In today’s competitive retail environment, companies such as Best Buy need to be one step ahead of the competition, by managing their employees, customers, and Inventory. Best Buy uses several database programs that allow efficient management of these processes. They include Oracle for Human Resources, and employee management, Customer Contact Management for customer information management, and Retek’s Store Systems for inventory management.
Best Buy has been working with Oracle since 1996. Oracle has provided support for employee management, including job codes, pay grades, and personal information. This software is crucial to the Human Resources aspect of the business. The company’s partnership with Oracle also expands to the data warehouse. Retail leadership is able to access business results daily, monthly, quarterly and annually. This includes information on general department and store performance. It also provides detailed breakdowns by product category and sub-category for in depth analysis. This comprehensive system that is used is called Matrix. Oracle does have a rather steep learning curve, taking that into consideration; a more intuitive, streamlined version may be better.
Best Buy has developed a customer relationship manager (CRM) database known as Customer Contact Manager. This software has been enhanced with data from Experian on customer’s shopping habits, in order to serve the customer better, by ensuring their experience exceeds their expectations. This database allows users to search for customer’s information by telephone number, name and zip code, Rewards ID number, or order number. This system allows a transaction search of the customer, dating back over ten years. This comes in handy in specific departments such as Appliances, where customers may be unaware of the water filter that is required for their refrigerator. This is also beneficial in the Computer department with customers who need to purchase ink for their printer. This...