QUESTION 5:(2 Marks)

Extra is a large group of electronics goods manufacturing and retailers. They have seen significant drop in their revenues in the last 5 years. The management formed a committee to identify the problems in their operations. The summarized findings of the committee are listed below:

The competitors have taken the market share of many of their products because the price determining process followed by Extra were mainly dependent on respective managers choice rather than a rigorous market survey.

The company advertisement policy was mainly focused on existing customers rather than attracting new customers.

The manual accounting processes introduced a lot of errors and inconsistencies which resulted in financial loss to the company.

Their warehouse staff's efficiency is very less and when a product is being ordered from warehouse it takes a lot of time in locating and delivering that product to the store.

The inventory record is not consistent across all stores, and sometimes an order is confirmed, then it is found that warehouse has no stock and it delays the order resulting in customer dissatisfaction.

The employees at stores and warehouses are not regular in their attendance and that also delays the response to customers.

a. Which kind of Information Technology applications can improve their business processes? Discuss in detail how each technology can solve specifically which problem.

b. Discuss how different new threats and problems can affect Extra by adopting these new technologies.