The Interview

The Interview
How are products ordered?
The products are normally ordered by the floor manager when levels are low. Also head office will order large quantities of products that have been heavily advertised.

Does system automatically generate orders for items out/low in stock?
No. This would not be a good idea because we are in a technologically driven time so products that sell well this month may be out of date next month. I don’t think this could work in our type of business. But for small items such as hoover bags, kettles, toasters etc. we would benefit from an automatic ordering system.

How are products booked into system?
Products are booked into the system normally by our stock controller in our warehouse and sometimes by our managers. Both need to have access to this option as sometimes the wrong thing may be booked in and not be realised until it is being sold on the shop floor. In scenario like this the staff member that is selling the item will bring it to the nearest manager and then s/he can easily rectify the problem.


What information does the system give about a product?
Name, model code, description, quantity level, all pricing such as retail price, margin, price ex vat, rebate on item, sales history, if it’s a current model or not.

What information does system need about the product?
It needs to have a unique model code in for the system to book it in. Also all of the pricing needs to be done before people can access the item on the system.

How does the system deal with aged stock? Does it warn you beforehand?
Who does it warn? Does the system add incentive to sell aged stock?
Aged stock is highlighted in the systems reports in order to show its urgency for sale. We operate our business in a way of credit with our suppliers. We have 3 months to sell an item before we have to pay for it. Obviously we want the product to pay for itself so this is quite an important requirement of the system. What would be beneficial would be if the system could warn us about a product that is coming close to the 3 month time period. It would be very beneficial for the system to warn anybody with access to the stock system. As for incentive, it would be a disaster for the company to have a system automatically generate incentives! I like to do that personally for my sales staff. It would be handy for the staff to be able to keep a track record of everything they sold catagorised by age level, display items etc.


What does the system do with non-current/discontinued products?
We have 2 different views of our stock list. One of current models and discontinued models that are still in stock. This shorter list is quick and easy to read and only shows the necessities. There is also another list containing all current models and all discontinued products. This is good for generating reports and viewing sales history etc. It is only accessible by managers.

Who has permission to access the stock system?
Only managers can order products and view all discontinued stock in the inventory. Salespeople can see the remaining inventory but cannot modify it in any way.

What reports do you need generated regarding stock?
Age stock reports, stock levels, sales history, products by brand, products by category, products that never sold since initial purchase, product sold by salesperson.

How do you search the system for a given product?
By model code or description

Are they catagorised?
No. they are sorted in alphabetical order. In reality it would be handy to be able to search by category and alphabetically.

What if product found in store is not in system?
If the product has been in the system previously it can be added by any of the managers. But if the product does not have any entry in the system we have to get on to head office. It would be better to be able to add new products to the system manually

what if product comes back faulty from customer?
They are booked into the system but have to be marked as faulty manually. The problem with this is that people forget to mark it as faulty! Then it shows that we have this product in stock, sell it to a customer and then when we go to give them the product we find that its faulty! It would be much better if we could enter the faulty items into a quarantined section of the system.

Can you see any way the current system could be bettered?
All of the suggestions I mentioned above.
• It would be handy to be able to search by category and alphabetically.
• The staff to be able to keep a track record of everything they sold catagorised by age level, display items.
• We would benefit from an automatic ordering system.
• It would be better to be able to add new products to the system manually
• It would be much better if we could enter the faulty items into a quarantined section of the system.