SYSTEM STUDY IN BIG BAZAR

Big bazar is consumer goods retail chain of Future Group Pvt Ltd. Future Group also runs

Pantaloons, Lifestyle, EZone, Book Depot, Future Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Home Town, Fair

Price, Brand Factory and Central Hypermarket. Future group is a subsidiary of Pantaloon

Retail India Limited which is listed in NSE and BSE the most established Stock Markets in

India. Mr. Kishore Biyani is the person behind Big Bazaar. He is CEO and MD of Pantaloon

Retail India Limited. Big Bazaar is based on the concept of Hypermarket or Mega stores. In

this kind of Hypermarket consumer get all the daily routine products under single roof. Big

bazaar is having more than 215 stores in more than 95 cities and towns.

Big Bazaar launched in India with a bang by opening its 4 stores in 4 major cities Bengaluru,

Indore, Hyderabad and Kolkata within a time span of just 22 days. Big Bazaar was started in

India in September 2001. It is now 10 years when big bazaar was started and has a huge

number of stores all over India. Big Bazaar was started as a fashion hypermarket which had

Apparels, Accessories, Cosmetics and General Merchandise on sale. Later on a huge range of

other products was added to the list. This list includes FMCG products, Electronics, furniture,

Stationery, etc. These stores are established on big areas having huge displays and providing

cool and comfortable shopping experience to consumers. These stores are based on the

concept of Walmart USA.

The starting Tag Line of Big Bazaar was ‘Isse Sasta Aur Accha Kahin Nahin’. After

completion of its 10 years in Retail market the company has given a new tag line ‘Naye India

Ka Bazaar’. In these 10 years Big Bazaar has become favorites among housewives and other

group of consumers too. In overall it has become the favorite retail store of every Indian

family.

Most of outlets of Big Bazaar are on an area of minimum 50,000 square feet. In bigger

metropolis there are some huge stores on an area of 160,000 square feet. Big Bazaar express

stores in small towns are also on 30,000 square feet area only. Big Bazaar also has its own

house brand also which it promote in its stores. The most famous of them are Clean Mate,

Tasty treat, Sensei etc. Big bazaar has some great promotional schemes too. It offers Buy 1

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Get 1 Free on many products. There are huge discounts on MRP of many products.

Big Bazaar also has special schemes on weekends and weekdays. They keep on promoting

products by having special display of products. Sampling and testing of many products is

available in store. Many small companies even launch their products through Big bazaar.

There are many schemes by various companies which are available in Big Bazaar only. Big

bazaar also provides consumer durables on Low EMI and interest free installments also.

History

Big Bazaar was launched in September, 2001 with the opening of its first four stores in

Calcutta, Indore, Bangalore and Hyderabad in 22 days. Within a span of ten years, there are

now 161 Big Bazaar stores in 90 cities and towns across India. By September 2012 BIG

BAZAAR will have two more stores in North east namely SILCHAR and JORHAT in

Assam.

Big Bazaar was started by Kishore Biyani, the Group CEO and Managing Director of

Pantaloon Retail India. Though Big Bazaar was launched purely as a fashion format

including apparel, cosmetics, accessory and general merchandise, over the years Big Bazaar

has included a wide range of products and service offerings under their retail chain. The

current formats includes Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Electronic Bazaar and Furniture Bazaar.

The inspiration behind this entire retail format was from Saravana Stores, a local store in T.

Nagar, Chennai

The stores are customized to provide the feel of mandis and melas [2] while offering the

modern retail features like Quality, Choice and Convenience. As the modern Indian family's

favorite retail store, Big Bazaar is popularly known as the "Indian Walmart".

On successful completion of ten years in Indian retail industry, in 2011, Big Bazaar has come

up a new logo with a new tag line: ‘Naye India Ka Bazaar’, replacing the earlier one: 'Isse

Sasta Aur Accha Kahin Nahin'.

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ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIG BAZAR:

With the retail sector in India undergoing a transformation due to the entry of large corporate

houses, IT managers and CIOs are now looking forward to know how IT can help them

achieve the business goals of their organizations.

Standards-based architecture and software support all kinds of mission-critical IT

applications for enabling greater efficiency, significant cost savings, and new business value.

The critical activities that can be handled by IT are finance and accounting, business

intelligence, vendor development and management, supply chain management,

merchandising and inventory management, facilities management, stores management,

customer relationship management, branding, marketing, sales promotion and HR.

Like any other retail stores Big Bazar also stands to benefit from elaborate IT set-ups.

However, this is subject to the scale and size of the organization, as well as an objective

assessment of its requirements. Key common challenges that can be tackled through IT

implementations include accurate merchandising, improved planning, and increasing

profitability, enhancing customer experience, strengthening store operations, improved

workforce management, and improving the supply chain. This is in fact one of the key

imperatives facing retailers in India, to have a robust and scalable supply chain that will

facilitate rapid growth.

Since a basic objective is to make data available to users and customers, proper IT

implementation and superior IT infrastructure ensure that in spite of getting minimal details,

the retailer captures the right information, which flows to everyone from the back office staff

to the head office managers. The entire information flow must be seamless. A retail business

works on a network environment because the stores connect to one another as well as to

supplier sites. This is because in the retail business quick response is the key to success.

Proper IT implementation also ensures that investment in retail reduces substantially.

An information system is a system that takes resources as input and processes them into

information product as output. It is an organized combination of people, hardware, software,

network and data resources. Management information system helps manager by following

ways :

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It helps to know about the daily transaction

To easily calculate profit and loss

To take decisions quick and accurate with the help of MIS

To know the regularity of the employees

They use a storing device to store all transaction per day

Big Bazar has their own inbuilt software called SPARSH and SANCHAYAN for human

resource and finance respectively. They are using Sanskrit names for software’s. SPARSH

means ‘to touch’ and SANCHAYAN means ‘cumulative’. Future knowledge services (FKS)

provide back end for all software’s in Big Bazar. In Big Bazar, Coimbatore they are not using

the SANCHAYAN software because all financial processing are done in the Head Office,

Chennai. They will send all the financial related data to the head office once in a week.

SPARSH software is used for processing employee details. It has separate login id for both

employees and operators. Employees can edit their personal details like address, mail id,

phone number, family details etc. They can go through their feedback and also they can

mention their feedback in respective sites. In case of emergencies employees can apply for

leave through this information system. Individuals get the details of the achievements they

had achieved in the organization. One of the main advantages of this software is that the

employees can generate pay in slips. Every year performance appraisal of employees is done

on the month of April. Attendance record is also created using this software. Each employee

have to swipe their card once they entered into the organization. The swipe machine

automatically sent the details to the SPARSH software.

In Big Bazar they don’t have any separate information system for marketing. They are using

MS Excel for marketing information system.

Management information system

It helps in finance

To find the cost of product

Marketing activities

Provide discount

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Organization security

Employee attendance

Stock availability

Counting customer footmark

The centralized servers are used by the MIS where one is the main server and other is a

backup server which can take over from the main server within 5 minutes,if there is any

problem. Each of the servers has its own storage sysem with monitoring hard disks ( 15 hard

disks storing the same information simultaneously). The information is backed up

continuously on CDs every day. The entire system is backed by an excellent electrical wiring

by JD International(electrical maintenance department). The recording of transaction at each

counter is done using REM. The database used for the storage is called POSH database and

this is an in-house production of Big Bazar. These transaction counters can capture credit

card details and customer information of big customers ( though all the information relating

to all the customer is not collected as of now). Receipts of transactions are cash or credit. The

number of transaction made per day varies from 3000-4000 on week days to about 5000-6000

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supplier ID

supplier nameproduct name

Supplier

Sub CategoryCode

Category CodeDescription

Sub

Category

Category Code

Description

Product Category

product Code

product namesupplier iddescription

Product

Cust. Id

product idquantity

date

Purchase

Rec

.

Product CodeId

min quantitymax quantity

quantity on handsales price

status

Inventory

Core ID

core nameterminal IP

HO Site

Employee ID

passwordaccess level

HO Employee

Employee ID

namedepartment

Employee

Cust.ID

nameaddress

citypostal code

Customer

Sub Category Code

quantity..........

Transaction Recor

d

Product CodeStart Date

end datesales price

pricing state

Pricing

maintains

performs

supplies

checks

purchases

operates

Transaction No.

trans datetrans date

employee id

Transaction

updates

on weekends. Any transaction recorded at each terminal is stored directly onto the POSH

database.

Logical diagram for data flow in Big Bazar

In the logical diagram various processes are shown with the help of entities and their

attributes. All the entities are somewhat linked with each other. Following is the brief

introduction about each entity and its attribute:

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1. HO Site: It is central point in the database unit, which controls all the departments. It

controls various operations like maintaining inventory, organizing suppliers, and

giving salaries to employees and billing to the customers.

2. HO Employee: It defines the employees who will operate the HO site. They can

make changes in the database of the product, and can even define new levels of cut

off points for both inventory and shelf.

3. Employee: It defines all the employees working in various departments. This entity

will be accountable for their salaries, their performance, their timings and their

attendance. All the incentives will be decided after seeing the performance graph of

the employee, which will be generated through the DBMS.

4. Product: This entity will define all the information about the product. It will tell the

cost of the product, its unique ID code, its supplier, its self life.

5. Supplier: As there are too many suppliers in the market who will be suppling their

products to big bazaar. This entity will help to maintain their database. It will tell

about the supplier name, location, product supplied by him, and about billing of the

supply.

6. Purchase records: This will tell about the purchase record of a particular product by

the customer. It will tell the name of customer who purchased the product, date of

purchasing, quantity purchased etc.

7. Customer: The end point of the business is customer. To create the database of the

valuable customers, you should know name, address, and product & in what quantity

they purchase.

8. Inventory: It is the store where all the products are placed before bringing them to the

shelf. The supplies directly come to the inventory.

Inventory control

It means keeping stock of all the inventory at the desired level. In retailing, all the focus is on

the management of products at the outlet, hence the role of inventory control can hardly be

exaggerated.

Benefits of inventory control

1. Meet anticipated demand

2. Smoothen procurement process

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3. Decouple components of procurement-distribution system

4. Protection against stock outs and hence informing suppliers beforehand

5. Making the maximum out of a order cycle

6. Hedging against anticipated price changes

7. Smoothen overall operations

At the time of collection of data, arranging the data in a proper manner at the time of

collection is not possible. So after collecting the data it should be arranged in proper order.

First of all, all the data collected will be arranged under different headings as for effective

handling of data.

Conversion of Data

Stock Database :

In this all the product’s data will be available in a proper alignment. Getting the details of all

the stock is made easy. Instead of going and searching for the stock, the details of stock will

be available in just one click.SAP software is used for this purpose. Once the stock comes,

the person in charge will check the stock for defects. If there is any defect, the stock will be

returned to the supplier and if it clear all its standards then the stock will be updated in the

stock database. Once the stock is finished, purchase order will be created automatically and

send to supplier database.

A simple example of stock database is as follows

Product_name Prod_id Product_price Brand_name Discnt_given

Shirt 56 1200 Park avenue 20%

Jeans 34 1900 Killer 15%

Shoes 64 700 Adidas 15%

Socks 64 52 Park avenue 5%

Tie 28 35 Menz 5%

Towel 93 250 Bombay dying 10%

Mattress 20 1100 Bombay dying 30%

Skirt 101 300 SRC 10%

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Kurti 81 500 SRC 15%

Sherwani 12 1500 30%

Employee Database:

This will include the data about salaries, leaves, performance etc of the employees. This will

help in giving possible rewards to the employees for their good performance, which will

motivate the employees to work more punishing the employees with low performance. This

will bring a homogeneous working environment in the working area. Swipe machine is used

for taking attendance and the data will be sent to employee database

Customer Database:

This database will include the data regarding the customer who visit Big Bazaar. This

database will include details like, customer’s name, address, customer id, customer phone

number, customer’s occupation. This will help in recognizing the customer and provide them

with membership cards.

A simple example is as follows

cust_fname

cust_lname

cust_id cust_addr

cust_phno

cust_occupation

Abhishek Mehta C00123-A Shanti apartments,Roop

Nagar,Delhi 45774849 Professor

Jyotsna Varma C030Plot no-343 Bunglow no 3,

Delhi 43847939Bank of

Maharashtra

Smita Singh C052101,Plot no-122,Hemraj

Apartmentsts,Roop Nagar,Delhi 48393297 stock dealer

Aditya Mehra C048 401, Block B Hazari, Delhi 42029300 Teacher

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Suppliers Database:

Suppliers details, transactions, payments etc. will be stored in this database. Simultaneously,

the details will be sent to the stock database. And if there is a shortage in the stock of any

product, information will be sent to the respective supplier for the supply of the product. This

will result in an effective stock management.

After converting the data in a proper and accessible manner, the data will be provided on all

the systems through Pilot Run method in which all the data will be made available on the

server which is connected to all the computers present in the work area.

After collecting the consumer database, they have decided to provide them with various

schemes as if different types of membership cards, after a level of purchases. For that all the

details of shopping will be added to the data base whenever they shop. Thus this will result in

good customer relations as customer will be impressed that the staff member is having the

data of transaction the consumer made with them. Thus after having a total transaction of

3000 or above, the customer will be provided with a membership card. The cards will be of

different levels as if

1. Silver Card: The customers making purchases between Rs.3000 to Rs.

10,000 in the shop. Free products will be provided with every purchase (as toys,

chocolates etc.).

2. Gold Card: The customers making purchases between Rs. 10,000 to Rs.

50,000 in the shop. They will be provided with additional services as home

delivery services, as well as free gifts with every purchase.

3. Platinum Card: Customers making purchases of Rs. 50,000 and above. A

accident insurance worth Rs. 50,000 will be given in addition to free home

delivery and free products. In addition to this heavy discounts will be given on

each purchase.

These way customers will be attracted more towards the Big Bazaar. And this is just with the

data base maintained on the systems with the help of software’s. This will simply result in an

exponential increase in the sales of the shop. And thus more of profit can be generated.

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CONCLUSION

What we have seen about critical analysis of information system prevailing in the Big Bazar ,

which is one of the main retail sector in Coimbatore. The applicability and effectiveness that

ensured that big bazaar has excellent in a place like Coimbatore and become pioneer in the

industry. This has been largely due to a radical and perfectly functioning information system.

The effectiveness of information system is greatly brought up by the efficient supply chain

and delivery system that big bazaar has. With the help of this system study we came to know

that how information system is helpful to the retail sector. Use of information system in retail

sector is resulting in an exponential increase in the sales, customer relationships etc.

Simultaneously customers are finding it easy and convenient to shop these days. Looking at

the early days when a customer has to wait for a long time to buy a product, it is easy now as

they can select their product from wide ranges available in the market. They can select a

product which will serve their needs the best. This is also helping in maintaining the selling

prices which was misused by the other retailers in early days. This way use of information

system is resulting in a drastic change in the retail sector. A fair and proper mode of shopping

is taking place.

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