How Investing in Better Technology Can Help Kmart Gain a Competitive Advantage

How investing in better technology can help Kmart gain a competitive advantage

Founded in 1899 by Sebastian Spering Kresge, K-Mart, was selling $.05 and $.10 merchandise and was always a low income family oriented store. In 2002, the company filed for Chapter 11, it was a hard time for all the employees as they were deprived on many of their so deserved incentives. During these hard times, K-mart had lost many of its good employees while some stay loyal to this company, rain or shine.

The year prior to K-Mart filing for bankruptcy, he was the second largest retailer behind Wal-Mart. This fall in decline prompted K-Mart to make some changes in upper management but it wasn't for the better as the decline continued in the following years. In 2002, about 284 stores were closed and more than 22,000 jobs lost. K-Mart fought and got out of bankruptcy, in 2005, they brought Sears, Roedbuck and Co and became two entities under the name Sears Holdings Corporation.

The company had to make many changes in order to survive; they have to cut many of their benefits to become more competitive. As these cut were occurring, many of K-Mart stayed loyal to the company despite their unhappiness but, the new comers took advantage of many situations such as the condition of the workplace (overworked) to sue the company. The company stopped recognizing talents within, brought managers whose styles didn't fit with the company standards.

As the world change and technology becomes more of a necessity than entertainment, Kmart had failed at some level to be up to date with it. It is true that we are an e-tailer just like many other brick-and-mortar retailers, we have MyGofer, K-mart.com; however, the stores themselves are very outdated when it comes to technology.

We have registers that are always freezing keeping the cashiers from checking out customers faster; our registers are not set up to apply for credit card in a faster way, for most part, we use paper application. There is a big disconnection between inventories displayed in the system versus actual inventory. Managers spend countless of hours on the floor verifying inventory to assure the accuracy of receiving products needed in the store, yet inventory is still inaccurate causing overflow of products in the warehouse.

Kmart needs to come up with a better system such as JIT inventory like Walmart or digital bins that will help not