Information Systems for a Nostalgic Record Store

¶ … Information Systems for a Nostalgic Record Store

Benefits and Drawbacks of Information Systems

Comparison of Five Systems' Cost and Benefits

Launching a new record store that concentrates on nostalgic music can potentially be lucrative as many music fans like to listen to their favorite musicians and artists who may not be played on popular radio today. For a small brick -- and mortar music store specializing in nostalgic music, it is recommended that a series of five systems be considered for managing the business. These five systems include the following:

Accounting System

CRM system

E-Commerce Website and supporting system

Point-Of-Sales System

Pricing and Merchandise Management System

The benefits and drawback of each of these systems id briefly described in this paper.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Information Systems

Each of the systems that the record store needs in order to operate profitably are defined in this section along with their benefits and drawbacks. Starting with the accounting system, it is a critical system for keeping track of expenses and revenues, and capturing how profitable the store is. The benefits of choosing an online system from NetSuite are ease of use, quicker access to the cost and revenue information anytime over the Internet, and low cost. The drawbacks are that NetSuite is hosted on a Cloud-based platform and may at times go down and not work (Wichmann, 1983). The second is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and the value of this system is in tracking customers who are the most profitable to sell to. The advantages of this system are tracking their purchases, knowing their likes and dislikes in terms of music, and which promotional programs work the best. The disadvantages are that it takes time to enter information into customer records, costs for usage of the system and can be difficult to keep updated (Sarapovas, Cvilikas, 2008). The third system is an e-commerce website and catalog system for showing the most popular records online fro sale. The advantages of this system are that it gets exposure and starts building a brand for the store online, is relative inexpensive as a means to get advertising, and can generate sales. The disadvantages are the need to continually keep it current with new products and also keep the pricing current (Sarapovas, Cvilikas, 2008). The fourth system is used for managing Point-of-Sales transactions. The benefits of this system include tracking sales more effectively than if done by hand, capturing pricing discounts and also being able to manage pricing in real-time without having to change tags. The disadvantage of this system is the lack of flexibility on managing large-scale discounts across many different items at once. This would still need to be done by hand. The picture at the left shows an example of a POS terminal.

Casio QT-6000 Point-of-Sales Terminal

Source: http://world.casio.com/system/sa/products/std/qt_6000.html

The final system that needs to be considered for the store is a pricing and merchandise management system. The benefits of this system are many, incouding being able to quickly determine which prices would be best suited for each specific category of record, which artists hold their prices the best over time, and what is the best possible price to charge for a given record. The disadvantages are that the system often requires intensive work to keep updated, lacks an interface that allows for rapid pricing updates across different musical genres at once, and is expensive to maintain.

Conclusion

All of the systems mentioned in this analysis and proposal are necessary for the record store to be profitable and operate successfully. Despite the costs of each all of them return a strong Return on Investment (ROI) as shown in Table 1, Comparison of Five Systems' Costs and Benefits. There is a wide variation in the quality levels of each of these systems as well, and going forward with the development of this proposal will take greater emphasis on how to use Cloud-based applications to save on computer system costs while increasing the speed of deployment.