Completely emptied. Staffs at the sites use hand-held terminals (HHT’s) that can record the barcodes of products that are out of stock and then, once the check is complete, the shopping list is sent to Head Office. Re-order requests from all the stores are added together to produce orders to suppliers.
Sales are then recorded all along with the prices at the Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) terminals and sent to the store computer so that the management knows what sort of products are selling rapidly and what needs to be added to the promotion basket for the month coming.
Head Office is contacted via email for administrative matters such as double-
checking prices, special offers, staff problems, income/outcome, etc. The store computers send sales information collected from the EPOS terminals to the mainframe computer at Swindon. This sales information is used to produce budgets and make financial projections for the forthcoming year.
The Customer satisfaction department gives the company feedback on
Customers opinions about special offers, prices, services, etc. this is all taken to the AGM meeting which takes place at various locations all year round.
Today this technology is essential to create a good business. Without I.C.T, organisations like Jet will not have any records of stock orders or any history of the things that were bought by a certain customer or in this case a VAT receipt.
Jet petrol station uses I.C.T for a different number of reasons, It is more easier to record and store data on a computer. All the information is on one main internal computer. Jet uses I.C.T for:
- Sales/Purchasing
- Finance
- Operations
- Marketing
Sales and purchasing
When sales are undertaken in a petrol station, information is entered using a touch screen computer. When a costumer has picked up the knob ready to fill up petrol in his/her car, the computer tells the cashier that a particular pump is active, the cashier than presses the pump number which is already displayed before him ready for use. After the person has filled up, the computer will stop the petrol.
Processing transactions involving the sale or purchase of goods provided or required by the organisations:
-Read transactions and stores them on the computer
-Stores data
-Inputs data
-Output data
-To analyse and read through data.
Sales is responsible for selling and marketing Jet’s fuel and confectionary products. The sales function is very important to Jet because it is what the company is all about selling goods and creating sales revenue. Marketing is needed to regularly research what customers want and to advertise the company’s products.
There are also monthly offers which have been offered by the company itself, Every month different products are offered to costumers cheaper than retail priced when spending a certain amount of money
on fuel. This is also recorded to see what products
are popular and need to be introduced later on in
the year, and which of them need to be promoted.
Finance
Finance Manages the control of money, money flow, costs/payments, payroll and profitability. This role is vital to the company because it keeps track of all that is bought and sold within the shop site and monitors the amount of profit being made. It also keeps track of bills paid into the bank. All the data is then stored into the main computer files, where the finance department at head office can view all the stocks which come in and go.
This data is used along with the other data from all the other sites in the UK to draw up a profit graph and at the end of the year, the computer calculates the highest profit margin, and the site which has accomplished this receives a certificate for the ‘highest profits for that year’ from the department.
Head office uses this information provided to print out wage slips for the cashiers and then send it back to the site along with the wages.
If Jet did not keep records of all this information then the company could go bankrupt and would have to shut down. ICT is used for:
- financial modeling and forecasting using spreadsheet software.
- presenting reports and financial documents using word processing and Microsoft access.
- spreadsheet software for keeping staff data.
- producing trial balances, profit and loss accounts and balance sheets using an accounting package.
- communicating internally and externally using email and faxes to other Jet sites.
- calculating and paying salaries using a payroll package and Microsoft excel.
-
paying suppliers for goods and services using financial management software (since 2001, Head office supplies stock to sites when needed to).
Purchasing buys such as raw materials and machinery parts needed to manufacture the products Jet sells. This function is important to Jet because without it the company would not be able to produce any products to put in its stores in the first place and so would not be able to make a profit. Purchasing uses ICT to:
- Produce and track orders for items they want to buy, then sent to head office.
- Send orders and payments to head office using EDI.
- Keep records of how long they have had their machines so that they know when to replace or service them, such as jet wash, air and water machines.
Marketing
Marketing is all about promoting goods to potential, regular, existing costumers. Sometimes sales and marketing are lumped together, but in actual fact they are really quite different functions. Jet uses ICT in every aspect of marketing.
Jet Card is a business charge card that allows you to take control of your fuel costs. Not only do you receive one monthly VAT approved invoice, giving you up to 6 weeks interest free credit, but you also determine the products that your drivers can purchase. You decide whether your cards are vehicle or driver specific and there are no minimum volume requirements. No card charges or monthly fees either
Today this technology is essential to create a good business. Without I.C.T, organisations like Jet will not have any records of stock orders or any history of the things that were bought by a certain customer or in this case a VAT receipt. Without these aspects Jet and other organisations would fail.
Jet petrol station uses I.C.T for a different number of reasons, It is more easier to record and store data on a computer. All the information is on one main internal computer. Jet uses I.C.T for:
-Sales
-Purchasing
-Finance
-Operations
Finance
Jet uses a TPS (transaction processing system) to keep records of transactions up to date. Here is some information about transaction processing systems:
Transaction Processing systems
Transaction processing systems are used whenever the master file must be kept up to date. A transaction processing system operates like this :
-
When a transaction is entered it is placed in a queue of transactions waiting to be carried out. The transactions are processed in the order that they are placed into the queue. If there are many people using the system at the same time then there could be lots of transactions being made from different computer terminals.
- The computer system will process one transaction at a time. Once the system starts processing a transaction it will not process an
- other transactions until the current transaction is finished. When a
- transaction is processed the master file is updated immediately.
- Therefore the master file is always kept up to date.
Under normal circumstances a well designed transaction processing systems will process a transaction within a few seconds of the transaction being inputted. During peak processing times (e.g. Saturday morning in a travel company) the time that it takes for a transaction to be processed will increase. For most systems this is acceptable. When it is not acceptable, a real time processing system must be used instead. Tesco also use I.C.T for finance by the following ways:
-To manage the flow of money in and out of the organisation- Ms Excel
-To design their flyers- Ms publisher
-To design their website- Internet Explorer
-Online shopping – Internet Explorer
-E-mail- Internet Explorer
-Business letters- Ms Word
Flyers
Jet also has a connection to the costumers through flyers etc, it uses I.C.T for flyers so they can attract customers in a way that will hopefully bring more sales to the company. As you may have seen, they use a lot of colour, without a computer they would not have been able to achieve this.
Website
The company also has its own website of which can only be accessed to jet employers and is internally based all around the company, This is good because
Business letters
They use business letters so they can let their customers know of their upcoming deals so more people will be aware of the latest deals which is offered by the company, so that the costumers will also bring other people e.g friends and family so that they can get good deals and save money. This would lead the company to more money, which would mean an awful lot of profit. This is done using ICT to format letters and send them to there loyal costumers in a more professional manner. Also, to reply to complaints and to get stock.
E-mail
Jet uses e-mail so people can contact them in an easy way. This is to help them keep in touch with other Jet petrol sites, and is easier to send messages to other sites regarding meetings, conferences etc.
General Finance Information
Managing the flow of money in companies like Jet very important as it is vital to know how much money is coming in the company and vice versa (going out). Company finances are organised by Head Offices. Every Year, Jet petrol stations earn £ 5 billion out of which £2 billion is profit. Sales in the UK provide approximately 90% of this £5 billion ( half from petrol and the other from other needs. Information from the site computers is used to work out from the average income weekly, monthly or annually for each store. Collating the income from sites univocally, by county or nation-wide assists in drawing up budgets along side the main office for Jet which is situated in Beacon Fell. This means the strategies that are working can be used elsewhere and others that are less effective can be scrapped.
ICT provides managers with a up-to-date information about all aspects of the business. The planning of financial strategy is a vital area of the company’s existence.
Input and output devices which is used by Jet.
- VDU monitors/ including touch screens
- Printers
- Keyboards
- Barcode scanners
- Hub
- Router
- Pocket-drive
- Zap drive
- Various USB ports
- Credit card scanners
- Credit card machine
- Receipt machine
These are all the devices which are used by Jet to help them with there sales, Finance and general needs.
Conclusion
I have seen that organisations/companies use ICT to help them in what is required by them. For a company/organisation to be able to be successful.
