Executive Summary
My decision is to roll out an upgraded IT system at a test site to help Zara's executives forecast what type of problems that may arise. Ensure a gradual company-wide implementation of the new IT system. Increase resources and budget of the IT department to deal with the long implementation schedule and the related costs. Maintain an in-house development of applications that meet the needs of store managers and allow the maintenance of customer-manufacturer control.
Statement of Issues
Zara's Chief Information Officer must decide whether to upgrade the retailer's IT infrastructure and capabilities. Since Zara does not own its Point of Sale (POS) terminals it is possible that the vendor can change to new machines that do not support the old DOS operating system. The company relies heavily on an out-of-date operating system for its store terminals and has no full-time network in place across stores. Although these limitations, Zara's parent company, Inditex, has built an extraordinarily well-performing value chain that is by far the most responsive in the industry. Therefore the major problem to the company is to decide whether it has to upgrade the present system and by doing so, risking the reliability they have with the current system or to continue with the present DOS based system which will not be compatible for future changes or improvements. Zara’s main strategy is the ability to respond very quickly to the demands of target customers which called for identifying trends of the customer in advance. The company has been able to identify the trends and meet the demand with the help of its autonomously organized structure and its effective value chain systems. The present system followed by Zara has been very effective and very easy to maintain, which as a result has persuaded the company to continue without any change in the present system so far. The problem that Zara faces right now is that the system that they use, POS runs on DOS...