Week 10

Q15. Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organisational processes or practice. An established discipline since 1995, KM includes courses taught in the fields of business administration, information systems, management, and library and information sciences. More recently, other fields, to include those focused on information and media, computer science, public health, and public policy, also have started contributing to KM research.

Witness Systems, provider of workforce optimisation software and services, has announced that Littlewoods Shop Direct Group, the UKs leading home shopping and online retailer, has deployed its Impact 360 Advanced Workforce Management solution, along with its Impact 360 Strategic Planning functionality.

Littlewoods Shop Direct Group uses the technology which includes forecasting and scheduling, adherence, scorecards, time off management and lesson management, along with strategic planning to manage 3,000 agent seats at its contact centre subsidiary Optimum (News – Alert) Contact Centre Solutions, created as a result of the recent merger of the Littlewoods and Shop Direct business lines.

Optimum Contact Centre Solutions handles both the inbound and outbound telephone sales and customer service. With Littlewoods sales exceeding £2.1 billion annually, Witness Systems solution helps ensure customer service is optimised by accurately matching resources, projected customer demand and the number of agents scheduled.

Vicky Jenkins, Customer Services Director for Littlewoods, comments: “We are an organisation that strives to put our customers first. We distribute over nine million catalogues every year containing more than 70,000 fashion and footwear, and home and leisure lines mailed by our Home Shopping brands. After an extensive review of workforce management offerings on the market, it was clear that Impact 360 Workforce Management is able to provide us with the flexibility we need to match available agents to customer demand and make us fit for purpose.”

“With Impact 360 Workforce Management, organisations such as Littlewoods can reduce costs by staffing appropriately to meet workload, drive business growth, and improve employee effectiveness and retention. The solution helps increase both agent and customer satisfaction by creating flexible shift patterns that suit employees, while ensuring that predicted customer demands are met.”

Knowledge Management would be a great tool to retain key corporate knowledge. It is a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organisational objectives by making best use of knowledge. It involves the design, review and implementation of both social and technological processes to improve the application of knowledge, in the collective interest of stakeholders.

It would help Littlewoods to know, what they know! i.e., What are the strong capabilities/ staff and facilities they have.

It would help Littlewoods to identify the concentration areas and less populated areas of knowledge.

It would help Littlewoods to collectively, share towards fulfillment of goals and objectives. It will also help find the current status of Littlewoods as compared to the competitors.

Week 9

Traffic building is a term used to describe the process of trying to attract people to your website. An online e-commerce business cannot survive if they do not have customers. It is important to them that they try and attract as many customers as they can and keep them for return purchases.

There are many ways that Littlewoods can attract sustomers to shop on their website.

Littlewoods has signed a two-year deal with www.buy.at to consolidate its third-party marketing strategy and boost web sales to meet its £750m target. So-called “affiliate” marketing deals agree for one site to feature content or ads designed to drive traffic to another. Under the Littlewoods deal, www.buy.at will manage a combination of search engine optimization, pay per click and loyalty site affiliates to increase the shop chain’s online performance. Affiliate marketing is key to the plan to double online sales to £750m in the next three years. A single affiliate network means we will have greater visibility of how each product and affiliate is performing and increase efficiencies using one management area and reporting system, rather than duplicating effort. The re-launch of littlewoodsdirect.com in September saw a 44 per cent rise in online business.

Littlewoods is now the UK’s largest online clothing and footwear retailer, with around 12% of the market share. They have alot of traffic on their website as they are one of the most popular companies in the UK.

With Misco it uses several ways to bring customers to their site. This is an important stage of any business as, if it is done right, it will show customers this is a trusted site to do business with.

Search engines are an easy way for customers to become aware of the Littlewoods website as it provides hits and sponsored links. Search engines also provide sponsored links which appear before the search results. Littlewoods always features in these sponsored links which will boost the traffic to their website further.

Another method of attracting customers to your website is through voucher and discount codes. There is a number of websites, like www.myvouchercodes.co.uk, which provide links to special offers on sites such as Littlewoods. This provides customers who are on another their site, an external link to Littlewoods.

Littlewoods has to work on keeping thier customers, this can be done with special offers, discounts and special privliges like newsletters etc.

As you can see Littlewoods has many ways to help attract customers to their website, this is why they are one of the biggest retailers in the United Kingdom.

Week 8

Q13. The first search that I conducted was “Dyson hoover”. When I took a look at the results that I got, I seen that Littlewoods was 5th on the sponsored links, above Amazon and Argos, which were both lower on the list. However, Littlewoods was not amongst the search engine results (well not the first six pages anyway). Potential customers would not search this far and would instead check the first few results and perhaps give up.

Littlewoods however does have the advantage of being higher up than its main rivals on the sponsored links, which are a more trustworthy source than the results.

Next I typed in “firetrap shoes”. Amazon had the first two results, with Littlewoods being nowhere to be seen apart from the sponsored links again.

On my third attempt I typed in “miss selfridge” (a clothing brand for women) and Littlewoods was half way down the second page. I think this was because I changed the search to pages only in the UK though.

Another search I did was Levis jeans and Littlewoods did not appear on any of the results I seen.

I think the poor results that I got were from the fact that Littlewoods do not make any products, instead buying from suppliers.

This is quite worrying as Littlewoods sell mainly online and the fact that their search engine results are so poor is alarming as they are loosing out in alot of business and potential customers. Littlewoods does however appear on the sponsored links nearly all the time which are paid for.

Week 7

Q12. Cloud computing is a term used to describe the method of using software as a service (SaaS) via the Internet. This means that someone can access the services through the Internet (the cloud) without control, knowledge or expertise of the technology. Google currently makes use of cloud computing with Google Apps, which provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Google is the biggest company that seems to be behind cloud computing as its business is already based on owning a massive computer infrastructure (or cloud) that people tap into from their homes or offices. Recently Google even joined with IBM to promote cloud computing.

Microsoft has also announced a cloud computing service, called “Windows Azure”. This will allow users to create applications, which will live on the internet, rather than on their own computers.

Cloud computing could prove very beneficial to e-commerce. The online shopping company ‘Amazon’ have a cloud computing service called “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud” (Amazon EC2), which is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Developers could create applications on these clouds I have talked about and sell them on the companies website. The developer would make money and the e-commerce company would take a cut also.

There are many benefits and drawbacks to cloud computing.

The benefits are:

• Access to data from any location with an Internet connection
• No need for maintaining a physical storage device
• No upfront capital expenditures for hardware, software licenses or implementation services
• No ongoing costs of maintaining and upgrading an on-site storage system’s hardware and software
• Pay-as-you-go model allows for reduced operating expenses
• Can add and remove capacity based on real rather than projected storage needs
• Alleviates burden placed on IT teams

The drawbacks are:

• Security, data is stored and could be corrupted or accessed by hackers
• Downtime is also an issue. It could bring businesses to a halt

Week 6

Q.11. Littlewoods have several parts to their management strategy for their upstream and downstream supply chains.

First of all is the push vs pull supply models. Littlewoods is a push supply model driven company. Their customers choose from a selection of products on the Littlewoods website. However customers could email Littlewoods and request a product and Littlewoods may provide it. The push model makes more sense for Littlewoods to use as they have a large amount of customers and products and dont make their own products, so it would be mayhem if they had to get custom products for their customers.

Littlewoods have alot of products and they are all supplied from different popular brands. They totally rely on their third party suppliers and have a close relationship with them. This is virtual intrigation, which is the most appropriate form for Littlewoods because they only sell online. This means that the third party suppliers have control of the majority of supply chain activities.

Above is the Littlewoods internal supply chain.

Littlewoods will be dealing with high volume distribution, for this Littlewoods will need a carrier to transport the goods. Thankfully they deliver the products themselves. This reduces cost.

Partnership management is very important. It is important to keep your suppliers happy. Littlewoods has many suppliers, so this is a big task.

Littlewoods use procurment on a regular basis. Littlewoods purchase all of their products from suppliers. They need to purchase new clothing every season and technological products when there are newer ones available. Littlewoods repeat purchase off supliers such as, Samsung, Sony, Diesel etc. Littlewoods needs to consider factors like delivery and handling, marginal benefit, and price fluctuations.

A value chain is a chain of activities. Products pass through all activities of the chain in order and at each activity the product gains some value. The chain of activities gives the products more added value than the sum of added values of all activities. It is important not to mix the concept of the value chain with the costs occurring throughout the activities.

Week 5

The threat of substitute products and services: As Littlewoods does not make any products, the product side of this force does not directly affect Littlewoods, although it will affect them all the same. The bigger concern would be on the services that Littlewoods provides. Tesco, Argos and Amazon all provide online shopping and are Littlewoods biggest competitors. Littlewoods needs to have a better website than its competitors, whether its the design, ease of use and/or better features. Cheaper prices and product insurance are also factors. Littlewoods also may have to change suppliers if more, better or cheaper products or companies come on the market.

The threat of the entry of new competitors: The online shopping market is ever growing and it is inevitable that new companies will want to expand into this market. At the moment over 130,000 UK business sell online and over £18 billion is spent online every year. These statistics would seem tempting to any company wishing to sell online. This however does not help Littlewoods at all as this will increase competitiveness amongst companies and lower profits. The market will eventually become saturated. Product prices will fall and quality of products will have to increase to remain competitive which will benefit customers.

The intensity of competitive rivalry: As there are so many comapnies in the online shopping market, competition is fierce. After taking a look at Littlewoods and its competitors websites, I found that pricing was the main method of competing. On the homepages of these websites sales, price reductions and special offers banners and advertisements were dominant. To me it looks like a full on price war between these companies.

The bargaining power of customers/buyers: As it stands, customers have got alot more power than they used to. Nowadays, online customers can choose from a wide variety of products on the Internet, through many different websites. They can look for bargins through search engines of comparison websites also. Companies like Littlewoods, Argos etc, will have to bring their prices down to remain competitive.

The bargaining power of suppliers: Suppliers may also have power over Littlewoods. The suppliers could increase the prices of their products or services or terminate their contract with Littlewoods. They may also not co-operate with Littlewoods or charge excessively high prices. This would leave Littlewoods in a tough position, as they would have to decide whether to stay with the same supplier or change. Littlewoods have many different suppliers providing them with products, so this factor is essential to them.

 

As you can see all of these factors affect Littlewoods in a big way.  They have to take these seriously to stay competitive and to remain as profitable as they already are.

Week 4

Q.7. After reading the terms and conditions of the Littlewoods website, I beleive that they are indeed very reasonable. They do not state anything that sounds unreasonable. They state everything clearly and it is easy to understand.

If you plan on returning any goods, then you have 14 days from the recipt of the goods, to return them.

Littlewoods has very good support for all its customers. Customers can contact Littlewoods for support by telephone and email, with any queries they have. They also have an online help system. This is a system with questions you can choose from. After picking one, an answer will be displayed, giving you information on how to aid your problem.

I think that Littlewoods have really good and fair terms and conditions and I think that they are definitely better than its competitors.

Q.8. The registration process of the Littlewoods website is an easy one. After clicking on the register link you are asked to enter your title, first name, surname and date of birth. Then you are asked to enter your address and post code. Finally you have to enter your contact details such as email address, password, and phone number.

You are then brought to a page, where you have to complete an account application. Here you must add details such as current accommodation, how many children in your accommodation and debit/credit card information. After completing this, then you will be registered.

Each customers credit/debit card information is encrypted. This is because no one other than the customer will be able to know that their details are. This is done to prevent unauthorised persons from seeing any confidential information and causing problems for Littlewoods customers.

Q.9. The Littlewoods website does indeed use cookies. Cookies are parcels of text sent by a server to a Web client (usually a browser) and then sent back unchanged by the client each time it accesses that server. HTTP cookies are used for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance), and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.

Littlewoods uses them to keep track of what products you are intrested in. This means that they can send you special offers (or display them on their website) on the type of products that you buy.

Week 3

Q4. After researching on the Internet (www.alexa.com), I have found that Littlewoods largest competitors are, Tesco, Argos, Amazon and Primark. This was not a surprise to me as these are all very large companies and I am aware of them all. Some other things that I found out were that compared to its competitors, Littlewoods had the highest traffic on their website over a three month period. I think that this is because their competitors have highstreet stores and Littlewoods does not.

The figures are below:

Littlewoods: 6017

Argos: 1213

Tesco: 1722

Amazon: 264

Littlewoods also had a higher traffic rank after one day and also one month. As you can see there is a big gap between Littlewoods and its competitors as far as web traffic is concerned.

This information shows that as a company, Littlewoods is growing steadly. 

Q5. After you have accessed the Littlewoods website via URL or Google, etc. You can choose a category of the type of product(s) you are looking for e.g. Sports, Mens, Womens, etc. Then you will be presented with a list of options on the left side of the screen. You can shop by product, brand, collection, etc. After choosing the appropriate option, you will then be able to filter and refine your search by product type, brands, price and style. There will also be products to choose from. After you choose the option you want, you can narrow the search even more by choosing one of the options given before, until you find the product you are looking for.

When you find the product you are looking for , click on it and you will be brought to a new page. Here you will be able to see a picture of the product along with the options to zoom and see a video of the product being used. As well as this you can also see the price, description, more images and CAT#. You will also be able to pick the size, colour, quantity and payment method. After selecting these options you will automatically told if it is in stock or not. You can then add it to your basket.

Once you are in your shopping basket you will be able to see the details of your order, which you can ammend or remove if you want. You can then click the ‘go to checkout’ link.

At the checkout you must enter you email adress, post code and account number. If you are a member, you can click on the sign in link or if you are not a member you must sign up first. After this you can select your delivery options, payment and then confirm your order.

Q6. If Littlewoods was to choose a new channel for e-business, I would reccomend that they use television. Its is proven to be a very successful method.

According to the BTSA (British Television Shopping Association), the market size for tele shopping is roughly around £500 billion.  Huge profits could be made if Littlewoods were to spread into tele shopping. There are a few things to consider before deciding to start a shopping channel.  First of all Littlewoods need to consider who their rivals will be.  After doing some research, I found that the biggest companies were Bid TV, QVC and Price-drop TV. They would also need to consider the price of creating a channel and the proper means of creating one.  They would have to get a studio and presenters to display and talk about the products.  There is a bright future TV shopping and I think this would be the best path to follow.  On TV customers would get a good look at the products on sale and even get to see them being used, to see if they were good quality or not.  Also, the digital takeover is in full swing, so this means that everyone will soon have digital tv and access to shopping channels.

Week 2

Q1. The website that I have chosen is www.littlewoods.com. This company sells womans, men and kids clothes as well as sports, homeware, furniture, electricals, appliances, gifts & jewellery and toys.

As you can see from the above picture, the website looks good and is well laid out. This attractiveness, layout and website quality is what will entice customers to this site.  There is a search box which allows users to search for any product.  There is also a shopping basket to allow users to add items before purchasing.

 

Q2. Using websites like google, I searched for information regarding turnover, profit and so on. Here is what I found.

Littlewoods is one of the largest UK retailers at the moment, along with Argos, Primark and others.  In 2007 they made roughly £25 million and by the end of 2008 they have estimated to make arounnd £50 million in profits.  By 2011, they estimate to have 50% of their sales online, this has already been acheived and they are now estimating around 70% of their sales by 2011.

On January the 4th of this year, there was a 7% rise in sales and a 44% rise in online sales.  I would attribute this to the fact that there are more and more people joining the online community and online shopping in particular. 

Littlewoods roughly employes 25,000 people across the UK.  They have 7 contact centres, 7 warehouses and 3 financial service centres across the UK.

Littlewoods Direct make £2 billion annualy.

 

Q3.  Littlewoods was created in the 1930′s by John Moores.  It was created to aid housewives, allowing them to purchase essential household items.  Back then there were only catalogues to purchase from.

The 1960′s brought more products and seen an increase of electronic products.

In the 1990′s Littlewoods extra was created and highstreet shops were introduced as well.

The new millenium brought the dawn of the Littlewoods website, which will allow its customers to purchase products anywhere, any time via the world wide web.  In 2002 the Barclay brothers purchased Littlewoods for £750 million.  On the 4th of July 2005, the Littlewoods high street stores were purchased by Primark, in a bid worth £409 million.  Altogether, 120 stores were purchased.  Littlewoods would still maintain its catalogue and online business.  In 2007 Littlewoods Direct was created.  Their headquarters is in Liverpool.

The web is not the only channel that Littlewoods use.  Catalogues is the only other method of selling.  They are sent out to customers and they can either phone or mail their orders.  The products are then delivered to the customers address.  There are over 40,000 products available in the catalogue.

UK Internet Usage Statistics (2006 – 2008)

This is my blog, which is dedicated to Internet usage statistics within the United Kingdom. After doing some research on the usage of the Internet in the UK, I have gathered all my results and I am putting them into this blog. I searched many websites and found some statistics about Internet trends.

I used www.statistics.gov.uk to find out the following stats.

In 2006, there was 14.3 million households that had the Internet.

In 2007, this number increased to 15.23 million. This is nearly a 1 million increase.

In 2008, 16.46 million households (39.9 million people) had the Internet. This is an increase of over 1 million.

Looking at these results, you can see that the usage of the Internet across the United Kingdom is steadily increasing, with no signs of stopping soon.

One of the reasons that the number of Internet users is increasing is due to broadband, in 2008, 56% of users were using broadband and only 9% using dial up. The other 35% had no connection (which is steadily decreasing).

In 2008 the men were the most dominent gender that used the Internet, with 75% compared to women with 66%.

The most popular activity of recent users was sending or receiving emails at 87 per cent. This proved to be the most popular activity for both the older age groups (55-64 and 65 plus), and the youngest age group, aged 16-24. While the youngest age group was often the most likely to be involved in activities, it was the least likely to use the for services related to travel and accommodation (50 per cent), and seeking health related information.

Nearly half of recent users had used Internet banking (49%). This activity, along with online selling proved to be most popular among the 25-44 age group (at 57% and 24% respectively).

As you can see, Internet usage in the UK is on the increase and will continue to do so in the future.