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Zara Response C CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

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CASE STUDY ANALYSIS ZARA: IT FOR FAST FASHION Introduction The success of Zara in apparel manufacturing and retail business started from their belief that customers taste in fashion is hard to pre... dict. Zara’s strategic intent to respond quickly and accurately to the fastchanging market demand has become the basis in building their core competency of highly responsive supply chain. This supply chain enables Zara to quickly capture the unpredictable market demand, shorten the turnaround production time and deliver the new design in only 3 weeks from conception to store. It can be seen that the highly responsive supply chain is fundamental in delivering distinctive value to each of Zara’s products. Zara’s supply chain relies heavily on the information exchange throughout every phases and people who involved in it. To make information transfer easy, Zara established operational procedures which involve the use of information systems. However, there are still challenges in regards to unreliable infrastructure and ineffective communication flow that hampering the information exchange. These challenges need to be strategically addressed as it is putting Zara’s core competency at risk. The purpose of this paper is to examine how information system can strengthen Zara’s core competency. Firstly, it will describe the core competency then examine the challenges that Zara face in cultivating this competency. Secondly, it will discuss the role of information systems in strengthen Zara core competency. Finally this paper will conclude by offering recommendation so that information system can be implemented to help the organization. Challenges in Cultivating the Core Competency Zara’s preference for speed and responsiveness has been formulated since its inception. Zara tries to capture rapid change of customer’s demand and fulfilling it in timely manner. The core competency that enables Zara to do this lies in their highly responsive value chain. This value chain is built from constant learning and collaboration of different part within organization and it becomes a distinctive value (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Zara’s value chain is designed to close the information gap between the upstream chain and the end customers. It relies heavily on the information exchange throughout the value chain. Zara established operational procedure which consists of three cyclical processes: ordering, fulfillment and design and manufacturing. Information system is heavily used to link one activity to another. However, there are still challenges which can be categorized into two issues below: 1. Unreliable Infrastructure Zara’s unreliable infrastructure is caused by two factors. Firstly, it relates to the outdated DOS operating system that Zara used in point-of-sale (POS) terminal of each store. Although the system is operable currently, DOS is no longer supported by Microsoft and there is no maintenance such as [Show More]

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