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Discussion forum 2 Instructions: Create an infographic or a poster to visualize your answers to these questions: (Be creative!) 1. What are benefits of an ERP system to companies like Fresh Direct? 2. What lessons do you learn from the failures of ERP implementation? If you had overseen the ERP projects at those companies, what could you have done to prevent these problems? (Pick 3 of your favorite solutions). Instructions to upload: After you design your graphics, download and save it to your computer. For a picture file, then follow this instruction (Links to an external site.) to upload it to your reply. If you save it as a non-picture file, then follow this instructionLinks to an external site. to upload. Websites for making infographics and posters: (Choose the free templates) · Canva (Links to an external site.) · Piktochart (Links to an external site.) · genial.ly (Links to an external site.) · Venngage Infographics CHAPTER 12 ENHANCING DECISION MAKING Management Information Systems 16e KENNETH C. LAUDON AND JANE P. LAUDON continued CHAPTER 12 ENHANCING DECISION MAKING CASE 2 FreshDirect Uses Business Intelligence to Manage its Online Grocery SUMMARY FreshDirect is the largest online grocery firm in the New York market, and one of the largest in the country. With an estimated 300,000 customers in 2018, ordering over 10,00 products and services every day, the company faced severe logistics and management decision making issues. To solve these issues, FreshDirect adopted a comprehensive enterprise data base system from SAP which utilized a number of business intelligence applications to track orders and customers. The video describes how the database system enables managers to control FreshDirect’s daily operations and plan longer-term enhancements. SAP Customer Success: Fresh Direct URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ZxTFZPUSg; L=4:30. CASE FreshDirect is an online grocer making more than 50,000 deliveries a week to customers throughout most of New York City and parts of Long Island, Westchester County, New Jersey and Connecticut. With an estimated $800 million in revenues for 2018, the company seems to be one of the few examples of a start-up, online grocery business actually being profitable. Most previous start-up, online groceries have failed, while existing traditional grocery stores have been more successful in online delivery from their local physical stores. For instance, a leading example of dot-com excess was the flame out of online grocery start-up Webvan in 1999. Webvan burned through $1.2 billion from investors in order to launch its online grocery business in ten markets. Webvan went bankrupt in 2001. MIS16_CH12_Case2_FreshDirect.indd 1 17/10/19 5:00 PM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0ZxTFZPUSg CHAPTER 12 , CASE 2 FRESHDIRECT USES BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2 continued FreshDirect was founded in 1999—just prior to the burst in the Internet bubble. The business plan for online groceries was to focus on a high-density, single metropolitan area like Manhattan in New York City, to offer farm-fresh food, and deliver it on-time at prices about 15% less than local stores. A high-density urban area meant fewer delivery trucks would be needed, and average incomes were quite high in Manhattan. Most investors and commentators thought the task difficult, if not impossible. For many years it was a combination of both. FreshDirect built a 300,000-square-foot headquarters and refrigerated packing plant in 2000 in the Long Island City section of Queens and made its first deliveries in 2002. In 2014 it built a massive 500,000 square foot new headquarters and food delivery facility in the Bronx. In 2018 it opened a 400,000 square fulfillmnent center also in the Bronx. The FreshDirect Web site features around 3,000 perishables and 3,000 packaged goods compared to the typical 25,000 packaged goods and 2,200 perishable items that a typical grocery store offers. To provide the level of service it wanted, FreshDirect created the most modern automated perishable food processing plant in the United States. While most of the plant is kept at 36 degrees to ensure freshness and quality control, dedicated areas vary from a low of minus 25 degrees for frozen foods to a high of 62 degrees in one of its specially designed fruit and vegetable rooms. FreshDirect butchers meat from whole carcasses, makes its own sausage, cuts up its own fish, grinds coffee, bakes bread and pastries, and cooks entire prepared meals. Cleanliness is an obsession— the factory was built to exceed U.S. Department of Agriculture standards. Despite attention to production detail at the plant, from 2002 until 2008 FreshDirect burned through investor cash as it tried to execute on its business plan. According to current CEO Richard Braddock, nothing went according to the plan. “We broke too many eggs. We showed up with thawed ice cream. We bruised the produce. We delivered late. Our trucks were stuck in traffic. We missed items in orders. We didn’t remediate service issues.” If a customer called to complain, there was no organized way for FreshDirect operations people to find out what happened or to re-send the order on another truck. According to Braddock, the companies ability to churn through customers, attracting thousands of new customers, then quickly losing them once they experience the poor service, provided most of the revenue. Attracting new users was expensive, requiring extensive online advertising and discounting prices. 85% of the customers ordered three times or less, then stopped using FreshDirect. In 2008 Braddock took over as CEO (prior to this he was Board Chairman, and prior to that a senior executive of Priceline.com). He ended the company’s policy of adding new customers at any cost, and stopped offering discounts to first time buyers. For two years, it simply stopped offering promotions to first-time buyers. And the new customers simply stopped coming. The danger, of course, was that the old customers would continue to exit, revenue would decline and the company would run MIS16_CH12_Case2_FreshDirect.indd 2 17/10/19 5:00 PM https://Priceline.com CHAPTER 12 , CASE 2 FRESHDIRECT USES BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 3 continued out of money. “The trick in this business,” Braddock commented, “isn’t to acquire new customers, it’s to make them loyal.” Braddock soon discovered that FreshDirect had no insight or visibility into its own business processes. While the end goal was to deliver fresh food to thousands of customers everyday on schedule, the exact location of orders at any moment was not understood, or who was in charge of them. Mistakes were happening routinely, but there was no record of how orders were moving through the logistics chain. Mr. Braddock knew that FreshDirect needed a system of continuous feedback, a real-time database that would follow every step—and misstep—of each business day, so that minor gaffes could be resolved before they turned into big problems. The software would have to track plant operations, along with data corresponding to some 200,000 active customers at the time and more than 8,500 products. It would take FreshDirect two years to build this database. Braddock also decided to upgrade FreshDirect’s Web site, using the company’s internal database to profile customers and serve a customized online experience. For example, the site’s software can now analyze order patterns, reminding customers of their favorite products and suggesting other items they might like, a marketing tool that has worked well for Netflix and Amazon. In addition, the database recognizes whether a visiting customer is a new, infrequent, lapsed or loyal customer—and serves appropriate messages and ads. Critical to the success of FreshDirect is a powerful IT infrastructure that seamlessly connects online customers to inventory, billing, and then to truck delivery. The firm uses SAP software (an enterprise resource planning system) to track inventory, compile financial reports, tag products to fulfill customers’ orders, and precisely control production down to the level of telling bakers how many bagels to cook each day and what temperature to use. It uses automated carousels and conveyors to bring orders to food-prep workers and packers. Managers are able “see into” the order and fulfillment process at any point in order to identify problems. Alerts are programmed to automatically alert managers to emerging problems. Today, if a truck goes out 15 minutes late or if a container of jalapeño hummus is left off an order, the problem can be traced to its source. Also, the real-time data reports allow FreshDirect to shift its resources to areas of customer demand, beefing up capacity based on the popularity of delivery zones and time slots, anticipating which products might sell out and stocking up on them in advance. The FreshDirect Web site is powered by BEA Systems’ Weblogic platform, which can track customer preferences, such as the level of fruit ripeness desired, or the preferred weight of a cut of meat. FreshDirect also uses NetTracker, Web site traffic and online behavior analysis software, to help it better understand and market to its online customers. At peak times, the Web site has handled up to 18,000 simultaneous shopping sessions. The final piece in the formula for profit is a supply chain that includes dealing directly with manufacturers and growers, thus cutting out the costs MIS16_CH12_Case2_FreshDirect.indd 3 17/10/19 5:00 PM CHAPTER 12 , CASE 2 FRESHDIRECT USES BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 4 of middle-level distributors and the huge chains themselves. FreshDirect does not accept slotting fees—payments made by manufacturers for shelf space. Instead, it asks suppliers to help it direct market to consumers and to lower prices. To further encourage lower prices from suppliers, FreshDirect pays them in four business days after delivery, down from the industry pattern of 35 days. FreshDirect was profitable for the first time in 2008. The key to profitability has been improving their execution of the initial concept. In