Analysis

Introduction 

Macy’s Inc. is a big operation company with several departments and thousands of employees. The company also needs to face with millions of customers every day. Macy's, as an omnichannel company, also emphasizes update speed and customers liking. However, Macy’s handles all the problems above well due to technology. Now, majority of Macy’s data processing operation is maintained by Macy’s Systems and Technology (MST). MST uses a mix of Internet, wireless, client/server, midrange and mainframe technologies to meet Macy’s business needs. MST management works closely with department store divisions, the corporate office and merchandise vendors to identify new opportunities and ensure that Macy’s systems can adapt to changing business conditions. MST plans to spend $89 billion cumulatively on software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with next five years.

Collaboration

Communication and employee engagement in Macy’s is emphasized by chief managers. Macy’s is consisted of administrative office, private brand office, merchandising office, merchandising planning office, technology office, stores office, marketing office and finance office. Employees from different office communicate and collaborate to be informed, make decisions, solve problems or manage projects.

1. Synchronous

 Macy’s marketing department now has regular meeting once a month. Employees from marketing department is gathered in the same office room and use PowerPoint to share their sales volume, sales experience with each other. There are other ways for employees from different departments to collaborate in multiple places, such as conference calls, multiparty text chat, screen sharing, videoconferencing.

2. Unlocking Internal Intelligence

Macy’s has already experimenting with collaboration and is happy with the result. Employee engagement increases and Macy’s realizes that the brand must resonate internally and externally to attract and retain outstanding employees.

Information Silo

An information silo is the condition that exists when data are isolated in separated information systems. For Macy’s, communication between customers and sales department, sales department and other departments and sales groups from different stores are really important. With previous relationship, Macy’s faces with some information silo from communication among them. For example, Macy’s now fills orders from stores, but store sales records and inventories at stores do not match with each other. You walk into a Macy’s and find a shirt you like. However, the store sold out the size you want. Then, the sales person tells you that he can find the suitable size at the store in Seattle, and will ship to you in 2 days. A problem remains. The sale record in accounting department is recorded for sales person in Seattle who is not the real sale person for this deal. There are several communication obstructions between different departments in Macy’s, and the most efficient way to reduce information soil is Information of immediacy.

Information System Compenents

The five information system components are hardware, software, data, procedures, and people. These components play a huge role in the success of Steris within its industry.

Hardware

Hardware plays a critical role in Macy’s information systems. For Macy’s, an employee, branch, or department cannot select the hardware they want to use, instead, the company has a decided hardware models that are used based on application size. It has some advantages. Firstly, If Macy’s faces with a server crash problem, the company does not need to learn to fix more than one kinds of servers. Secondly, the employees just need to familiar with one kind of computer or server’s operation.

Currently, Macy’s begin to use RFID to manage its inventories. RFID means Radio-frequency identification. It is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identitying and tracking tags attached to objects. Macy’s uses RFID to help the company to better control products information and monitors the products as well. RFID system consists of tags, readers and application software system. Both tags and readers use RFID chips to identify the signal from each other. The application software system is installed on handset POS machines, computers, ipad according to the requirement for different department.

 

Software

Software is the functional component for hardware that instructs and controls the resources.

 

Macy’s is active at mobile market with the development of mobile phone. Not only Macy’s but also its competitors such as H&M, Nordstrom have similar online shopping application. Macy’s now develops another three mobile applications which named Macy’s Wish Writer, Macy’s Image Search, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Macy’s is innovative enough to create Macy’s Image Search Application, so that it can attract more customers through convenient products searching method. IOS, Android and Blackberry are the mobile operating system platforms for these applications.

 

For RFID system, Macy’s have professional RFID software—Portal track to be compatible with its hardware and products’ tags and labels. Macy’s uses it to keep track of company’s inventories, get the information about the inventories timely. Portal Track can be deployed to platforms to desktop, mobile and web-based systems. Portal Track also integrates with a variety of Macy’s systems such as ERP, MS SOL Server, Oracle and supports browsers Safari 6+, IE 6+, Firefox 6x+.

 

Data

Data is a complication of raw recorded facts, figures, tables and or statistics. Macy’s database stores all kinds of information needy by the whole business process such as customer basic information, products liking, and inventories tracking.

 

Macy’s pays attention to high-performance analysis tool from SAS, Cary, N.C. the retailer linked the SAS Enterprise Miner to a Hadoop cluster, an open-source, data- management platform initiated by Yahoo and Google. This private cloud platform sits behind Macy’s firewalls and processes large data sets in a distributed computing environment.

As for the inventories, RFID system helps company to figure out the accurate numbers of inventories timely. RFID system provides databases that have detail inventories information which contains inventories numbers, colors, sizes and its locations and discounts.

SAS-Enterprise-Miner-2

 

Procedure

For Macy’s, it begins to attempt RFID system in 2011. Every employee has its Macy’s account and they operate computers or POS machines to clock in RFID system. If one product is selected by the customers, the employee just uses RFID reader to scan the tag on the product, then the Portal track, Macy’s RFID software system, will select product data from company’s inventory database and appear it on the computers in seconds. It is easier for employees to know the accurate inventory locations, so that employees can adjust inventories timely.

Meanwhile, if employees change the information about the products, RFID System will capture data and send it over the Internet to centralized database. Then with cloud computing, the data can be shared globally. The back-end process such as accounting department, utilize from global visibility of inventory and item level transaction traceability through an easy to use web-based user interface. To illustrate, employees from accounting department can get the sales volume for each salesmen immediately after customers clock out.

At the same time, warehouses also use RFID to track inventories without human intervention. For warehouses with high volume and large amounts of inventory on hand, RFID tags eliminate the need for direct line of sight or labor-intensive tag reading because they do not have to be scanned.

People

People are part of every information system that they us, and hardware, software, data and procedure are used for serve people. Meanwhile, people are human capital for company, and Macy’s does a lot to retain the human capital. Macy’s provides twice employee skills trainings per year for employees. The training is also a pertinence for employees from diversified departments. For example, Macy's provides on-line cloud computing classes for employees from IT deparment. employees can use their own ID and password to log in the system and select 3 or 4 classes from 7 related classes. Macy’s also creates a friendly working environment and provides large staff welfare. As for customers, Macy’s provides most convenient service for them through webpages, APPs and other platforms. It is proud to say that Macy’s now operates 789 department store locations in the U.S.     

 

Enterprise Resource Planning

ERP is Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a database and a set of inherent processes for consolidating business operations into computing platform. ERP system is based on ERP technology, and it includes the functions of CRM systems, such as sales, relationship management, and customer support applications, but ERP system also includes accounting, manufacturing, inventory, and HR applications.

 Macy's use SAP predictive analysis to achieve its ERP system. In fact, Macy’s Inc. chose SAP, systems applications and products, because it provides clients with the opportunity to interact with a simple database for a better range of the many applications.  Macy’s and many other companies use this ERP vendors to be able to manage ‘’financials, their asset, and costs, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents.’’

Social Media

Macy’s puts lots of manpower and money in social media and it now has a relatively mature social media IS. Macy’s has managed to attract more than 12 million Facebook fans, and Macy’s updates product information to followers. Macy’s also mirrors the content posted on Facebook to Twitter. Sometime, Macy’s use Twitter to hold a raffle. Macy’s Pinterest is very active. Its boards contain almost 1000 images, and just look like dull ecommerce pages. Users from Pinterest have to create a board with personal information to access to Macy’s board. So it is useful for company to collect customer data.

Macy’s uses official website, FB and Twitter to create platforms for customers to communicate. This process creates good shopping experience for customers. Customers are easily to know the quality of the products and fitness of the products. However, there is a drawback that once false comments are spread among customers, states of affairs will lose control. The goodwill of Macy’s will be damaged.