TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2

QUESTION A..................................................................................................................................3

QUESTION B..................................................................................................................................6

QUESTION C..................................................................................................................................8

QUESTION D................................................................................................................................12

QUESTION E................................................................................................................................13

QUESTION F................................................................................................................................16

CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................17

REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………………18

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Introduction

Founded in the year 1919 in London, Tesco is a grocery and merchandising retail chain. The
organization is without a doubt the largest retailer in Britain by local and global market shares and
sales. The organization originally dealt with foodstuff, but they have since ventured into other
circles. For example, financial services, software, internet services, clothing, car and health
insurance, and consumer electronics. Tesco appears on the London Stock Exchange and it also
headlines the FTSE 100 Index. As at 23rd December 2011, the organization had bagged an
astounding £31.3 billion in terms of the Market Capitalization and consequently ranked the 14th-
biggest organization on London’s Stock Exchange. Looking at the competition in the retail industry,
it is very important for organizations to establish operational strategies that are efficient. Information
System (IS) covers a complex sample of Information Technologies and the professionals who apply
the fastidious technology in the sustenance of an assortment of organizational functions Structure of
Management Information System.

The company also offers financial services through Tesco Financial Services, which controls
4.6 million customer accounts roughly divided between credit cards and car insurance policies.
Through the more than 100-unit Tesco Express chain, the company ranks as the largest seller of
gasoline in the United Kingdom. This kind of information system entails information technology
application to managerial and organizational needs. It constitutes determining the type of
information technology to be beneficial to organization and development and application of business
solutions in relation to. The strong point of this kind of information system is that in combines the
business understanding with information system and technology knowledge to help an organization
Tesco compete successfully or restructure on-going operations.

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 Moreover, Tesco in Malaysia comes through a network of over 50 hypermarkets, which are
serviced by two state of the art distribution centres in Selangor. In total, they stores in Malaysia have
a combined floor space of over 4 million square feet. Tesco Stores (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd owns and
operates hypermarkets in Malaysia. It offers fresh produce, groceries, household items, and apparel
and its own food and non-food products. The company was founded in 2001 and is based in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia with stores in Malacca, Klang, Purchong, Mutiara Damansara, Sungai Petani,
Penang, Ipoh, Shah Alam, Kajang, Banting, Ampang, and Seri Alam. Tesco Stores (Malaysia) Sdn
Bhd operates as a subsidiary of Tesco PLC.

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A. Firm Profile

a. Describe the nature of activities and services provided by the firm

Tesco is one of the world’s leading multi-channel retailers with operations in 13 countries.
Their half a million colleagues work to earn the lifetime loyalty of their customers and put
responsibilities to communities at the heart of what they do. CIMB Bank Berhad and Tesco Stores
Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. have announced a five-year strategic partnership. The result of this partnership is
the new CIMB Tesco MasterCard and new CIMB Bank kiosks that would give Tesco shoppers a
value-added shopping-banking experience. Cardmembers will receive up to 5% cash rebate on Tesco
spending including Tesco's online store and additional Tesco Clubcard Points when they use the
CIMB Tesco MasterCard. Tengku Dato' Sri Zafrul Aziz said, "The partnership between CIMB and
Tesco Malaysia represents a winning formula in delivering value to customers.

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B. Business Start-up
a. A brief relevant historical background on the company and how they began operations and major
key milestones of development and achievements.

Tesco has several information systems, some of which they utilize on a day-to-day basis to
make operational decisions. Others are also used in coming up with strategic and tactical decisions.
Performance and Order Management System. In addressing these challenges, the organization
resorted to developing a system of processing the orders placed by customers. This was bent on
hastening the processing speed of such orders. The ever escalating customer base of the organization
prompted the need for a more efficient system of processing orders. Considering that Tesco was
pitting the development against a time frame, the organization had put in double efforts to beat their
deadline. A team comprising of ten engineers was therefore assembled, and after working in-house
for six months, the project was done. Tesco also had to do outsourcing from IVIS group and
Microsoft Gold Certified. Eventually, this saw the birth of order management system (OMS).

To the high-quality, service-oriented image of these stores, Tesco introduced its own private
label product lines, developed through an extensive research-and-development program. Tesco also
restructured and computerized its distribution system, opening its own centralized warehouses for
storing inventory which could then be supplied to its stores as needed, instead of having to rely on
manufacturers' delivery schedules. Considering that Tesco was pitting the development against a
time frame, the organisation had put in double efforts to beat their deadline. A team comprising of
ten engineers was therefore assembled, and after working in-house for six months, the project was
done. For market success, an organisation has to be efficient in its customer service. To get to this
goal, Tesco saw it necessary to boost its efficiency pertaining to the customers by processing their
orders from its compound conduits

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Major Key milestones of its development and achievements.

Caring of the environment

1) Tesco put carbon labels on 100 own-brand products in the UK including orange juice,
detergent and potatoes.
2) Tesco opened first new format environmental store in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, which has
a 60% lower carbon footprint than an equivalent store built in 2006. All new stores will
follow this format.

Providing Healthy choices

1) Tesco removed over 2,500 tonnes of saturated fat and 3,000 tonnes of salt from our products
since 2005.
2) Tesco helped over 4.5 million people around the world get active over 2million in Thailand
alone.

Supporting communities

1) Tesco created more Community Champions in the UK, and introduced them in the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Malaysia, Korea and China.
2) Tesco launched of Community Promises to make sure our staff understand how they can
make a difference.
3) Tesco raised a record £6.2 million for our UK Charity of the Year, Marie Curie Cancer Care.

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 The another achievement for Tesco as we made it into the Malaysian Book of Records by
organizing the Largest Karas Tree Planting effort in the country. In conjunction with the recent
World Environment Day, this Greener Earth CSR initiative was held at Dungun on 8th June 2013
and participated by the Malaysian Timber Industry Board (MTIB) and Kumpulan Pengurusan Kayu-
Kayan Terengganu (KPKKT).

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C. Business Problem

a. Discuss a specific business problem, opportunity or challenge which required an IS solution.

Describe the antecedents to the problem including the social, managerial, organizational,
technological, legal or economic issues which increased the complexity of addressing the
problem or opportunity.

For any company to enter into the international market for the first time, a proper research
and analysis regarding the challenges and current marketing conditions prevailing in the targeted
country must be undertaken. The project has been undertaken to analyze, understand and highlight
the major challenges that TESCO can face while entering into Malaysia for the first time. The report
focuses on the Political and Legal, Economical, Socio cultural & Technological and environmental
challenges that may create a difficulty for TESCO to start its business in Malaysia. Slow economic
growth at the time of change in government which may lead to slow business in the beginning of
setting its business in Malaysia. Therefore, the consumers may prefer price over quality and TESCO
may need to have strong control over its expenses and Riots may cause physical damage to TESCO's
property if the Political war emerges. In Addition, Challenges for TESCO will have to change its
marketing and advertising strategy in Malaysia, The government control on advertising & media
may disallow advertisement & commercials of many products of TESCO UK, The company may
also have to undergo the process of repackaging & re labeling on their products and the last is
TESCO will have to create new ideas to advertise its product which could be expensive and time
consuming.

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Business Problem, Opportunity/Challenges which required an IS solution

Competition from other operators.

Mydin is one of the competitor organizations of Tesco and Mydin Mohamed Holdings Bhd is
a local business organization in retail industry, As a retail company in Malaysia, Mydin had
implement several marketing planning to boost their sales and obtaining bigger market share.
Therefore, this commentary will examine the marketing mix approached by Mydin to successfully
market their product and formulate their marketing strategy. Therefore, Mydin can moves towards
becoming a market leader and Mydin imposed low pricing strategies and provide economically price
goods to its customers. Surely, the expansion and growth will influence the business objective

Dependency on a few major customers.

i. Built Loyalty

Running a customer-focused business helps organizations build a loyal customer base.

Customers are more willing to purchase from companies that they feel consider their needs when
they create products and services. Customer also are frequent patrons to businesses that place a high
value on training their staffs to emphasize customer service.

ii. Increase Referrals

The more loyal customers are to a business, the more likely they are to refer the products or
services to friends, family and business associates. Referrals are advantageous to businesses as they
cut down on advertising expenses. Customers who come to businesses through referrals also
generally are prequalified, which makes it easier to turn them from prospective customers to buyers.

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Majority of material business contracts are in the form of frame agreements.

Tesco is one of the company supporting services provider, it is a norm for Tesco to enter into
non-exclusive frame agreements with its customers. Subsequent to the frame agreement, customers
will from time to time within the agreement tenure issue individual purchase orders to the group
which specify amongst others the detailed scope and quantity of services, equipment or parts
required. Typically, there is no contract value assigned to the frame agreement and customers are not
obliged to make any minimum purchases or issue purchase orders at specific intervals.
Consequently, despite entering into these frame agreements with customers, there can be no certainty
of purchases under these frame agreements.

Subject to liquidated damages claims or service level penalties.

Supporting services may be affected by factors beyond its control such as attitude customer
disruption of other competitor, delay or disruption in the supply of materials or services from third
parties. If Tesco fails to deliver or perform its services in accordance with customers' stipulated
timeframes resulting in any delays, it may be subject to liquidated damages claims. In addition,
Tesco may also be subject to service level penalties if it is unable to comply with the service levels
agreed with customers in particular, stipulated restoration response time or compliance with
occupational health and safety requirement. Tesco has not been subject to any liquidated damages
claims or service level penalties that materially and adversely affected its business performance and
results of operations. However, customer is always right and every organization have to good in
customer service and give comfortable price each products.

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Humanistic factors

i. The lack of information of the managers and users as they don’t know exactly what they want
and what their information needs are.
ii. The lack of understanding of the needs of the users by customers (the lack of correct definition
of the needs and wants)
iii. The lack of information of the managers and users about the collaboration method with the
staff team.
iv. The lack of customer service given.
v. The lack of understanding of the some price of a products.

Organizational factors

i. The lack of good conditions for participation and collaboration of the managers, users and
system directors.
ii. The lack of existing systems and method analysis before sell the products.
iii. The lack of evaluation of the existing power.
iv. The lack of human resources with management(the problems of absorbing human resources)
v. Inadequate and incomplete documentation
vi. The lack of consistency and complexity of the existing one department

Environmental factors

i. The lack of an environment of irregular items like other organizations

ii. The lack of quality criterion of the existing information for customer.

iii. The lack of procedures and methodology and stages of creating good customer service

iv. The lack of evaluation of environmental aspects in management information.

v. The lack of suitable use of mass media to develop the culture of buy products at Tesco and
information.

D. Technology-based solution
a. Discuss the IS solution introduced to address the business challenge, problem or opportunity.
What process led to the choice of this solution and what other options were considered?

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 Technology in business has many benefits including security, automation and overall
efficiency. It helps employees and consumers. Technology adapts continually, which makes it
difficult for businesses to keep up. However, the fast pace isn't a good reason to avoid adopting
technology in business practices. There are many benefits of using technology. Business owners
should hire professionals if they are unsure how to implement new technology and how it benefits
their businesses specifically.

i. Communication
Technology also offers businesses great gains in communication. Cell phones and other
mobile devices keep workers connected and easily locatable wherever they go, reducing the time it
takes to enact a meeting. The Internet offers a wealth of communication opportunities, allowing
companies to host meetings online, even allowing video content and virtual whiteboards to share
information. Companies who take advantage of the global network also find themselves operating in
markets around the world, free to serve customers and patronize suppliers anywhere in the world.

ii. Information Technology

Technology also offers substantial advantages for businesses, especially when it comes to
information storage and analysis. Scanning business documents into a database can vastly reduce the
amount of storage space required for recordkeeping, and these electronic documents are much easier
to search than their physical counterparts. Information tools can also greatly increase a company’s
ability to work with stored data, allowing analysts to quickly identify business trends and locate
areas where a company might improve its bottom line.

iii. Reduced Costs

One way in which these advantages add up is by reducing business expenses. Increases in
productivity allow companies to do more with fewer workers, reducing payroll costs normally spent

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on repetitive but necessary business duties. Advances in communication can reduce travel costs,
allowing executives from far-flung branches to confer over the Internet instead of meeting at a
physical location. Data storage can reduce warehousing costs, since entire rooms full of documents
can fit on a single hard drive. In addition, the analysis and computation abilities of modern machines
can bring their own savings, allowing engineering firms to model virtual prototypes before building
them or enabling a company to simulate the effects of a proposed change in their business model
before making costly alterations.

E. Addressing the challenges

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a. Assess the IS solution - has the problem been solved, was the company able to achieve the
objectives set out? Include the views of stakeholders concerned including managers, employees,
clients, partners or customers concerning the new solution or service provided.

Growing businesses face a range of challenges. As a business grows, different problems and
opportunities demand different solutions what worked a year ago might now be not the best
approach. All too often, avoidable mistakes turn what could have been a great business into an also-
ran. In Addition, Recognizing and overcoming the common pitfalls associated with growth is
essential if your business is to continue to grow and thrive. Crucially, you need to ensure that the
steps you take today don't themselves create additional problems for the future. Effective leadership
will help you make the most of the opportunities, creating sustainable growth for the future. This
guide highlights the particular risks and mistakes that most commonly affect growing businesses and
outlines what you can do about them.

Keeping up with the market

Market research isn't something you do as a one-off when you launch your business.
Business conditions change continually, so your market research should be continuous as well.
Otherwise you run the risk of making business decisions based on out-of-date information, which
can lead to business failure. The more you succeed, the more competitors notice and react to what
you are doing. A market leading offer one day may be no better than average a few months later and
apparently loyal customers can be quick to find alternative suppliers who provide a better deal.

In Addition, as products age, sales growth and profit margins get squeezed. Understanding
where your products are in their lifecycles can help you work out how to maximize overall
profitability. At the same time, you need to invest in innovation to build a stream of new, profitable
products to market.

Skills and attitude

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 Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind creating and growing new businesses. All too
often, they are also the people holding them back. The abilities that can help you launch a business
are not the same as those you need to help it grow. It's vital not to fool yourself into valuing your
own abilities too highly. The chances are that you'll need training to learn the skills and attitudes
required by someone who is leading growth.

Therefore, to grow your business, you need to learn to delegate properly, trusting your
management team and giving up day-to-day control of every detail. It's all too easy to stifle
creativity and motivation with excessive interference. As the business becomes more complex, you
also need to develop your time management skills and learn to focus on what's really important.

F. Lesson for Manager

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a. Discuss three key lessons which managers in organization can learn from this case.

i. Managers acknowledge the need of Tesco to be continuously enhance from time to time
In this regard, must have become critical for every companies, given the good relationships of
the global business. There are large numbers of companies have been investing in a lot product
for their companies in ensuring the robustness and sustainability of the business. It also become a
platform for Tesco to gain competitive edge over competitors in the same industry.

ii. The system provide a solution to a supply chain problem

Supply chain problem can be very costly to companies. Therefore, organizations are motivated to
find innovative solutions. Tesco found a solution to solve the issue by organization as lack of the
customer service. The managers realized that this issue may have a problem to correctly
determine inventory levels for each product and part. Therefore, the managers would like to
introduce another approach for customer to get back them loyalty to shopping with Tesco.

iii. Effective communication is important to the managers within the company.

The importance of managerial communication in a workplace is a major component in

increased productivity, better employee relations and multigenerational relations. Managers with
effective communication skills also are likely to become good problem-solvers. Communication
is important to management because managers must understand orders that come from above
them and transmit them effectively to those below. They must also gather information from
below and transmit it to those above.

To lead others, you must demonstrate effective communication skills. Otherwise, a manager
will lack the credibility to implement his employer's objectives, and struggle to rally worker
teams behind them. Managers who communicate well are also more likely to become good
problem solvers, which is an essential skill to function well in an international workplace where
diversity is increasingly the norm. Employees who show an aptitude for verbal and written

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communication are more likely to advance up the corporate ladder, as well. Effective
communication between managers and employees is requisite for a well-functioning workplace.

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Conclusion

The results of the study show that when an organization decides to incorporate the
management information system, it is bound to fuel the achievement of being highly competitive this
is founded on the basis that operations linked to chain management are refined. By using the OMS,
Tesco has climbed the charts of market positioning. Moreover, the relationship between Tesco and its
suppliers and customers has immensely improved. Tesco should consider doing a couple of things to
ensure that they reach the peak in working with the OMS. The first one is to conduct a research on
whether OMS culminates into shrinkage about operational costs. Secondly, they should undertake
research on the market that is continuous to establish the efficiency with which the organization is
effective in its undertakings.

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Reference

Book

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Incorporation.
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Practice. Presented at the Eleventh Conference On Information Systems (ISD 2002). 12-14
September, Riga, Latvia.
3. Cronholm, S. and Goldkuhl, G., 2003. Six Generic Types of Information Systems
Evaluation. Linköping, Sweden: Department of Computer and Information Science,
Linköping University.
4. Larson, R. and Davis, M., 2003. M UC Berkeley, IS 202 Information Organization and
Retrieval. [online] Available at: [Accessed 27 December 2011].
5. Monk, A., Wright, P., Haber, J., and Davenport, L., 1993. Improving Your Human-Computer
Inter-face. New York: Prentice Hall.
6. Manning, C. and Raghavan, P., 2006. Stanford University CS276 / LING 286 Information
Retrieval and Web Mining, Fall.
7. Tesco, 2009. Online Ordering System that Processes 5000 Orders per Hour. London: Tesco
Incorporation.
8. Trinder, P., 2007. UK F29IF1 Database and Information Systems. Edinburgh, Scotland:
Heriot-Watt University. [online] Available at: [Accessed 27 December 2011].
9. Williamson, E., Harrison, D., and Jordan, M., 2004. Information System Development
within Supply Chain Management. International Journal of Information Management, 24(5),
pp. 375-385.
Website

1) https://www.jobstreet.com.my/en/companies/441472-tesco-stores-malaysia

2) http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/56/Tesco-plc.html

3) https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=9068769

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