Firstly, Marks & Spencer has made lots of changes by increased its spending to invest on supply chain and technology which has formed a part of a wider modernisation programme. This investment has caused them rise in capital expenditure to £792.4m in 2007 from £337.7m in 2006. Their increase spending in technology use on supply chain is to invest in new distribution centres in food and general merchandise. In addition, new financial system also been implemented by Marks & Spencer as well as a major project to replace tills. The role of the advancement of technology has helps in upgrading its in store ordering systems to use a single integrated order across all channels of stores, telephones and online. For example, the 'quick order system' which using by them has made their customers easier in finding any Marks & Spencer product by simply keying in one of their product reference codes. In doing so, these numbers can be find on product labels, or in magazines, catalogues and leaflets. Therefore, availability of its products information can be flexibility reach to its consumers with this system.
Furthermore, the purpose of overhaul technology into Marks & Spencer is to improve its operations and customers interaction. This can be shows by it's significantly changes in its IT set up as part of a transformation plan. Marks & Spencer has focused in the logistics area and made enhancement in this system in order to produced efficiency supply chain especially in streamlining of international distribution platforms. Thus, with the use of IT in the logistics area, the goods produced overseas can be transported directly to all its market without the need to first come through the UK. This will dramatically reduce export costs and speed up distribution.
Marks & Spencer Expands RFID Trial http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/791/1/1
Besides that, the widespread use of technology is enabling Marks & Spencer to implement RFID in its supply chain. The broaden use of radio frequency identification (RFID) pilots at Marks & Spencer in its supply chain has increased its confidence in the tracking technology. Marks & Spencer has fully used this technology to rollout of item-level tagging in its clothing departments. In this recently year, M&S is considered be the world pioneer in the use of radio frequency identification tags on individual in-store items. It is the largest retail user of such tagging in the world. The retailer is currently expanding its tagging of clothing items to 120 stores. Also, its food department has used RFID to fast-track delivery and receipt of stock and increase visibility in the supply chain. The adoption of RFID in the scanning products from the depot to Marks & Spencer shops has help to reduce wasted stock through improved accuracy. The supplier of Marks & Spencer can also able to know what type of products and how many trays that Marks & Spencer have dispatched since the tag has been read at various point in the supply chain which is from production process to dispatch. Hence, the use of RFID technology has provide the chance to Marks & Spencer to improve visibility in the supply chain and ensure there is no mistake in getting the right volume of goods into its stores.
Moreover, the advancements in technology has enable Marks & Spencer to incorporate e-commerce in its business. The reason for them to do online selling is because they faced an intense pressure from competitors as many new entrants are doing business that are diversify from each others. Marks & Spencer's introduction of online selling is to overcome the weaknesses of previous method such as the customers who were stay very far from them or even out of the country and is very useful to them as it has numerous stores worldwide. Thus, e-commerce can speed up the transaction with its customers and can improved quality of service to its customers.
Marks & Spencer decreases costs and increases quality with new IT managed services dealhttp://www.computacenter.com/press-releases/2007/marksandspencer1207.asp
To maximize their IT, Marks & Spencer has signed a £19 million IT managed services contract with the Computacenter Services. Damone Quigley who is the Head of Infrastructure and Application Services at Marks & Spencer have mentioned the objective to sign with this contract was to align IT more closely to its business and deliver tangible results at lower and predictable costs. The contract with Computacenter Services will help increase M&S' IT agility by ensuring its head office staff have better access to core technology, tools and processes. Additionally, the 'Plan A' objective with environmentally-friendly hardware configurations and a WEEE-compliant asset disposal process with zero percent of IT going to landfill can be achieved with the support from Computacenter. The five-year agreement with Computacenter Services provides Marks & Spencer with a service featuring end-to-end accountability for more than 4,000 head office users across six UK sites.
UK: RETAILERS LOOK TO NEW PAYMENT METHODS http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Business/Marks-and-Spencer-implements-an-ethical-sourcing-program-for-its-global-supply-chain.html
In the spring of 2000, Marks & Spencer has looked for new payment method which had caused them to accept credit cards as another payment method at its UK stores. In doing so, Marks & Spencer continues to look ahead to future developments in card technology. For example, Marks & Spencer has increased the availability of smart cards and the possibility of converting loyalty cards into payment cards. However, potential problems with regard to data protection need to be resolved before the latter can be developed. Its decision to adopt with this new payment method is because there is a strong trend among the adult population in the UK has a minimum of one credit card and 18% pay their supermarket bill in this way. As a result, accepting credit cards at its UK stores can encourage buyers to make payment at their convenient and this method is very useful especially the e-commerce grows in popularity. Besides that, the fear of Internet fraud is encouraging consumers to pay for goods by credit card rather than debit card because of the added protection afforded to them. The new breed of smart cards with a built-in chip will be capable of storing a large amount of data and could reduce fraud as could the use of PINs at point of sale, although this would necessitate added hardware investment.
Marks & Spencer signs up IBM for in-store systems refresh
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/it-business/services-sourcing/news/index.cfm?newsId=4548
In order to fully utilize the technologies in the firm's business, Marks & Spencer has received the support by signing a three-year systems integration contract with IBM to refresh its in-store technology and systems. the contract will allow IBM to project-manage the deployment of the key areas of M&S's in-store systems across its UK and Ireland store estate. This will include the implementation of the Beanstore point-of-sale application from software supplier -and IBM business partner - PCMS. In addition, the use of IBM technology in its store systems is an important part of its store modernization programme. It helps to improve the overall shopping experience for our customers, including better and faster service at the till point.
On the other hand, M&S has also made some technology change as its planned to replace its existing Epos system with PCMS's Beanstore application when its first revealed back in April in the year of 2007. It's estimated that the PCMS's Beanstore application would roll out to all its stores by 2010, with testing on the new application due to be completed by the end of this year.
