The Downtown Music Store, Essay Example

Introduction

This paper is about the downtown music store, Club IT that is run by Rubin Keys and Lisa Tejada. This paper looks at the music store from the point of view of an employee who is joining the company as well as evaluating the company from a business and functional perspective. Club IT is a pioneer in the way in which music stores can reinvent themselves with savvy use of IT and marketing aimed at the target audience. The focus throughout this paper would be on examining the workings of Club IT in a critical manner as viewed from the perspective of a new employee who has been tasked with evaluating the IT usage and effectiveness in the company. I have been entrusted with the job of IT manager and hence I need to find out the functions and processes associated with the use of IT in the music store.

Mission and Clientele of Club IT

The mission of Club IT is to serve the customers with a blend of music and appealing food and beverages that seek to let the customers unwind. Club IT prides itself on the fact that they have a unique combination of musicians and chefs who delight the customers with their renditions and preparations. The aim of the management of Club IT is to encourage customers to come and visit the store not only to enjoy the food and beverages but also to entertain themselves with the assorted musicians who play there. The clientele of Club IT consists mostly of young upwardly mobile professionals seeking to unwind after a hard day’s work. Hence, Club IT is organized around the principle of maximizing the fun while minimizing the stress. The accent at Club IT is on helping the customers to distress thereby generating revenue in the process.

Functional Areas

The functional areas of Club IT include the preparation of food and serving of the same along with the beverages, the music and dance sequences that entertain the customers etc. The functional aspects of Club IT also include liaising with the vendors who supply the food items and beverages, keeping track of the inventory and determining the prices of food and beverages served to the customers along with deciding on which musician would play on a particular day along with the genre of music that is supposed to be played. Club IT specializes in selling merchandize that is of the signature variety i.e. branded merchandize that customers can take along with them. The functional areas of Club IT also include catering to the different kinds of customers by providing preferred tables for returning customers and loyalty programs aimed at this segment of customers.

Use of IT

Club IT uses software and Information Technology for internal and external purposes. If we take the use of IT for internal purposes, a perusal of their staff portal reveals many interesting insights. For instance, IT is used extensively to document the activities of the personnel and to record their attendance, wages and leave accrued. This gives the employees a peek into how they are doing and the parameters on which they can base their work and associated rewards that have been credited to their account. There is information on the employee of the month as well as information on new recruits that provide details about these employees for dissemination among the rest of the employees. The portal uses ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning to track the inventory and uses advanced processes that determine the re-order levels as well as electronically contact the vendors to place orders for stock.

The use of IT is not restricted to particular levels of employees and all the employees use the employee portal for internal purposes as well as the enterprise wide software for external purposes that includes serving the customers and recording the various transactions using sophisticated accounting and financial software. The analysis of the software used gives an idea about how Ordering, Sales and Budgeting is carried out according to the various business and enterprise needs and the way in which these functions are integrated with the rest of the back office functions seamlessly. It can be said that Club IT is quite savvy in the use of Information Technology to meet its organizational goals and this manifests itself in the integrated and interlinked manner in which IT is used in the music store.

Conclusion

This paper has given a snapshot of the various aspects of Club IT and has evaluated the use of IT in the store. From the point of view of an employee joining the IT function; it is clear that Club IT offers much scope for growth for the employee as well as the way in which IT can be used to further the organization goals. In conclusion, the ambience of efficiency and a culture of customer first ensure the success of Club IT.

References

Kelly Rainer, E. T. (2008). Club IT : Case Study. Retrieved from: http://bcs.wiley.com/he-bcs/Books?action=resource&bcsId=4176&itemId=0470169001&resourceId=12379

Kelly Rainer, E. T. (2008). Introduction to Information Systems: Supporting and Transforming Business, 2nd Edition. New York: Wiley.