Technology & IT

Automation and IT are a fundamental pillar in the operations of Croma as a consumer electronics
retailer, functioning at an omni-channel level. When Croma talks about leveraging technologies to
build up their customer base, to make their processes efficient, to manage orders & inventories and to
create a competitive advantage, it focusses on developing an ideal retail environment where
technology walks hand-in-hand with all the retail concepts like Supply Chain Management, retail
channel, price, promotion and customer relationships. They want to achieve the tag of ‘PHYGITAL’
– presence in both online and offline, and using IT, they are keen to make it a reality.
Some of the latest technologies and software used by the employees at Croma (Infiniti Retail) include
SAP IS Retail, Oracle, E-biz, SAP Hybris 6.7, Sterling Order Management System, and RPA.
We look at the impact that it has created from the viewpoint of:
Customer Engagement & service

 Croma is improving the in-store experience through a combination of technologies like

Mobility, IoT, AI and Machine Learning. Application of these technologies allows to explore
concepts like in-store Dynamic Pricing that was possible only online.
 If for any customer, their warranty on a product is getting over, they get a notification alerting
the customer relations team to contact or be prepared for action if required.
 Through an integration of mobile platforms integrated with their content management system,
Infiniti retail enables associates to respond to the queries consistently across all the stores.
 Technologies like NLP, PWA and Chatbots are being used to interact with customers
frequently and effectively such that their problems and queries can be attended to and solved
quickly.
Customer Behaviour & Analytics

 To understand the customer analytics and trends, they use the capabilities provided by Tata
IQ services, one of the companies of the TATA group. This keeps the load off from the
Infiniti Retail team on keeping tracks and light on technology.
 They also MIS, Data visualization and data mining to study customer behaviour and
preferences.
E-tailing and omni-channel

 They use an Enterprise-grade Order Management System that will maintain and keep track of
a single inventory for all the channels – online, stores, marketplace and mobile.
 This would help in reducing any channel conflict over order fulfilment and multiple inventory
management.
 It also helps in customer order fulfilment of any online/offline order from any store at any
place.
Offline Sales

 They have implemented a mechanism called “Endless Aisle Mechanism” where if the
customer is looking to purchase a product and that is not in there in the store that she has
visited, the sales associates can lookup inventory of nearby stores and based on availability
through promise delivery.
 This prevents any lost sales at the offline stores and in fact it utilizes the online mechanism to
place the order for the customer similar to the concept of showrooming.
Strengths
1. They have already prepared themselves for the growing customer base by having a
Centralized Order Management System.
2. They have improved the technologies at the offline stores in order to make it attractive and
effective at the same time to prevent any lost sales or customer dissatisfaction.
3. They have IT backing up the customer related information and insights that is very useful for
consumer retailing to predict demand and trends. They have good idea on the range of
assortments that would be required by the customers.
4. Afore-mentioned applications of technology and IT.

Weaknesses
1. They have failed to replicate the improvements made at the offline stores, on the online front
especially the checkout mechanism at the website, which does not seem to enforce the
concepts of e-SERVQUAL and e-recovery SERVQUAL models (Model 1). In terms of the
attributes,
Efficiency (E) – Poor
Their site is very difficult to navigate, products are not easily found and overall is not well
organized. Their website has been created using ready-made website templates leading to
poor performance and vertical alignment of contents.
Availability (A) – Poor
Most of the popular products are in stock but fast-moving electronics like trimmers which are
in demand these days are not in stock sometimes. Other products are also not in stock and the
inventories are not updated frequently. Also, the site often changes the preferred store
location showing ambiguous results.
Fulfilment (F) – Medium
Orders are delivered to your doorstep or at the nearest Croma store to pick-up, but their
delivery times are more than other e-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart who are their
competitors. They do have a 3-hr delivery but is applicable on certain products and locations.
Security/Privacy (S) – High
Although there is option of cash on delivery, online payments are secure on the website and
the payment gateway is pretty straight-forward. No personal details are asked apart from the
name, DOB, gender, mobile and address during the profile creation. They ask for strong
passwords to prevent any data leak. Also, the privacy policy is stated clearly.
Responsiveness (R) – Poor
The website is very slow and not responsive when dealing with keyword searches. Their
search bar is very faulty.
Compensation (C) – Medium
The reviews online mention that complaints and defective products were provided with late
but apt compensation.
Contact (C) – Poor
The main problem with their online customer service is the contact mechanism as their main
medium of contact is through complaint mails. They do have a chat messenger but the
response time is usually 24 hrs which is not fast as per new standards. On call service also
seem slow and request to clarify the queries in 1-2 working days.

2. In times of the COVID crisis and growing trend of online retailing, the investments made at
the offline stores have gone to waste temporarily and Croma has failed to implement AI based
 systems and interactive content online that could have drawn a larger crowd. They have failed
to copy what their competitors have been doing to capture the market.
Suggestions
1. A huge investment needs to be made on the online front to improvise the online shopping
experience for the customers. Better pricing and promotion need to be followed up using
technologies like price comparison applications, attractive offers being sent to customers
through CRM and omni-channel fulfilment strategies.
2. There is a need for Infiniti retail to move to cover all the quadrants of the Information and
Fulfilment matrix – Online, Webrooming, Showrooming and offline. This requires high end
technologies in synchronization with the Centralized OMS that they have currently
implemented. (more explanation required, Deepanshu dekh lio kuch add krdio isme)

Supply Chain Management

In 2013-14, Infiniti Retail’s business was threatened by the ‘deep discounting’ model adopted by
online shopping players like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. To compete against them, Infiniti Retail
decided to embark on a transformation journey and identified ‘demand forecasting’ as one of its
primary focus areas. Alongside other initiatives, Infiniti Retail chose to adopt and customise the TOC
supply chain model, developed by Goldratt Consulting for Titan. The online tool helped Infiniti Retail
change its business model and optimise inventory by reducing product shortages, decreasing
merchandise overstock and improving inventory turnover.
Using the TOC concept, they were able to optimize their approach towards Slow-moving SKUs, new
product introduction, wide variety of assortments in a category, the order and buying strategy for
Croma, and the forecasting of demand that will happen in a certain period.
This TOC approach has been complemented with the introduction of the Enterprise-grade Order
Management System so that the orders made by Croma to the manufacturers and the orders demanded
by the end customers are in perfect synchronization and these demand statistics should be a part of
available information to the manufacturers also.
The Theory of concepts is used to target the following UDEs (Un-Desirable Effects) and remove them
from the system:

 Large inventories and obsolescence

 Regular stock-outs
 Huge lead times for deliveries of order
 Few selected products available (No range of products to choose from)
 High costs and large amount of wastage
To ensure the right product in the right place at the right time for the right price, all the following four
boxes have to be ticked: (Model 2)
1. Forecasting
2. Inventory Planning
3. Supply chain speed
4. Accurate, available data
We can safely say that Infiniti Retail have been successful in doing so to a certain extent but in these
times of uncertainty and growing e-tail market, the availability of accurate data is very difficult
and this has a domino effect on the inventory planning and forecasting, pushing the uncertainty
into the supply chain speed, leading to overall system being susceptible to unfulfilled demand
and stock-outs happening.

Strengths
1. Application of TOC concepts have made their forecasting and inventory management
efficient. Only few firms have used TOC to optimize their supply chain.
2. Enterprise-grade OMS helps in optimum order quantities being ordered from the consumer
electronics manufacturers.
3. Other TATA group companies support Infiniti retail in their operations and supply chain.
Weaknesses
1. There is lack of coordination in the offline and online order fulfilments despite the
Centralized Order Management System keeping track of the online and offline inventories
and demand.
2. The data necessary for the forecasting and inventory planning is not updated regularly thereby
some of the products happen to be in stock at offline stores but not in stock for online orders.