"Making Decisions with Data Analytics: Whole Goods

You opened your first grocery store in 2013 called Whole Goods, in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. As a business student, you learned that to differentiate yourself and improve margins, you must develop inhouse brands and products. Following this strategy, you increased the percentage of inhouse products sold by 30 percent. However, given production costs you chose to outsource production of these inhouse brands and have demanded very strict quality control measures of your suppliers. This was a good strategy. Customers have found your inhouse brands to be of much better quality than those of the competition, and revenues and profits have been high. You have been thrilled with your business success and are now planning for an explosive growth by adding five stores each year for the next five years. At the same time, you plan on increasing the percentage of inhouse brands by 70 percent. This new plan demands a heavy investment in technology to manage the flow of products and information across the supply chain. You have realized that the Excelbased system you have been using for sales and records management will no longer be an option as the number of monthly transactions will exceed 10 million. You are also thinking of moving to online sales.

Case Questions

1. Is this a realistic strategy from a supply chain viewpoint? Why or why not? 2. What technological capabilities do you need from a new system to support your strategy? What criteria will you use for selection? 3. How will you go about incorporating the technology to support your supply chain strategy?"