Business Process and Operations Management
Business Process and Operations Management
Assignment part a
Group Number:54
Mainash VijayvargiyaJunlu Wang
Chirag Ajay Verma
A1
Argo is a leading catalogue retailer in the united kingdom and has created new revolution with it new marketing and supply chain strategies. Argo is fully owned UK established company and has multichannel business retail with 33,000 employees working in 700 stores for them. Argo serves over 130 million customers with return customer rate of 20%. 30% of their service is transited from online or from their phone.
In the Europe countries like UK and Ireland people have the argo catalogue at their home for easy use ordering from home. Argo has well established them selfs from their competitor and developed new supply chain and marketing strategies according to customers needs. Now argo is one of the best and the leading store in London and Ireland.
Now lets know what retail means. In todays world having repeating customers in retail business has become hard, because of online shopping. Now a days people just prefer to sit at home and order thinks and relax. The technology has changed a lot of thinks and made people little lazy, they dont even prefer to come out and get things just sit at home and order things from home. Retail is showcasing your marketing techniques is such a way that people buy final goods from the retailer. Retailer is a person, agent or an business enterprise who showcase their marketing skills to sell final goods to the end user.
Definition of Retailing
Retailing can be defined has showing your marketing skills and your services skills to the end customer. We can even say that facing the customer for service/ selling final goods is known as retailing.
In the future this industry is never going to be the same because of enormous amount of change in our lifes like technology has totally changed our way of living. With AR, VR and data analysis this technology will totally change the experience of people and their life style. It is going to make our life more sustainable and more adaptable but for the business its going to be little hard to adapt and change their future goals and adapt to new technology to give customers a great experience. Just like in our class we discussed about innovation on operation management play a big part on operation management.
ANALYSIS OF ARGO
In analysis of the Argo we will discuss the factors effecting the business, nature of the business and what are strengths and weakness of the company. In Argo Strength and weakness are internal factor whereas opportunities and threats considered as external factors. Today we will be discussing about the firms nature of business, strengths , weaknesses, opportunities, threats and their financial record of the company.
Argo parent company is Home retail Group Pls. Argo is a retail industry and mainly sell lifestyle to their customers. The only USP they consider is to make shopping experience more easy and enjoyable for customers. Their buyers are mostly from online and the market sector they focus on is households.
Innovation perspective with retail/Argo retail is one of the way to make a company more efficient. During the start of the trimester we learned about product innovation and perspective of products. In that we learned about how IT is completely leading and helping other industries to grow their product in the market, and above we even saw that argo was first started with books door to door then soon started with household and that turned the tables upside and down for their company, and since then they have managed to stay on top.
Argo has also started to develop themselves at society level. They have started to establish their business by entering into international markets. By this step it going to help our society because it will provide employment to people and GDP growth. Argo is completely based on process innovation because of this they have managed to stay on the top in the retail industry of UK and Ireland.
Argo is also depended upon IT technology because it is service provider business and in this process innovation is must and the technology to manage outcomes to process the efficient work force. They are largely depended upon the Blockchain technology. In my perspective innovating with the AI for future growth will take Argo to the next level and will even make their business successful in the market.
Strengths of Argo
Strength of Argo is their uniqueness of products which they get in the market. Argo concepts is similar to their competitors but the unique way of the marketing, supply chain and the brand position that they have maintained. They have maintained their financial position so well from their competitors.
Largest Household retailer in the UK with over 700 store
Offers online services to people for shopping
Few brands owned by them Elizabeth Duke, Alba, Bush, Chad valley, etc
Huge working force more than 60,000 employees
Argos weaknesses
For employees its working on Sundays
Pricing is not fair in Ireland
Limited market share with their competitors
Not that recognised by others because of other retain chains
Argo Opportunities
25% of sale are from online so in the future it can do more good with new innovation
Reaching markets in the growing economics
Argo threats
The threats for a business can be a negative factor for their turnover or their nature of business. Some factors gives their competitors a big chance in the market segment. The threats of Argos are :-
International expansion of different brand in same sector will lead in competition
Price war with other retailers
Impact of Govt policies and regulations
A2
In terms of operation and management, to meet the needs of sustainable development, environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability are guaranteed from three perspectives. In terms of environment, Argos vigorously promote and develop their own online shop service, let customers to online through various means understanding to the characteristics of the goods, the information such as material, even using the AR visual improve the system to allow customers to understand product information, can make some customers choose and buy products at home, instead of driving to the entity store to see, reduce part of the carbon emissions. However, the report does not show whether Argos recyles products that are not needed after use or that have problems with quality. So Argos has a degree of environmental sustainability. On the social level, they vigorously promote and develop online store services in order to enable customers who are too far away from stores to buy goods, and to improve their quality of life, they can buy and get goods without leaving their homes. After the Argos is Sainsbury acquisition, as a result of combination of characters and cut the middle management team, a lot of work at risk, but the company still hopes to avoid compulsory redundancies by offering affected staff alternative roles within the business, this is for the sake of social employment, so they have very strong social sustainability. However, in terms of economic sustainability, maintaining the omnichannel approach is very difficult, because Argos has been vigorously developing digital information, so the development and maintenance of high-end technology such as technical architecture and data architecture is very expensive, which requires a lot of time and investment to ensure development. So in terms of economic sustainability Argos is not doing a particularly good job.
Supply chain sustainability is closely related to supply chain management. Supply chain sustainability refers to the company's efforts to consider the environmental and human impacts of its products in the entire supply chain. Every transportation link from raw materials to production, storage, transportation and delivery is a part of the supply chain. Among them, supply chain risk management has a significant impact on the sustainable performance of the supply chain, and eliminate waste to maximize the utilization of recyclable resources (Govindan, 2014). Argos offers customers a robust online service and a wide range of delivery and pickup options. Consumers can choose to have their order delivered to their home or picked up at more than 1,000 Argos stores and collection points. In this day and age, with the development of digital technology and the COVID pandemic, more and more people are choosing to travel less or not travel very far. So this kind of delivery is a good way to deal with that, and they also use the mini warehouse model to increase the frequency of delivery from the distribution center to the store, increase the inventory in the store and increase the number of distribution locations, but if they continue to grow the number of collection points in the future, There will be an increase in costs and the possibility of mispicking or placing goods in incorrect locations, which will partially affect the sustainability of the supply chain. Argos covers almost all types of non-food products, so they also need to pay close attention to environmental impact issues, such as recycling customers' purchased goods for secondary processing, increasing the weight of transportation to reduce the frequency of transportation, so as to reduce the impact of carbon emissions on the environment.
In the UK, a large proportion of non-food retailers want to fully switch to digital operations. Many non-food retailers have tried to overcome these obstacles by acquiring their digital competitors. Argos continues to innovate to provide more convenience for shoppers. It is also considered a revolutionary company in the retail market and a leader in non-food omnichannel retailing. So Argos and others are in a sustainable position to compete when it comes to operating digitally and making things easier for customers. Focusing on the development of digital business is convenient for customers, but it also increases the difficulty of omnichannel experience development, because if you want to do all the business is very mature, it is inevitable to invest a lot of manpower and resources. Such development can make the company and other non-food retail companies are in a leading position, but from the point of sustainability, now and in the future of the short period of time the money may cause certain influence on the company, thus losing part of ability to compete with other companies, this has a partial impact on the sustainability of the company's competition with other companies.
How resilient are the firm's operations and supply chain practices to any future disruptive events?
Honestly, speaking all the retailers irrespective of which society they belong will have a proper level of challenges and burdens on their business which will lead to day to day matter as well as long term. The major issue and the challenge the company is facing is the concept of disruptive energy is the digital innovation as majorly it is has faced a massive level of e adverse effects of digital innovation. Mainly because the investment is very high and leads to a major element of cost blockage. On the more, it is difficult for the offline retail dealers to take a profitable advantage of such platform and still provide a competitive advantage. According, to the statistics as well retail market has faced a major change which reported retail market has faced a major channel shift. On the more, the non-store retailing actually leads to put drive into or a maximum contribution to the functioning of the four other stores which being the retail sectors of fuel, food stores, and non-food stores (Pettit, Croxton,& Fiksel, 2019). The resistant is not only from the company but also from the employees, it has to major thrive itself from working towards the working of the knowledge ones self as well as the skills of the individual and also the abilities to match with the abilities the new digital innovation.
The issue is become more problematic as the transition has become really slow and has led to a condition where the slow adaptation has created multiple problems which are allied with the same problems and concerns. The issue is that the company is dealing with a multiple level of concern as this industry is highly competitive and change which is required on the massive level of changing landscape. It can also lead to a condition which will also lead to a major level of technological advances and changing consumer habits and the same is the most unsuitable option for the Non Food Retail Market .
The shifting of supply chain from one space to the other is not a easy task as it requires a major level of high level research which meets the efficiency and effectiveness to their supply chain and minimizes competition from the market. None the less, it would require different locations, logistic support, and information systems (Novak, Wu, & Dooley, 2021). It also emphasizes the presentation of the information and products. Adding, further a continuous level of concerns in term with the rising inflation and the declining consumer confidence will have a major catastrophic impact on the non-food retail market.
The recommendations to maintain/improve the sustainability of their operations and resilience to future disruptions going forward can be listed as follows:-The digital innovation can be in a form where the forefront technologies approach where the concept will be based on the digital format by focusing on the AR Smart Mirror to entice the digital technologies. The best option is to assume that the Customer driven strategies are more emphasized where the both options are managed which being the offline track and the online track. On the more, supporting the concept where the freedom of operational hours is provided and the option to the product analysis. The other most viable solution is to follow a great level of customer segmentation and the concept of the demographic segmentation (Kano, Narula, & Surdu, 2022). The non-retail organisation has lead to a situation where the technology named the Supply Chain Guru software from LLamasoft and the element of the devised a hub-and-spoke fulfilment of the model which would be able to yield the desired rapid fulfilment and tight delivery windows. This industry being highly competitive and highly price driven has to incorporate a system which only produces facts that may lead to a increase in price for all over industry as a whole or would save the cost in other segments which may actually balance the whole price element and finally provide an upper edge from its competitors and finally lead to better market presence and smooth running of the business operations which is the goal of the company on a larger time period. The other is the managing the restructure of the management which will lead to benefits of achieving the concept of the omni channel approach. Thus , on a longer run it will lead to a situation where the Retailers will deal with a proper success parameter which will be in the long run will be done in the process of having of defining the inherent in the concept of the dynamism, which will be define customer-centric perspective, as well providing the uniqueness and planning the strategy and defining the logistic support.
References
Jashim Uddin Ahmed, Tasfia Mazid and Ahmed, A. (2020).Argos: Revolution in Non-Food Retailing. Sage Publications: Sage Business Cases Originals.
www.about.sainsburys.co.uk. (n.d.).Argos. [online] Available at: https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/brands-that-deliver/argos.
Govindan, K, Azevedo, S, Carvalho, H, Machado, V, 2014, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652614005460 accessed 08/09/2022
Kano, L., Narula, R., & Surdu, I. (2022). Global value chain resilience: Understanding the impact of managerial governance adaptations. California Management Review, 64(2), 24-45.
Pettit, T. J., Croxton, K. L., & Fiksel, J. (2019). The evolution of resilience in supply chain management: a retrospective on ensuring supply chain resilience. Journal of Business Logistics, 40(1), 56-65.
Novak, D. C., Wu, Z., & Dooley, K. J. (2021). Whose resilience matters? Addressing issues of scale in supply chain resilience. Journal of Business Logistics, 42(3), 323-335.
