Information Systems Essay example -- Business, Technology

Introduction The use of information technology or Information System has defined the way business is conducted globally over the past several decades. The internet has led to high rate of globalization; this is of special significance to the various industries (Reponen 2003). Goods and services can now be offered or sold in a large scale and in various part of the globe. The consequence of this is the growth in customer base for many business entities, especially the supermarkets (Reponen 2003). Due to large markets, various business entities have found it more convenient to adopt the use of information system and Information technology to both manage the large customer data and also reach them in the global market (Burgess, 2002). This report centers on the use of Information Technology/Information System in Tesco Supermarket. It begins by giving a brief overview of the supermarket and examines the benefits and challenges faced by the supermarket as it utilizes Information System (Burgess, 2002) . Description of Tesco Supermarket Tesco Supermarket was founded by Jack Cohen; he started by selling groceries in the market of End of East London from1919. The brand of Tesco first appeared in 1924 after Jack Cohen bought a large volume of tea shipment from T.E Stockwell (Blythe 2008). He came up with the name Tesco by picking the first two letters from T.E Stockwell (TE) S from Stockwell; he then combined these letters with the first two letter of his surname (Co) to form Tesco. The fist Tesco Store was opened 1929. This was followed of opening of the first self-service store in 1948 in St Albans. Subsequently, in 1956, the first Tesco Supermarket was opened. Tesco Supermarket has since established numerous subsidiaries all over ... ...formation technology has helped Tesco Supermarket to link up with its subsidiaries spread over a wide geographical area (Nag & Sengupta 2007). The supermarket has also managed to engage in electronic information interchange with its business partners and clients. The Information System has enabled the supermarket to reduce cost of its operations, increase its efficiency and win the trust and loyalty of its customers. Nonetheless, Tesco Supermarket has experienced some challenges with the use of Information Technology. These challenges have been occasioned by, amongst other factors, system failure, the need to train its workforce every time a new technology is introduced. In some cases, these challenges led to reduced profit margin and increased overhead costs. Moreover, during such challenges, the supermarket experiences slowed rate of work (Singh, et al 2005).