on the area of the customer (Ferdinand, 2015). The supermarket can charge extra delivery charges for an express delivery. This process can be easily implemented by internally rescheduling the slot to the closest delivery to that area. This increases the speed of delivery and the customer can always rely on the website for urgent orders. Invoicing Producing bill copies: Current process: Woolworths provides a list of all the groceries bought buy the customer along with the total amount to be paid while placing the order itself. A paper bill is also available along with the delivered groceries Improving performance objective (Cost, dependability): Instead of providing a paper bill, Woolworths needs to completely migrate to online billing. The user can login at any time to see past bills and can take print of it only when necessary (Dixon, 2014). This concept is eco-friendly. Also when a bill is available online the customer can use it to check where the products prices have increased or decreased. Payment Payment methods used Current process: This is the biggest drawback for Woolworths online store. They accept only credit card and gift cards. More payment methods need to be added to the website making it flexible. Improving performance objective (Speed, dependability, flexibility): A Woolworths wallet needs to be introduced. The customer can transfer amount into this wallet and use to pay for products bought on the Woolworths site. This increases the speed of each transaction. They should also allow customers to pay via cash on delivery, where the delivery person can collect the amount once the goods are delivered (Gangeshwer, 2013). A card swipe machine can also be carried by the delivery person to make it easier to the customer. All the above mentioned improvements in topic 4 will effect cost indirectly as when rightly implemented all of these suggestion will increase the customer base. And more customers leads to more sales. Conclusion Order to cash cycle has been implemented hundreds of times in various companies. The key to any process to work efficient is to be able to incorporate ideas that will enhance the process to increase its usability. The five performance objectives cost, quality, speed, flexibility and dependability are vital to understand if the process being implemented is producing desired outcome (Krajewski, 2013). Not all processes are designed to accommodate all the five objectives. Some organizations may believe in producing extremely high quality products even if the cost of the product is high and the speed of production is low. While there are other organizations that would like the five objectives to be at an optimal level. Thus process design has no particular rules or strategies to be followed. Strategies are selective implemented depending on the need of the company. Note that no matter what process one uses and how many every times one changes the process, the quality of the goods have to be always up to the mark (Wiengarten, 2013). As customers prefer a good quality product at a reasonable price even if it is a little difficult to obtain. References Berlin, J., 2013. Method and system for managing business feedback online. U.S. Patent Application 13/946,915. Bianchi, C. and Andrews, L., 2012. Risk, trust, and consumer online purchasing behaviour: a Chilean perspective. International Marketing Review, 29(3), pp.253-275. Casazza, M., Ceselli, A. and Ltocart, L., 2016. Optimizing Time Slot Allocation in Single Operator Home Delivery Problems. In Operations Research Proceedings 2014 (pp. 91-97). 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