After seeing the presentation by the consultants for Zara, I might have changed my mind about what action the executives from Zara must take. In my prior blog, I said that Zara needs to take action immediately because the risk of having their ancient POS system deemed irrelevant.
These were my thoughts before entering class last week, but my suggestions may have been modified after learning some more information about Zara. I do agree that most companies should upgrade their POS and IT systems if they are operating on something that is older than I am, but if the infrastructure of a certain company is not extremely complex, working on a simple and user friendly system can work just fine for what that company needs it for.
I told the story in class of how I was given the opportunity to try and sell a new POS system to liquor stores in Colorado, but I quickly found out that many businesses are not willing to spend the extra cash on a newer system that performs the same operations as their out-dated one. Sure, there are many advantages to all the new POS systems, but is it going to help the business grow and thrive? With Zara, I'm not really sure if they need something new.
If Zara was not operating on DOS, my thoughts would be solidified because there would be no need to upgrade to one of the newer systems. After all, Zara just keeps track of sales and inventory on their current system. I still believe that Zara needs to upgrade to a newer system just because there is no support for DOS available anymore. But if this was not the case, I think this is a situation where "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
The main question that I see coming up frequently in most of these cases is "Are the risks greater than the rewards?" With Zara, the risks may supercede the gain in revenues, so maybe this is actually a do nothing case.
No comments:
Post a Comment