Big bazaar runs SAP one of the leading ERP solution provider.

ERP means enterprise resource planning- a software solution for various activities like inventory management, billing, supply chain management etc

COMPANY PROFILE

BIG BAZAAR Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited, is Indias leading retailer that operates multiple retail formats in both the value and lifestyle segment of the Indian consumer market. Headquartered in Mumbai (Bombay), the company operates over 7 millions square feet of retail space, has over 1000 stores across 53 cities in India and employs over 25,000 people.

The companys leading formats include Pantaloons, a chain of fashion outlets, Big Bazaar a uniquely Indian Hypermarket chain, Food Bazaar, a supermarket chain, blends the look, touch and feel of Indian bazaars with aspects of modern retail like choice, convenience and quality and Central, a chain of seamless destination malls. Some of its other formats include, Depot, Shoe Factory, Brand Factory, Blue Sky, Fashion Station, all, Top 10, bazaar and Star and Sitara. The company also operates an online portal, futurebazaar.com.

Big Bazaar is not just another hypermarket. It caters to every need of your family. Where Big Bazaar scores over other stores is its value for money proposition for the Indian customers. At Big Bazaar, you will definitely get the best products at the best prices - thats what they guarantee. With the ever increasing array of private labels, it has opened the doors into the world of fashion and general merchandise including Home furnishings, utensils, crockery, cutlery, sports goods and much more at prices that will surprise you. And this is just the beginning. Big Bazaar plans to add much more to complete your shopping experience. FUTURE GROUP: Future group is one of the countrys leading business groups present in retail, asset management, consumer finance, insurance, retail media, retail spaces and logistics. The groups flagship company, pantaloon Retail (India) Limited operates over 7 million square feet of retail space, has over 1000 stores of its leading retail formats include, Pantaloon, Big Bazaar, Central, Food Bazaar, Home Town, Ozone, Depot, future Money and online retail format, futurebazaar.com.

Future group includes, Future Capital Holding, Future Generally India Indus league clothing and Galaxy Entertainment that manages sports Bar, Brew Bar and Bowling Co. Future Capital Holding, the group s financial arm, focuses on asset management and consumer credit. It manages assets worth over $1 billion that are being invested in developing retail real estate and consumer-related brands and hotels. The groups joint venture partners include Italian insurance major, generally. French retailer ETAM group. US-based stationery products retailers, Staples Inc. and UK-based Lee Cooper and India-based Talwalkars, Blue Foods and Liberty Shoes. Future Groups vision is to, deliver Everything, Everywhere, Every time to every Indian consumer in the most profitable manner. The group considers as a core value and its corporate credo is- Rewrite rules, Retain values.

Big Bazaar: Big Bazaar is a retail outlet that offers best products at the best prices. With the ever increasing array of private labels, it has opened the doors into the world of fashion and general merchandise including home furnishings, utensils, crockery, cutlery, sports goods and much more

ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN RETAIL: With the retail sector in India undergoing a transformation due to the entry of large corporate houses, IT managers and CIOs are now looking forward to know how IT can help them achieve the business goals of their organizations. Standards based architecture and software support all kinds of mission-critical IT applications for enabling greater efficiency, significant cost savings, and new business value. The critical activities that can be handled by IT are finance and accounting, business intelligence, vendor development and management, supply chain management, merchandising and inventory management, facilities management, stores management, customer relationship management, branding, marketing, sales promotion and HR. Like any other vertical, retail also stands to benefit from elaborate IT set-ups. However, this is subject to the scale and size of the organization, as well as an objective assessment of its requirements. Key common challenges that can be tackled through IT implementations include accurate merchandising, improved planning, and increasing profitability, enhancing customer experience, strengthening store operations, improved workforce management, and improving the supply chain. This is in fact one of the key imperatives facing retailers in India, to have a robust and scalable supply chain that will facilitate rapid growth. Since a basic objective is to make data available to users and customers, proper IT implementation and superior IT infrastructure ensure that in spite of getting minimal details, the retailer captures the right information, which flows to everyone from the back office staff to the

head office managers. The entire information flow must be seam less. A retail business works on a network environment because the stores connect to one another as well as to supplier sites. This is because in the retail business quick response is the key to success. Proper IT implementation also ensures that investment in retail reduces substantially. Key System Applications in the Organization. Since there are different interests, specialties, and levels in an organization, there are different kinds of systems. No single system can provide all the information an organization needs. Figure given below

illustrates one way to depict the kinds of systems found in an organization. In the illustration, the organization is divided into strategic, management, knowledge, and operational levels and then is further divided into functional areas such as sales and marketing, manufacturing, finance, accounting, and human resources. Systems are built to serve these different organizational interests Types of information systems in Retail Outlet: Organizations can be divided into strategic, management, knowledge, and operationallevels and into five major functional areas:

    

sales and marketing manufacturing finance accounting human resources.

Information systems serve each of these levels and functions. Four main types of information systems serve different organizational levels are Knowledge-level systems support the organizations knowledge and data workers. The purpose of knowledge-level systems is to help the business firm integrate new knowledge into the business and to help the organization control the flow of paperwork .Knowledge-level systems, especially in the form of workstations and office systems are among the most widely used applications in business today. Computer systems, such as word processing, electronic mail systems, and scheduling systems, are designed to increase the productivity of data workers in the office is a part of office system. Management-level system serve the monitoring, controlling, decision-making, and administrative activities of middle managers. The principal question addressed by suchsystems is: Are things working well? Management level systems typically provide periodic reports rather than instant information on operations. Strategic-level systems help senior management tackle and address strategic issues and longterm trends, both in the firm and in the external environment. Their principal concern is matching changes in the external environment with existing organizational capability. What will employment levels be in five years? What are the long-term industry cost trends, and where does our firm fit in? What products should we be making in five years? Information systems also serve the major business functions, such as sales andmarketing, manufacturing, finance, accounting, and human resources. A typical organization has operational-, management-, knowledge-, and strategic-level systems for each functional area. For example, the sales function generally has a sales system on the operational level to record daily sales figures and to process orders. Aknowledge-level system designs promotional displays for the firms products. A management-level system tracks monthly sales figures by sales territory and reports on territories where sales exceed or fall below anticipated levels. A system to forecast sales trend over a five year period serves the strategic level.

Requirement Analysis

Operational Requirements Automatically checks of purchase order forms against goods received notes and indicate action if there is an excess or short or delay or early delivery.  Updated information on inventory information  Automatic placement of orders to the suppliers when stock goes below assigned levels.  Initiate payment advice when supplies are taken into the stocks by the warehouse  Current status of a customer account should be available in a customer account file Tactical information requirements Based on regularity and quality of supply, develop a supplier performance index  Depending upon the value of the stock, obtain information to exercise stricter control on high value products  Keep track of big payments and receipts  Based on frequency of purchases and value of purchases, developing customer ratings  Develop a customer database for future use

Software requirement specifications

Operating System Retail Man 2007 is written for the Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft XP Professional platform, by focusing on such platform, we get the lowest possibletotal cost of ownership combined with the reliability that we expect for our network. Retail man 2007: Retail Man POS contains shop front POS and back office modules including, fast and easy POS and invoicing screens, purchase orders, stock control, diary, double entry accounting, telephone directory, built-in emailing, touch screen,barcode scanner, Pole display, cash drawer and POS printers support. Generatepurc hase orders from back office, check on your staff sales as they are done, keep a list of your repeat clients, email invoices, quotes or purchase orders directly, print stock barcodes, check profit & loss and balance sheet on daily bases. View, print or save reports as HTML, XLS or PDF files. Also let the stock control tell you when you have hit the minimum level of your stock as you sell it, and track stock serial numbers as you buy it and sell it. Use built in emailing to generate huge profits by bulk emailing your clients with advertisements and special offers with no additional costs

The typical use of different version is listed below.

Clients - Windows XP Professional Middle Tier - Windows 2000 server

Database - Windows XP

Windows 2000 benefits are  Greater Reliability  Greater Scalability  Unparalleled Multi Language support Windows XP Professional benefits are  Easier to Manage  Higher Levels of Security  Terminal Server Language:Languages used for designing the website are HTML (Hyper Text MarkupLanguage), JAVA, Microsoft VB (Visual Basic)

Hardware Requirements
The hardware of information system for big bazaar will be built on three tier architecture, comprising pc based clients, clustered server and the database server. THREE TIER APPROACH Client: The client represents the face of IS, through which data relating to various retail operations could be keyed in and data stored in database can be extracted. Application Server:

The middle tier will comprise of clustered servers also called transaction servers, as they facilitate transactions taking place in the big bazaar. The clustering of servers will be done through the MS Windows 2000 clustering service. This is essential for the system to handle high workloads, especially during peak hours. The middle tier will serve as an interface between the clients and the database.

Database: The database server will receive and process queries received from the middle tier transaction servers. All the data will be stored in this database server.

Along with the three tier system various other equipments are required. Bar code scanners enable you to collect detailed data regarding products that your customers purchaseinformation that is useful for inventory management, merchandising andmarketing decisions. Successful retailers use this information in data warehou sing applications to fine-tune store assortments and help assure that consumers find the products that they want on the shelves, when they shop. A quality scanner that reads bar codes on the first try will speed checkout and lead to cashiers who are more comfortable and less frustrated. A pleasant cashier will transfer this positive energy to customers. Electronic payment peripherals enable you to readily and efficiently handle credit and debit card transactions. Among these are terminals that not only process electronicpayment but also capture signatures electronically. A signature capture terminalincorpo

rates a credit/debit card reader, provides means to enter a PIN number, and includes a display for other customer input (e.g. for market surveys) and graphics-based advertising.      Printers Modems PCs Gateway Router

Increases operating efficiency across stores using wide-area networks (WANs) and virtual private networks (VPNs) Uses wireless technologies at the point of sale for faster checkout and real-time product information, in the store to improve operations, and throughout the supply chain to reduce costs

Logical Design

In the logical diagram various processes are shown with the help of entities and their attributes. All the entities are somewhat linked with each other. Following is the brief introduction about each entity and its attribute: 1. HO Site: it is central point in the database unit, which controls all the departments. It controls various operations like maintaining inventory, organizing suppliers, and giving salaries to employees and billing to the customers. 2. HO Employee: it defines the employees who will operate the HO site. They can make changes in the database of the product, and can even define new levels of cut off points for both inventory and shelf. 3. Employee: it defines all the employees working in various departments. This entity will be accountable for their salaries, their performance, their timings and their attendance. All

the incentives will be decided after seeing the performance graph of the employee, which will be generated through the DBMS. 4. Product: this entity will define all the information about the product. It will tell the cost of the product, its unique ID code, its supplier, its self life. 5. Supplier: as there are too many suppliers in the market who will be suppling their products to big bazaar. This entity will help to maintain their database. It will tell about the supplier name, location, product supplied by him, and about billing of the supply. 6. Purchase rec.: this will tell about the purchase record of a particular product by the customer. It will tell the name of customer who purchased the product, date of purchasing, quantity purchased etc. 7. Customer: the end point of the business is customer. To create the database of the valuable customers, you should know name, address, and product & in what quantity they purchase 8. Inventory: It is the store where all the products are placed before bringing them to the shelf. The supplies directly come to the inventory. Inventory control It means keeping stock of all the inventory at the desired level. In retailing, all the focus is on the management of products at the outlet, hence the role of inventory control can hardly be exaggerated. Benefits of inventory control 1. Meet anticipated demand 2. Smoothen procurement process 3. Decouple components of procurement-distribution system 4. Protection against stock outs and hence informing suppliers before hand 5. Making the maximum out of a order cycle 6. Hedging against anticipated price changes 7. Smoothen overall operation

Security in Retail.

Though security solutions such as IP surveillance and automation remain a pipedream, most retailers take other measures to ensure a secure network Backups of all application data, operating system, databases and files were taken on a daily basis onto tape drives and even on disk. All the backup media was stored offsite on a daily basis. Weekly and monthly backup tapes are stored at remote locations. If the OS or application software conks off, data can be restored by reinstalling the concerned software and retrieving the latest data backup