World Shoppe is a Supermarket chain having retail outlets in important residential colonies in Metro Locations. World Shoppe stocks items from provisions, toiletries, cosmetics, beverages, wines & spirits, Frozen Foods and Vegetables. Other categories of items will be added on in future. The chain is relatively new compared to other more established companies. World Shoppe hopes to make a significant difference by providing value-added services like Door Delivery, Volume discounting and monthly credit schemes. Its business philosophy is to treat each individual customer as an account and providing all facilities by which the account would repeat-purchase in World Shoppe locations. Regular customers would be provided with the World Shoppe card, which designates the customer as an account and thereby make available all value-added services to such customers.
Operational Structure
- World Shoppe will start its operations in Mangalore city. It will commission 8 retail outlets in the important residential localities of the city.
- 2 stock depots-East and West, will service World Shoppe stock distribution. Each stock depot will service 4 locations each. Inter depot stock transfers will also happen to facilitate a balanced stock position.
- Within each outlet, there are two kinds of stores that are maintained. Main stores and Shelf inventory. Main stores reflect the outlets stores from where items are moved to the shelf. Shelf inventory reflects items in stock on various shelves in the outlet. Therefore, total stock of item is the main stores stock added with the shelf inventory stock.
- Minimum total stock (MTS) positions are defined for each item. Re-order levels (ROL) are also defined for each item. Whenever stock falls to the Re-order level, stock indents are placed to the nearest stock depot. Stock depots reach items twice everyday – morning and afternoon.
- Minimum Shelf quantities (MSQ) are maintained for each item within the outlet. Whenever stock level in the shelf of a specific item falls to MSQ, the outlet manager instructs replenishment of stock to the shelf.
- The Dispatch Manager compiles door delivery orders three times during the day. The cut-off time for packing for the 1.00 pm delivery is 10.30 am. At 10.30.a Customer-wise packing list is generated. Together with that, a Item-wise total quantity list is also generated. Packers assemble items in bags and make a ticked off and the packer presents the list and the consignment to the Dispatch clerk for billing. Two copies of the bill and consignment list are stapled along with each consignment box. Boxes are loaded into the delivery trucks after the driver verifies the Consignment List with delivery instructions. Credit feasibility of each customer is indicated in the bill. Customers may pay by cash, Cheque, by card or opt for credit.
- Delivery trucks are loaded with standard sized consignment boxes, which come in three sizes-small, medium and Big. The total space of a Delivery truck is fixed and therefore, it should be possible to calculate space availability in a truck based on pending Door Delivery order volumes. Unless specified, customer orders are loaded on first-come-first-served basis on the delivery truck. Currently, there is only one truck. This will be increased as order volumes increase.
- After completion of deliveries, deliveryman will settle collections with the dispatch manager.
Customers
- Customers are divided into two categories. Walk-in customers and Account Customers. Account customers are provided with the World Shoppe card and they may use that card while billing at the counter or alternatively, quote the Card Number while ordering stocks over the Net.
- Account customers can order for stocks over the Web. The minimum value for door delivery orders is Rs.250.This amount may be revised later. Customers need to be given a choice of item categories to choose from, item lists with prices and status of item availability in stock.
- Based on the delivery schedule and the status of space availability with in each delivery, earliest delivery date/time will be intimated to the customer. Account customers may also walk-in to the store, buy items and ask for door delivery.
- Customers may return items to the store and based on the situation, the store may accept items back. Either money will be returned or customers may buy another item and settle the difference (either way).
- Volume discounts are defined for each item. Discount rates are defined for quantity slabs. There may be any number of quantity slabs for individual item. Some may have two and others may have up to 5 quantity slabs. This can change in the future.
The project has been planned to be having the view of distributed architecture, with centralized storage of the database. The application for the storage of the data has been planned. Using the constructs of MS-SQLServer2000 and all the user interfaces have been designed using the ASP.Net technologies. The database connectivity is planned using the “SQL Connection” methodology. The standards of security and data protective mechanism have been given a big choice for proper usage. The application takes care of different modules and their associated reports which are produced as per the applicable strategies and standards that are put forwarded by the administrative staff.
