Module Title: |
Global Challenges |
Module Code: |
QHO-536 |
Module Leader: |
Khurram Riaz Khurram.Riaz@qa.com |
Level: |
5 |
Assessment Title: |
Individual Essay |
Assessment Number: |
1 |
Assessment Type: |
Essay |
Restrictions on Time/Word Count: |
2500 |
Individual/Group: |
Individual |
Assessment Weighting: |
100% |
Issue Date: |
w/b 07th Feb 2022 |
Hand In Date: |
20th May 2022 4pm |
Planned Feedback Date: |
Within 20 working days |
Mode of Submission: |
Online |
Number of copies to be submitted: |
1 copy online via SOL |
|
|
Will be marked anonymously |
Essay Title: Evaluation of the technological breakthrough megatrend and how this impacts the business landscape
Introduction
The essay aims on highlighting and evaluating the megatrend of technological breakthroughs and their influence on the business of Asda. With the rise of e-commerce, the global nations had been highly influenced and merchants are looking forward to improving or implementing online retailing tactics for gaining a better market share. The megatrend of eCommerce has allowed creators to find a new and sustainable way of doing business, which goes well with the globalisation and digitisation trends. As there are no limitations in doing or expanding this megatrend, it has offered the businesses to operate at low financial costs. Through this essay, the megatrend will be discussed and studied within the context of Asda. It is an international supermarket chain that has its headquarters in Leeds and was founded by Peter and Fred Asquith (Asda 2022).
Discussion
Technology has become an important factor for business firms to enhance their internal organisational activities and gain a stronger marketplace in the current competitive world. With the emergence of digitisation, technology has been affecting organisations and is continuing to reform and shape the business landscape. In Industry revolution 4.0, there has been a significant business transformation, where automation within the manufacturing and retailing industries is booming (Nwaiwu 2018). Additionally, firms are also being administered through data-driven digitisation technologies that are offering them to make a digital value chain. With the help of this type of value chain, the communication process had particularly shifted towards business partners and the environment. Hence, it can be understood that technology had significantly changed the concept of conventional business.
With the advent of the digitisation process, business firms are seemingly focusing on the aspects of customers and citizenship. Some of the significant digital innovation dynamics are based on typical emergent technological architecture like computing at both small and large scales (Liu et al. 2018). Industrial revolution 4.0 within the economic condition had particularly transformed the economic and environmental systems by changing consumer expectations through product development. Moreover, it is also bringing forth new forms of management within the business system and parallelly demanding the implementation of informatisation and digitisation within the business processes.
One such essential foundation is Information Technology (IT), which had been playing a key role in providing digital solutions to various activities that take place within business entities (Sotnyk et al. 2020). Additionally, the effects of digital technologies have also been evident across various dimensions of society through the process of automatisation. However, there have been certain issues that are also associated with the implication of digital technological features in businesses. This includes the aligning of the existing firm's information systems with digital technologies (Sotnyk et al. 2020). Thus, business firms are also trying to adopt new methods for cost minimisation and handling the issues of internal administration within the industrial-technological phase. Nowadays, business firms are aiming towards the achievement of a potential competitive advantage by filling the gap with technology and making them sustainable over time.
The modern business landscape is implementing cyber-physical systems or becoming smart factories through the usage of the Internet of Things (IoT) (Rossato and Castellani 2020). This, in turn, provided the firms with various advantages, and the ability to turn existing products or services into their digital variants. A fast-growing business can thus, be better handled through ‘hybrid supply chains’ and using Big Data, IoT, and Artificial Intelligence (Bienhaus and Haddud 2018). Hence, with the advent of technology, the different operational areas within the business landscape had been highly influenced in the aspect of data exchange and global interconnectivity. Not only this but such interconnectedness can be achieved in real-time as well, which further drives the advantage of firms to imply innovativeness and derive new market entries.
Asda is one such organisation that had effectively used the power of technology to drive through a competitive marketplace and gain a strong market position. Asda, being the third-largest retailer within the UK had commissioned Nucleus to further develop their content infrastructure within their eCommerce website and develop the user interface as well. The eCommerce websites of Asda had been further developed by using the platform’s strengths and implying it within the application server. Recently, the firm had been able to strengthen its e-commerce platform through a rapid sales increase of 2.7% on its quarterly revenue income (Reuters, 2020). It reflected their strong growth within the groceries section that has particularly happened online. Hence, this significantly reflected their strong growth within their eCommerce business channels.
The news report from Reuters (2020) stated that their operating income rose to and improved their gross profit rate. Asda's online sales further got enhanced due to the sudden change in the customer's habits during the current pandemic situation. The megatrend of technological breakthroughs is further seen in Asda's business landscape with the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their new digital platform. The business organisation is known to have turned to AI to accelerate its channel transformational strategy (Skeldon 2021). They wanted to better manage their end-to-end operations by enhancing their online platform. With AI-powered forecasting, Asda had been able to ensure end-to-end visibility in their supply chains along with omnichannel fulfilment and workforce administration capabilities. As mentioned by Bienhaus and Haddud (2018), supply chain activity plays a big role within the business landscape and hence, there is a need for digitising the procurement functions as well.
The global technological transformation is majorly being driven by Big Data, which helps out business firms to gain both competitiveness and business profitability. Hence, the technology has been implied within procurement processes like cloud, enterprise resource planning, and mobile solutions. This enabled firms to improve their sourcing strategies along with strengthening buyer-supplier relationships. Digitisation had been seriously embedded within products and services and seemed to be supporting the various corporate business activities. Technological advancement is providing the opportunity to firms to develop their value creation path and utilise more profound opportunities for entirely transforming the business. Moreover, retail firms had also been implementing digitisation capabilities to enhance their customer integration process through effective service delivery management (Truant, Broccardo and Dana 2021). Thus, technology had certainly helped in implying a positive effect on the growth of revenue for business firms along with the financial performance of companies.
Abilities within big data analysis had also become crucial for gaining strong agility within the financial performance of firms, particularly in foreign sales and exports. With the help of digitisation, companies can gain agility for their short, medium, and long-term goals. In the context of Asda, it can be seen that its online sales had certainly surged in the past few years. In 2021, their eCommerce sales revenue had increased to 1.9%, and within the pandemic in 2020, a sales increase was expected in the grocery section within their online retailing shop (Statista 2022). It has been reported, that with the online retailing option through the implementation of digital technology, Asda’s revenue for their year-on-year sales had jumped up to 3.8% within three months (Saker-Clark 2020). With the help of technology, the firm had been able to further build and accelerate its online inventory capacity to meet the levels of anticipated grocery during the tough pandemic times. Moreover, the firm had also decided on keeping its prices low as there had been a significant fall in the spending aspect of the UK families (Saker-Clark 2020).
The technological hunt had not stopped here as the world is also moving towards other technologies like ‘Mobile Pay Go’, which makes a better safe in-store shopping. With the help of this technology, Asda can make the shopping process faster with reduced queues during the checkout process. Hence, with the implementation of Scan and Go technology, retailers are encouraging their customers to scan and bag products as they shop in the stores. Technology had typically transformed the retail infrastructure and enhanced the experience of the shoppers within the stores. Moreover, technology had also offered a future-proof business plan. Within the technological deal, Asda also planned on using machine learning (ML) that will help the firm to demand projection through calculated business impact and risk (Skeldon 2021). It will also enable the organisation to manage its waste production processes. Along with this, better inventory management can also be done through this process along with a better understanding of customer behaviours and demand drivers. Thus, building a strong relationship with the stakeholders along with customers becomes more flexible through the implementation of technology within the business processes. Through technology, Asda is also planning for establishing large-scale business transformation with the help of this megatrend.
AI had already been a subfield within the digital technological division, which had witnessed rapid growth and a sudden surge in the activity since its launch. Among the digital megatrends, the other typical subfields include smarter machines, invisible technology, burning platforms, data-driven platforms, digital dilemmas, and reinvention of work (Hajkowicz and Dawson 2018). Within the context of smarter machine formation, comes the involvement of artificial intelligence. It has quite efficiently become the natural language through the processing of typical algorithms that can easily convert speech to text. Asda was looking for end-to-end retailing solutions that can help them to cover all the different business activities. These solutions included supply chain, commercial, retail operations, and logistics. With the help of AI technology, the company had been able to form an omnichannel retailing function and was able to easily manage workforce capabilities (Yahoo Finance 2021). Along with this, Asda had also planned on making good use of the digital megatrend by implementing various other SaaS-based technologies. This included Blue Yonder’s Luminate Commerce, Luminate Planning, Luminate Logistics, and Luminate Control Tower, each of which runs on the Luminate Platform (Yahoo Finance 2021).
Digitisation within the logistics section had also been a part of the megatrend that effectively transformed the business processes through the influence of intelligent and modern technologies. With the changing dynamics of the business environment, enterprises are continuously evolving along with the significant changes within the organisational structures. Thus, within the digital logistics trend within corporations, the global competition had grown to become tough. The core aspect of this trend includes the improvisation of business performances through the implication of service and technology paradigms (Gali?ska 2019). One of the key technological breakthroughs within the logistics section is the utilisation of blockchain technology. Supply chain management is a complex process that involves the creation as well as distribution of goods. To overcome the challenge of reduced transparency and increased complexity within the logistics, blockchain technology had been utilised. Moreover, the utilisation of such technology also ensures the formation of a peer-to-peer linked database function that consists of a network of equal nodes. In the context of blockchain, Asda had also planned on implementing it to control and manage their substances and enhance the traceability of their products (Tijan et al. 2019; Berneis, Bartsch and Winkler 2021; MBS, 2022).
Blockchain using cryptocurrencies had taken a massive part of today's lives and is believed to be the future of the technological megatrend. The price of coins like Bitcoin and Dogecoin are consistently increasing with the rise of decentralised currency factors. As per the news report by Harper (2021), as soon as Amazon starts to accept cryptocurrencies, supermarket chains like Asda will also go to join the line. With the megatrend of digital transformation by the development of application-based services, the retail sector is already experiencing and is also expected to face more disruption. Market innovators are required to adopt digital technologies for better engagement with the customers. In the perception of Liao and Wang (2018), blockchain technology involves databases, encryption, consensuses, virtualisation, and distributed system technologies. The smart code contract within Blockchain verifies the negotiation process and creates a form of decentralised automation. Moreover, with the emergence of AI, there has come the age of sustainable development within the business infrastructure. Through AI, business firms in the future can create global economic inequity, which could mitigate the existential crisis for humanity (Goralski and Tan 2020). Thus, a sustained cycle of industrial innovation can be brought through the implication of digital technologies like AI.
In the future, the megatrend of digitisation through AI is also expected to influence the marketing strategies as well as the customer behaviours. Future business models will be reformed through such processes by implementing tele-conversations in real-time using advanced voice analysis capabilities. Relating to the organisational context of Asda, it had also been presented that Asda had decided on using RISE with SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure for strengthening their digital core (Davenport et al. 2020; Barrett 2021). Hence, as a future manager and leader, it can be understood that the implementation of technological breakthroughs within the business system can enhance the chances of better understanding customer behaviours. With the sudden pandemic boom, there has been a significant surge in the implementation of technologies within businesses along with the rise of eCommerce. This decision of Asda to expand their strategic partnership by focusing on the acceleration of the digital transformation program can gain them a reliable customer case (Barrett 2021). Moreover, relating to the future business perspective, Asda can undergo simplification of its business model through process and inventory visibility.
With the utilisation of SAP Ariba solutions, Asda can also streamline their procurement activities throughout their plants and also utilise data-driven intelligence for pricing optimisation and supply chain visibility. With both SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Business Technology Platform, the eCommerce base can be further digitised by creating an exponential rise in the eCommerce growth (SAP 2021). Through the help of SAP Ariba solutions, the sourcing, buying, and spending analysis have benefitted along with the enhancement of the supplier lifecycle. Data-driven intelligence is expected to help the firm in making strategic decisions regarding the improvement of supplier relationships and spending compliance. It also helped the firm to reduce its risks by waste minimisation and achieve long-term resiliency within the supply chain disruption (SAP 2021).
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin had been able to change the conventional payment option by not relying on the central mode and becoming a public structure (Berneis, Bartsch and Winkler 2021). Relating to the role of a future business leader, it can be commented that technological breakthrough is expected to highly enhance the pace of change. It will be done by automating the communication process as well as gaining real-time data. Megatrends are considered to have a stronger impact on the long-term changes within the business activities. In accordance to actively stand up to the global competition, the utilisation of technological breakthroughs is essential.
Conclusion
Based on the overall analysis of the study, it can be concluded that technological breakthroughs had enabled business firms to gain a strong standpoint against the global competitive forces. The essay provided detailed insights as to how technology and digitisation had shaped the business structure by automating the internal processes. Along with this, the advent of Industrial Revolution 4.0 had also been an essential part of bringing forth the transformation. Technology utilisation had been discussed regarding the aspects of Big Data, IT, IoT, and AI. Asda's business seemed to have boomed with the utilisation of technology and using eCommerce platforms. They had also experienced a sales increase of 2.7% along with enhanced end-to-end visibility in supply chains. The firm also utilised AI technologies like Mobile Pay-Go and machine learning. For future purposes, the firm had also planned on implementing blockchain technology in their business for better logistics handling.
Reference List
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