Introduction: Information Systems in Shoe Retail

Businesses rely on timely and accurate information to plan, make decisions and take timely and appropriate actions leading to increased performance, income and subsequent rise in profits (Hannabuss, 1987). This reliance has increased significantly in the information age which has made the provision of such information much easier through the awesome computing resources available to organisations at affordable costs.

These information are provided through systems like Market Information Systems (Lin & Hong, 2009) and others including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems which have created revolutions in businesses through the redesign of core business processes and the provision of increased quality and quantity of information in sectors like Sales, Pharmaceuticals and Car Manufacturing (Shoemaker, 2003).

The use of information Systems in businesses especially sales has completely changed the traditional approaches so much so that it has become possible for automated systems to use the large amounts of data captured by markets and salesmen to discover customer shopping trends and made recommendations to customers based on their past behaviour as is being done in today’s leading online sales outlets like Amazon, eBay, etc.

This blog will focus on a number of information systems applicable in a shoe retailer in the Small, Medium Enterprises sector of the Nigerian economy which can facilitate business differentiation and create competitive advantage leading to improved customer satisfaction, sales and increased profitability. Areas of focus include the use of market information systems in improving sales management through the provision of information that will lead to decisions on promotions, incentives to customers, price adjustments and so on. Other areas include the use of ERP systems for online and on-premise sales, inventory, analytics and performance management.

As mentioned earlier, information is critical to planning and timely decision making in many organisations. However, unreliable information due to errors in underlying data can compromise such information and have serious consequences for both the organisation and the customer (Mollick, 2014). Errors may also arise due to unethical practices of operators (Guragai, Hunt, Neri, & Taylor, 2017). Consequently, any discourse on Information Systems must take into account issues of ethics and periodic information systems audits.

The issue of errors in underlying data may be intentional as a result of security issues. Additionally, sensitive information may also fall into the wrong hands through acts of sabotage leading to unintended consequences (Allen & Fisher, 2015). Accordingly, this article will also discuss the issues of information systems security as it affects the shoe retailer.

References
Allen, C., & Fisher, W. (2015). Road warriors and information systems security: risks and recommendations. Journal of Management Information and Decision Sciences, 18(1), 84-96.

Guragai, B., Hunt, N. C., Neri, M. P., & Taylor, E. Z. (2017). Accounting Information Systems and Ethics Research: Review, Synthesis, and the Future. JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS, 31(2), 65-81.

Hannabuss, S. (1987, May 01). Information and Decision Making. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 87(5/6), 11-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057476.

Lin, C., & Hong, C. (2009). Development of a marketing information system for supporting sales in a Tea-beverage market. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(3), 5393-5401.

Mollick, J. S. (2014). How are concerns about errors and ethics related to demands for information systems audits? Communications of the IIMA, 14(1-2), 63-73.

Shoemaker, M. E. (2003, July 01). WHAT MARKETING STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING ( E R P ) SYSTEMS. Marketing Education Review, 13(2), 69-77.