Tesco is one of the leading supermarkets

Tesco is one of the leash supermarketsIntroductionTesco is one of the UKs leading supermarkets, supplying nodes nation wide with groceries and a vast array of antithetic services. In the past Tesco started as simply a supermarket, these days they altogetherege their nodes insurance, mobile phones, and even electrical redeeming(prenominal)s. Tesco even offer their customers a fix system where customers get a 1% return on their purchases, this 1% comes back to the customer in the form of a voucher which chamberpot be holdd in a variety of different ways.Tesco, uniform a lot of UK supermarkets, is a very big organisation comprising of a variety of systems, these systems assist the company in operating at levels ranging from the operative level to executive. It is the structure of these systems which each(prenominal)ow the business to run effectively, to ensure that the lay finalitys argon made and reports are compiled for effective perplexity.This paper will talk over t he characteristics of two of the core management education systems that Tesco use and the ways in which they might apply them to their business.Transaction Processing SystemsTransaction Processing Systems (or TPS for short) are vital systems in any business, these systems are responsible for serving the operative level of an organisation. Examples of some TPS systems would include Recording payments received for goods and services. Placing determines for products or services. Withdrawing property at a cash machine.TPSs are in contact with the customers every of the time and if one were to fail then it would be immediately apparent, if Tescos cashbox systems were to fail then the customer would be aware of this immediately. This outlines the great immensity of these systems, while they may seem to be repetitive, they must ultimately be reli commensurate. This means that although 100% reliability cannot be guaranteed, the TPS must therefore be able to detect and correct errors . (Wikipedia, 2009. Transaction Processing System.)However, not all minutes are processed immediately there are two different types of act systems. Real time processing systems process the transactions immediately, this method keeps information up-to-date and information within the reports will be consistently accurate. Batch processing systems store the information in batches and are processed at slower rates, this method of processing means that reports do not always have up-to-date information. Businesses requiring up-to-date reports will favour for a real time processing system. (Bocji, P 2003 p238)Tesco will make from these Transaction Processing Systems in unlike ways. These systems will hold and pull together information about customer purchases, e particular(prenominal)ly those who have a customer loyalty card it will assist in being able to target another(prenominal) products at these customers to help increase sales. Automatic cerebrate with suppliers will be impro ved as stock can be re-ordered as soon as it has been sold, greatly reducing the physical cause of stock ordering and minimising the errors involved with manual ordering. Greater effectiveness of customer service as prices can be modified with ease, a greater choice of products can be attained and lower prices to the customer.Tesco uses TPSs in their heroic poem systems (Electronic Point of Sale) these systems scan barcodes and communicate with the in-house system. This in-house system will record all the data of transactions and stock which take ups to be re-ordered, probably in a batch system which can then be transferred to the processor at the end of the day. This information will then be loving to higher management for generating reports and will provide the distribution centre with orders for the side by side(p) day. This information will also provide ordering information for third party suppliers.Decision Support SystemsDecision Support Systems (or DSS) are the managem ent information systems aimed at supporting the managerial level. These systems provide information, usually in the form of ad hoc reports to assist with decision making.The models bases that power DSSs vary from standardised analysis to complex mathematical descents between variables in the data. DSSs are unremarkably accessed from a com lay outer, giving the manager the ability to issue the DSS software commands and bay specific data. The output from the DSS software is usually in an easy to earn text and visual format (such(prenominal) as graphs and charts).DSSs are a cabal of special models that help with information analysis, forecasting and planning. Company performance data is also part of this integration. DSS are usually not a somatic system and tend to be more departmentally targeted, usually playing as a marketing assistance. Normally DSSs are utilize as a specialist system such as an expert systems or data warehousing, however they are aimed to be very easy to u se and should integrate across all levels in recognition of the overlap between operational, tactical and strategic decisions. (Bocij, P 2003 p253)Expert systems replicate the knowledge and decision making skills that a professional in a certain vault of heaven would have. These systems are vital tools in decision support a good example would be making a credit decision on whether or not to give someone a personal loan. entropy warehousing is a type of business intelligence software that analyses transaction information to enhance a companys competitiveness. The data warehouse itself is a bulky database which contains a companys sale information. info mining is used in draw with data warehousing and is an automated way to scram patterns in data. Data clustering can also be utilised in order to find relationships between groups or portions of the data. (Wikipedia, 2009. Data Mining)DSSs can be used to create problems, managers can analyse the data when certain variables are chan ged, or looking at different scenarios. Some types of the occurrences include Data Mining, as already discussed. Goal Seeking Analysis, changing variables one at a time until a want goal is achieved, doing this enables the manager to see what goals need to be set in specific areas of the business to attain desired result. What If Analysis, like goal seeking analysis but involves changing a number of variables at once or changing a relationship within the variables, while keeping an eye on the changes in the other variables. Optimization analysis, to find an optimum value for the variables given certain conditionals.pickings Tesco as an example you can assume that via Transaction Processing Systems, various data is collected in the stores. This information is stored in the company of import frame system and can be accessed by departmental managers for them to overprotect reports via expert systems or data mining/warehousing. This enables the managers to get information such as how many customers enjoy eating chicken in similitude to those who prefer beef this can then be coupled with information such as what other products the consumer purchases along with these situations.The managers at Tesco could then find information about item affinity, a process that would highlight the likelihood of a number of items being purchased together. This information is of great importance when considering what special offers to put on, it could aid in finding other suitable products to put close to these special offers. (Information Management, 2006)The success of item affinity is evident by the story of the beer and diapers, it was found that men were buying diapers along with beer on Friday nights. This is an eccentric occurrence that you wouldnt normally predict however, it was thanks to data mining and item affinity that this was uncovered. (The Register, 2006)ReferencesBocji, P (2003). Business Information Systems Technology, Development and Management for the e-bus iness second Ed. Gosport Ashford Colour Press Ltd.Information Management, (2006) Demystifying Market Basket Analysis. Information-management.com online updated October 2006, accessed 6th celestial latitude 2009.The Register, (2006) The parable of the beer and diapers. Theregister.co.uk online updated 15th August 2006, accessed eighth December 2009.Wikipedia, (2009) Data Mining. Wikipedia.org online accessed 8th December 2009.Wikipedia, (2009) Transaction Processing System. Wikipedia.org online accessed 8th December 2009.