excutive summary

This report will discuss the systems that are used in Carrefour. Carrefour is considered one of the leading organization in the world after Wal-Mart and Tesco. This organization has reached this level of performance by using high quality systems that were able to enhance the operation in the firm.

The purposes of this project are giving the initial information about Carrefour, developing the teamwork skills, help us to become familiar with the application of management information system and gaining practical knowledge of information technology issue that facing real companies.

The methods that we are using  is gathering information from Carrefour website and contact Carrefour Company by telephone and sending emails.

We have faced some dilemma  in doing the project which are the  limited sources to look at, relating the information to the topic, finding graphical pictures and some difficulties in finding information about which systems the company use .

This report will first give background information about the organization. For example, company profile, established, location, Carrefour achievement and activities, mission and vision.

Then it will present the different type of systems that are used in the organization, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) 5.0,  Carrefour Mobile, IBM (International Business Machines)  in Carrefour and some important issues that Carrefour facing today.

introduction

Carrefour is a French international hypermarket chain, with a global network of outlets worldwide. It is means “crossroads‟ in French. It is the largest hypermarket chain in the world in terms of size, the second largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue and the third largest in profit after Wal-Mart and Tesco. Hence, it operates mainly in Europe, China, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and in the Dominican Republic, but also has shops in North Africa and other parts of Asia. Carrefour’s own retail brands are an important medium for brand differentiation and customer loyalty, contributing substantially to the organization’s growth in sales.

It is reputation has been built, on the quality and freshness of it is products, customer service and competitive prices. Selling goods with quality choices in food, personal care, communication, leisure, entertainment and household goods . In addition, Carrefour worked to continually meet the needs of local consumers, ranging from the need to refrigerate food to clothes under one roof, is trendy as shoppers pick specialized stores.

After looking at the facts on Carrefour company .In this report, we will try to know how they used Information systems to let them become one of the largest companies that existed in the world.

Background about Carrefour

  Company profile:

Carrefour initiated from France, it is an international retailer that is the world’s  second-largest and the largest in Europe, and it is a leader in the industry. There are three different kinds of stores within Carrefour, including hypermarkets, discount and convenience.

  Established:

The first Carrefour store opened on June 3, 1959. Its created by Marcel Fournier, Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey and grew into a chain from this first sales outlet. In 1999 it merged with Promodès, known as Continent, one of its major competitors in the French market.

In April 1976, Carrefour launched a private label Produits libres (free products – libre meaning free in the sense of liberty as opposed to gratis) line of fifty foodstuffs, including oil, biscuits (crackers and cookies), milk, and pasta, sold in unbranded white packages at substantially lower prices. In September 2009, Carrefour updated its logo.

  Location:

This company is located in France and has many branches all over the world like in Bahrain, China, Egypt and many more.

  Carrefour achievement and activities:

For many years, Carrefour addressed social and environmental issues. In 1992, Carrefour launched its "Quality Lines", food products which integrate environmental and social criteria in their specifications. Then, in 1996 its applied the protective principle when choosing to develop own-brand products free of Genetically Modified

Background about Carrefour

Organism (GMO). In 1997, its launched its own-brand organic range. Also, in 2000 Carrefour developed its supplier social charter in partnership with the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH). Moreover, in 2001 Carrefour linked the UN Global Compact and also signed an international protocol with the trade union body UNI Network International. Following the merger with Promotes the Group created in 2001 a dedicated service at Group level to promote best practices across the Group and to anticipate future issues.

Mission:

Carrefour focused totally on meeting the expectation of its customers. Therefore, it mission is to be the benchmark in modem retailing in each of its markets. As a global retailer, Carrefour is dedicated to enabling as many people as possible to purchase consumer goods in accordance with the principles of fair trade and sustainable development.

  Vision:

The vision of Carrefour has just announced its plans to boost sales, and they involve a astonishing change in strategy.

Information systems used in carrefour

1.    Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

·       Definition:

Is technology uses communication by radio waves in order to exchange data between a reader and an electronic tag attached to an object, for the purpose of identification and tracking.

·       Purpose:

It tracks and documents the products as they move through the manufacturing process. Also, RFID allows data to be transmitted wirelessly through the products that are holding an RFID tag microchip, which is read by an RFID reader. The data transmitted can provide identification, location information, or specifics such as date of purchase or price about the products. For example, a production organization has the ability to track all the products that are sold to different external organization. If we assume organization X is supplying Carrefour with dairy products. Carrefour will make a deal with organization X, when the amount of dairy products reach XX number of items, than the organization X will ship more products before the products are sold. This way, Carrefour will have consistency of products avaiable to be sold.

·       Uses of RFID technology:

RFID makes it possible to give each product in a grocery store its own unique identifying number, to provide assets, people, work in process, medical devices and many more.  All with individual unique identifiers like the license plate on a car but this technology cover all the item in around the world.

Information systems used in carrefour

o   Common uses of RFID:

Asset  Tracking

Asset tracking is one of the most common uses of RFID. Companies can put RFID tags on assets that are lost or stolen often, that are underutilized or that are just hard to locate at the time they are needed. Just about every type of RFID system is used for asset management. NYK Logistics, a third-party logistics provider based in Secaucus, N.J., needed to track containers at its Long Beach, Calif., distribution center. It chose a real-time locating system that uses active RFID beacons to locate container within 10 feet.

Manufacturing

RFID has also been used in manufacturing plants for more than a decade. It's used to track parts and work in process and to reduce defects, increase throughput and manage the production of different versions of the same product.

Supply Chain Management

It is used also in closed loop supply chains or to automate parts of the supply chain within a company's control for years. So, companies are dramatically increased using RFID to track their shipments among supply chain partners.

Retailing

Retailers such as Best Buy, Metro, Target, Tesco and Wal-Mart are in the lead of adopting RFID. These retailers are currently focusing on improving supply chain efficiency and making sure product is on the shelf when customers need it.

Information systems used in carrefour

Payment Systems

One of the most popular uses of RFID today is to pay for road tolls without stopping. These active systems have caught on in many countries, and quick service restaurants are experimenting with using the same active RFID tags to pay for meals By driving through windows.

Security and Access Control

It is also used for long as an electronic key to control who has access to office buildings or areas within office buildings. The first access control systems used low-frequency RFID tags. Recently, vendors have introduced 13.56 MHz systems that offer longer read range. The advantage of RFID is that it is convenient (an employee can hold up a badge to unlock a door, rather than looking for a key or swiping a magnetic stripe card) and because there is no contact between the card and reader, there is less wear and tear, therefore less maintenance.

As RFID technology advances and becomes less expensive and more robust, it's likely that companies and RFID vendors will develop many new applications to solve common and unique business problems.

Information systems used in carrefour

·       Benefit of RFID technology:

1. Reduce warehouse and distribution labor costs: Switch the point and read labor-intensive operation of tracking pallets, cases, cartons and individual products with sensors that can track these items anywhere in the facility with pin-point accuracy. This can reduce the high labor costs and service fees of regular stock management and store shelf inventory.
2. Reduce point-of-sale labor costs: RFID allowed products, checkout can be completed with a quick scan of all items in the basket that  help to decrease point-of-sale labor costs. The current scan-it-yourself element of self-service checkout can be upgraded, helping to improve adoption, reduce self-service checkout times and reduce fraud.
3. Reduce inventory: RFID can reduced the  inventory errors so that the company can be assured that the inventory indicated is the actual inventory available.
4. Improve forecasting and planning: Visibility improvements throughout the supply-chain can help to improve the forecasting capabilities to help better track where inventory is and what is happening to it throughout the supply chain.
5. Reduce theft: With RFID, products can be tracked through the supply chain to pinpoint where a product is and eliminate inventory errors that can cause shipments to go missing, or to better find where and when in the process the product was lost. Within the retail store, RFID can and has been successfully deployed, particularly on higher margin items, to help prevent theft.

Information systems used in carrefour

·       Benefit of RFID technology:

·         Reduce out-of stock conditions: When an item is out of stock the customer is often left dissatisfied and they on to a competitor in order to source the product. Eliminating out-of-stock conditions via better RFID product tracking and inventory visibility and forecasting, such as alerting the store staff directly when the last item leaves the shelf, can have an immediate top-line revenue impact and have residual effects by improving customer service and satisfaction.

Improve customer experience: With RFID, items in a cart can be tracked and if a high-tech cart or kiosks are part of the shopping experience, offers can be made automatically such as dynamic up-sell, cross-sell of useful accessories

Information systems used in carrefour

·       Advantage of using RFID technology:

No contact or even line-of-sight is needed to read data from a product that contains an RFID tag. This means no more checkout scanners at grocery stores, no more unpacking shipping boxes, and no more getting keys out of your pocket to start your car. RFID technology also works in rain, snow and other environments where bar code or optical scan technology would be useless.

·       Disadvantages of RFID Technology:

Ø  expensive to install.

Ø  Small and medium scale enterprises find it costly to use it in their firms and offices.

Ø  difficult for an RFID reader to read the information in case of RFID tags installed in liquids and metal products because the liquid and metal surfaces tend to reflect the radio waves, which makes the tags unreadable.

·       what is liked about RFID Technology:

Ø  helps to link various businesses associated with a product to the entire supply chain.

Ø  RFID  can store many data because it will help Carrefour to reduce number of systems  used for saving data.

Ø  RFID can help to  transmit and receive information without using  wires.

Information systems used in carrefour

·       what is disliked about RFID Technology:

Ø  Difficult to  anyone to understand  the system except the expert.

Ø  Can be less reliable.

1.    Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

·       Definition:

Is the structured transferring of business information between organizations by electronic means in standard data formats without human intervention . In other words, EDI is a process which allows companies send information between each other  electronically without using paper.

From these , there are 3 key concepts about EDI:

1.     Computer-to-computer :  EDI   is  most efficient in transferring the electronic documents or business data from one computer system (sender’s computer system) to another computer system (receiver’s computer system), that is from one trading partner to another trading partner without human intervention. however, it is not always possible for EDI to flow in this most efficient manner.

2.      Standard data formats:  A standard definition of the location and structure of the data is provided.  Unstructured text is not EDI.

3.      Routing business data:  EDI can be  used in routine business documents like Purchase Orders and Invoices while It cannot be used in non-routine business documents like complicated contracts or information meant for humans to read and analyze .

Information systems used in carrefour

1.      Routing business data:  EDI can be  used in routine business documents like Purchase Orders and Invoices while It cannot be used in non-routine business documents like complicated contracts or information meant for humans to read and analyze .

·       Advantage of EDI system :

                

Ø  Saving a company money by providing an alternative to, or replacing information flows that need a great deal of human interaction and materials such as paper documents, meetings, faxes.

Ø  Allows a company to take advantage of the benefits of storing and manipulating data electronically without the cost of manual entry.

Ø  Reduced errors, such as shipping and billing errors, because EDI eliminates the need to rekey documents on the destination side.

o   EDI has a lot of characteristics make it very useful, such as:

Speed – data can directly transfer out  of one computer system and into another without any delay.

Accuracy – Errors are reduced by using  EDI that because data is not being re-keyed. 

Simplicity – EDI standards specify how data will be formatted and where it can be found.

Security – Much less likely to lose information transmitted through EDI than information sent via mail.  EDI can be accessed only by authorized users, and then there are audit trails and archives of data.  EDI data cannot be easily changed by unauthorized users.  It is also not subject to viruses

Information systems used in carrefour

·       Disadvantage of EDI system:

   On the other hand , we believe that EDI is not perfect system that because :

Ø  It is Difficult to agree on the standards that are used: even though there are widely-accepted and used, it is very difficult to force trading partners to accept these standards. This is because cooperation between trading partners is needed in order to establish common rules so they can avoid differ in interpretation.

Ø  It is very costly for smaller companies: because those small companies are facing resources problems in getting start with the initial implementation of EDI system. It is beyond the resources these companies to invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in setting and implementation costs, as well as weeks of personnel training, to get an EDI system running .

Ø  It is Trading Partners Involvement because the: Highly dependence on the participation of trading partners. It is extremely hard to get a high level of supplier compliance so EDI will be a meaningless if your trading partner doesn’t  get involve using EDI system effectively.

Information systems used in carrefour

·       Benefits of EDI:

   There are a lot of benefits of EDI , the more important benefits of  this system in the companies  are :

1.    EDI  Remove document re-keying

The company  can get  many  benefits from implementing EDI which helps in  remove  the manual keying of key business documents such as Orders, Invoices and Acknowledgment. Some of these benefits are:

·         reduced labour costs.

·         elimination of human keying errors.

·         faster document processing.

·         instant document retrieval.

·         removal of reliance on the postal service.

2.    EDI  lead to Eliminate paper

Implementing Paper-based trading relationships in the company  have  some disadvantages when compared with their  in electronic trading equivalents:

• stationery and printer consumable costs
• document storage costs
• lost documents
• postage costs.

Information systems used in carrefour

3.  EDI  Increases  the quality of the trading relationship

• Electronic trading documents, when printed, are much easier to read than copies faxed or generated on multi-part stationery by impact printers.
• Accurate documents help to ensure accurate supplies.

4. EDI creates the Competitive edge

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) will help you to deal with your customers' point of view, so for them you are cheaper and more efficient to deal with than a competitor trading on paper which means your costs will be lower because you will require less manpower to process orders, deliveries or payments.

See Beyond Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) 5.0

SeeBeyond produced the SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network Suite 5.0, so Carrefour tied up with it to install Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) software and this become a part of Carrefour’s strategy to adapt itself to the local situations by customizing its operations, the merchandize mix and even store formats. Therefore,  Carrefour aimed at integrating its stores, distribution centers and supply chain partners in several countries. The idea of SeeBeyond is that to open standards-based middleware  that lets organizations to deliver business value but at an general lower total cost and with mitigated risk.

Information systems used in carrefour

 

·       About SeeBeyond ICAN suite:

Is offers extraordinary support for open standards such as J2EE and Web services and it is a complete platform that lets you quickly create new end-user business applications by assembling business logic and functionality from the information systems that is already used. With ICAN 5.0, the IT strategy can finally keep up with the business strategy.

·         Definition:

SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network Suite: is a trademark of SeeBeyond Technology Corporation.

·       How SeeBeyond ICAN are helping the company:

SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) Suite helps organizations:

1.       Rapidly assemble.

2.      Deploy enterprise-scale end-user applications built on existing systems.

3.       Infrastructure to dramatically improve business operations.

·       What is liked about the company’s use of Seebeyond ICAN :

Ø  Offers companies both large and small, unbelievable flexibility in developing an Integrated Composite Application Network.

Ø  The ability to rapidly build, coordinate and deploy the business processes that can take complete advantage of existing enterprise data.

Information systems used in carrefour

Ø  Integrating stores, logistics, point-of-sales, and supply chains to drive increased revenue, reduce risk, and reduce costs.

Ø  Using See Beyond, retailing customers are gaining the benefits of streamlined information flow, increased product availability in real-time, decreased stock levels, improved revenue and reduced costs.

Ø  Matches end-user needs with those of IT users.

Ø  Integrate new applications with existing enterprise and legacy applications.

1.    Carrefour Mobile

 In November 2006 Carrefour launched its mobile telephony offer which was called: Carrefour Mobile. Theame mobile telephony virtual operator (MVNO). To launch its MVNO mobile telephony offer, Carrefour Mobile decided to deal with two software, the CRM process and the BPO player.

·       Coheris CRM software

It’s a French software publisher in the CRM market; it offers two ranges of software products that cover the additional domains of CRM and Business Intelligence. This software relies on a network of technology partners and integrators, as well as its own teams of specialized consultants and engineers. Coheris CRM helps to manage all the customer contacts and the processes linked with it.

This software ensures the standardization of different processes linked to the customer like marketing, sales, services and it is capable of offering the means of interaction adapted to the customer profile and to the channel that it wants to use (mail, telephone, SMS, web, fax, and points of sale).

Information systems used in carrefour

·     Experian BPO Services (Business Process Outsourcing)

This process helps start a mobile telephone virtual operator business by continuing to focus on the core of the business which is retail. It is an Experian that provides companies and individuals across the globe, information processing, analysis and marketing services to help them manage the risks and benefits that are linked to their sales and financial decisions.

With matching performing information processing tools and specific knowledge of consumers, markets and economies, Experian assists companies throughout the world in making and developing their customer relations.

·       Benefits

1. To respond on time to market by offering mobile telephony that works with a CRM information system quick to deploy.
2. Management of a high volume of requests.
3. To use a powerful CRM solution capable of receiving a high volume of requests.
4. To access a single repository regardless of the channel used by the customer and to benefit from an open solution for integrating the expectations of consumers (loyalty card) and to interface with heterogeneous environments.

·       What is liked about this system?

  Help them to deal with their customer easily.

  Save money, time and effort.

  Decreased the rates of turn over.

  They could get a 360 ° view of customers.

  The BPO helps to improve service levels increase security.

Information systems used in carrefour

1.IBM (Interational Business Machines)  in Carrefour

IBM has signed a five-year agreement with French retail chain operator Carrefour to take over the transformation, management and maintenance of Carrefour's IT infrastructure and associated applications.

Earlier, Carrefour has teamed with IBM and its partners for a promotion system across its supermarket and hypermarket stores to enable the planning and execution of targeted campaigns, with feedback as to their effectiveness. IBM said that this will allow Carrefour to meet the quickly changing demands it faces as a retail business and it also said that retailer will benefit from the latest technologies in terms of security and a reduction in energy expenses. So, we can say that this agreement helped Carrefour to optimize their IT costs, enhance IT security and service quality, and reduce subcontracting .

·       Business Benefits

1. Greater control over marketing strategy and customer relationships resulting in stronger customer loyalty and a stronger Carrefour brand.
2. Deeper knowledge of customers via analytics and segmentation.
3. Shorter campaign planning to execution cycle.
4. Faster feedback on promotional effectiveness and more detailed feedback to suppliers.
5. Closer supplier relationships.

·       What do we like about this system?

1- Because they used it for targeted promotional campaigns that increased their revenue.

2- It helped them to lower marketing costs.

3- Also helped in saving other costs.