Operations Flowchart Of Woolworths Ltd: Back-end And Front-end Essay.

Back-end Flowchart

Discuss about the Operations Flowchart of Woolworths Ltd.

The operations of an organisation are considered the most critical and integral part. It refers to the process of the profit making through client/customer satisfaction (Zine et al. 2014). This could include various complex steps to operate a business but in this essay the emphasis will be laid upon a retail firm. The firm, which is selected for the strategic analysis, is the Australian giant Woolworths Limited. It is headquartered in Sydney and operates its business from there. It operates retail business throughout Australia and New Zealand where its business line diversify from supermarkets, takeaway liquor retail, hotels to petrol (Woolworthslimited.com.au. 2016). In this essay, I will focus on the strategic management as well as the operational flowchart of the company.

Back end flowchart can be referred as the operational chart, which is not generally visible to its end clients or the customers. In my context, I would rather refer it as the process related to the back office tasks. As the company belongs to the retail industry, it faces a huge competition, not only in the region but also globally (Lovelock and Patterson 2015). Therefore, the back-end flowchart of the organisation should be more focused towards thriving in the cutthroat competition.

Figure 1: Back-end Flowchart of Woolworths Ltd

(Source: Appleyard et al. 2015)

In this case, the company analyses the competition level, as they have to act accordingly. Once the same has been done, then the marketing strategy of the company is to be planned to make its way through the competition. I analysed that the finance department is brought into action, which decides upon the purchase of products required and other expenses needed to be done. After this step, the same is forwarded to the sales department, which will distribute it to stores where it will be sold to the end customers (Zine et al. 2014).

We generally look after various factors and dimensions while purchasing a product from a particular store. There is a process, which the company follows in order to maintain its customer satisfaction and hence they try to keep their certain process transparent (Pollamarasetty and Potti 2016). In this, they generally focus on the customer satisfaction and their retention. Therefore, there are certain processes, which are visible to the customers and hence fall into the category of front-end flowchart.

Figure 2: Front-end Flowchart of Woolworths Ltd 

Front-end Flowchart

(Source: Pollamarasetty and Potti 2016)

I came to know that the main competition among the retail firms are about the variety of products available, their prices as well as other benefits provided but the above-mentioned factors are also very important. In my opinion, this is the era of online shopping but at the same time physical presence of stores is also appreciated. However, once the order is placed, the process of payment is the main concern of customer along with the time in which the product will be delivered (Steenstra et al. 2014). Furthermore, the most important factor is how the company treats its customers after the completion of sale. Therefore, the company should focus on the above-mentioned factors to cut through the competition.

The service encounter is considered as one of the most important notions where the customer or the client look forward to or interact with the service providers. While my essay is focusing on the retail firm named Woolworths Limited, I will be discussing about the same and the importance of the service encounter in this sector. Many experts who have researched on the same previously have considered it as the “moment of truth” (Dos Santos et al. 2013). In my opinion, service encounter mainly focuses on the customer satisfaction and client retention. The main objective of service encounter in Woolworths is to detect the errors, which are leading to any kind of customer dissatisfaction and rectify the same. The customer satisfaction is related to various factors but it is mainly influenced by the employee behaviour and their response to any service or delivery failure as well as customer demands (Fisk 2013). Hence, this considers the front-end flowchart where the customer relationship is mainly focused upon and their satisfaction is the priority.  

The managerial implication in my opinion is related to the back-end operational flowchart. It is the part where the management need to strategise their moves in a structural way to generate revenue in a competitive market (Dabholkar 2015). Hence, investing time and money on the competitive analysis and strategising moves based on the same is of utmost importance. As per the flowchart created, I would recommend that the marketing strategies should be focused on customer satisfaction, which must incorporate competitive pricing and other benefits.

Moreover, it also includes certain elements of front-end flowchart where the availability of the products could make it more profitable. The main objective of the management in context to its customer is to keep a good relationship with them so that they should not shift to the alternative products. Moreover, managing the cost and other expenses by the management is also important in order to record profit and expand its business further (Laga et al. 2012).  The business will ensure its success only if the management of the organisation moves in a planned manner and tries to tap every opportunity to increase its popularity and goodwill.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have focused on the operations of the Australian retail giant Woolworths Limited. The main objective of the paper was to identify the front and back end operations and its importance for the success of the business. These operations were illustrated through the help of flowcharts and the important factors of the same have been used to draw the significance of service encounters and the managerial implications.

Reference List

Appleyard, J.P., Bruce, E.J., Flores, R.H. and Purcell, J.L., 2015. International Business Machines Corporation. Service emulator substituting for backend components to satisfy needs of front end components, 2(1), pp. 87-94.

Dabholkar, P.A., 2015. How to improve perceived service quality by increasing customer participation. In Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference, 11(5), pp. 483-487.

Dos Santos, M.A., Svensson, G. and Padin, C., 2013. Indicators of sustainable business practices: Woolworths in South Africa. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 18(1), pp. 104-108.

Fisk, R.P., 2013. Lmpression Management 26 In Services Marketing: A Dramaturgical Perspective. Impression management in the organization, 9(4), p. 427.

Laga, N., Bertin, E., Glitho, R. and Crespi, N., 2012. Widgets and composition mechanism for service creation by ordinary users. IEEE Communications magazine, 50(3), pp. 52-60.

Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P., 2015. Services marketing. Pearson: Australia.

Pollamarasetty, S. and Potti, R., 2016. Omni-Channel Retailing: Enriching Customers’ Shopping Experience. Handbook of Research on Strategic Supply Chain Management in the Retail Industry, 20(11), p. 233.

Steenstra, J., Gantman, A., Taylor, K.S. and Chen, L., 2014. Qualcomm Incorporated. Dynamic resource matching system. 15(6), pp. 8-10.

 Woolworthslimited.com.au., 2016. Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing - Woolworths Limited. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworthslimited.com.au/ [Accessed 5 Aug. 2016].

Zine, P.U., Kulkarni, M.S., Ray, A.K. and Chawla, R., 2014. Designing flexible service systems: Application to machine tools. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 3(1), pp.1-23.