Effectiveness of Technology

Effectiveness of Technology

In my lifetime technology has come a long way from black and white tube TVs to color HD-LED TVs and manual cash registers that did not include sales taxes to high-tech touchpad registers. In this paper I will explain how technology has changed the role of retail managers and how technology has improved retail management as well as the downside of technology to retail managers.

Technology Changed the Role of Retail Managers

Technology has changed the role of retail managers who use to spend hours at a time on an adding machine trying to calculate the sales for the end of the day as well as physically do a daily inventory check. Manager predecessors use to spend all their time in the office instead of out on the floor where they could have gotten firsthand insight on customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and operational flows or clogs. Manager predecessors use to thumb through employee files to find out who might be available to cover a shift, sometimes this was very time consuming.

Technology Improved Retail Management

Technology has enabled retail managers to have critical real-time information at their fingertips at any given moment. New information systems provide data such as sales revenues and items sold for each department not just the whole store in general. From a firsthand experience I know the value of breaking down sales information into departments. When I worked for Macy's every day we started with a pep rally to inform the sales associates of the sales revenues from the previous day and whether we achieved our sales goal or not, this procedure was rather stagnant. Most sales associates could care less and it showed in their performance and customer relations, some felt overwhelmed and useless to try to meet the store's sales goal for that day. When Macy's finally upgraded their software technology which was just a few years ago in 2008 the revenues began to sore at my store location. The new technology provided detailed sales information for the store as a whole as well as broke down the sales reports in each department to give each department manager a clear and concise sales report. Armed with this new information system, the store manager was able to provide to each department manager specific sales goals each day. The department managers take their daily sales goals and delegates' personal goals for each employee in their department. When the sales associates started having their own personal sales goals morale and competitiveness changed our store as we knew it. When your manager can tell exactly what you have done in sales on any particular day, hour or minute it tends to motivate you much more than if your manager does not know who works very hard to help the department, because it is easy to look busy when you see your manager in the area.