Modernizing Ancient Businesses: Filet Cut Co.
Brief Company Background
Filet Cut opened its doors to the community of Greeley, CO by Evan Peterson in 1983. Filet Cut has proudly served the town as the most favored butcher shop in the area. With the fresh cattle raised in the nearby communities, Filet Cut has always had a great relationship with nearby restaurants as well as other consumers. The butcher shop is manned by Evan Peterson, his wife, sons, and two employees that all reside in Greeley. Evan Peterson takes pride in his work and still runs the shop the same way it did when it originally opened.
Filet Cut has seen success through the high quality of work that is portrayed in every piece of meat they sell. They have good relationships with the local cattle farmers and even some local game hunters. While they enjoy serving their local community, they seek to expand their area of operations to bring national attention to their name.
Discussing Business Problems
Filet Cut is a traditional brick and mortar butcher shop owned by Evan Peterson that does all their operations through traditional methods. Orders for products are maintained through phone calls and log books. Financial accounts are accounted for in log books written in pen. They accept cash and checks for transactions which can turn away consumers with debit and credit cards. The business has survived off word of mouth and a loyal customer base. As their customers rave, the quality of product is the best in the area. However, finances are in a poor state due to not attracting new customers and other modern options being available for consumers such as online ordering.
The ability for consumers to order products online from other competitors has left Filet Cut with at a technological disadvantage. They are losing sales due to not having a way to accept all forms of payment and by not having a presence online. When one searches for a butcher shop in Greeley, CO the only hits are either about the one other butcher shop in town or a news article about Filet Cut. There is no way for an online consumer to retrieve relevant information about Filet Cut and that is losing sales for Evan Peterson. By developing a website with eCommerce capabilities will allow Filet Cut to not only lose these consumers but increase their reach. Their poor leveling of marketing is impacting their ability to remain profitable.
High Level Solution
The high level solution to reinvent Filet Cut is achieved by improving their operations in two different areas. The first being their online operations, being built from the ground up. Filet Cut needs to have an online presence that welcomes new customers while allowing them to sell products online. According to Tracey Wallace of BigCommerce, 95% of Americans purchase goods online at least one a year with 51% of them preferring to shop online. Not only that, “46% of American small businesses do not have a website” (Wallace, 2016). Filet Cut needs to open their doors to this large market or miss out on the opportunity completely.
The second area is introducing new elements to their current business processes to not only better serve their customers but work more efficiently. We understand that Filet Cut is not a large enterprise and adding any new task can add to the already heavy workload. New software and systems will be introduced with the aim of reducing the time it takes to perform everyday tasks such as inventory tracking and finances. On top of that, we propose the use of third party services to assist in order fulfill duties that extend past the original scope of Filet Cut.
Benefits of Solving the Problem
There are several benefits that come along with solving Filet Cut’s business problems. The main benefit is that they stay competitive in their market. Filet Cut wants to continue to serve their community and keep their doors open. By establishing a web presence and incorporating new technology into their business processes they can achieve this goal. David Evans of the Harvard Business Review states that “the retail industry is getting “reinvented”…” referring to how the industry is needing to change its approach actually getting people into their stores (Evans, 2016). Consumers are not longer walking around to find what a store has, the consumer is looking online for their research. Filet Cut will benefit from their online presence in this regard.
Filet Cut will also be improving their efficiency with their day to day operations. By incorporating technology into their business processes reduce the time it takes to do former processes. Inventory will be automatically tracked, POS transactions will increase their current scope, and more. Filet Cut can devote more time to fulfilling their orders and providing an excellent experience for their consumers with that time saved.
Business or Technical Approach
Technology will be the core component of Filet Cuts transition into the 21st century. Although Filet Cut has no intention to become a technology company it will leverage other companies offerings to create an online presence and reach more customers, establish e- commerce capabilities, and revamp instore technology. This is going to change their current logistics, bookkeeping, and transaction procedures however we will chose an approach which does not add significant burden to the existing staff. We will consider several choices for online marketing offered by companies which specialize in this field instead of hiring a full time social marketing employee or worse yet taking away time from the existing staff. We will also explore options to create an online storefront. Filet Cut will benefit from the implementation of these tools and keep costs down by having third parties manage the technical aspects of the technology platforms. Filet Cut will also experience an almost turnkey implementation if the correct technology services can be implemented. The chosen solution should also tie all business systems together through data sharing. Choosing our technology framework carefully to insure data exchange between all systems will ensure easier management of business operations and that data is centralized.
Business Process Changes
Filet Cuts will experience the 21st century by replacing the current in store payment system by POS system. When choosing POS systems for a butcher shop we have several considerations to make. A POS provides a significant amount of benefits to most retail organizations today. The most significant decision factor you should take into account when choosing a POS is that it should be compatible with the rest of your technological infrastructure according to retail consultants. CAHAN, L. (2017). We will want to take into consideration the fact that the butcher shop will eventually have an online commerce platform, our POS of choice should have the ability to exchange data with it. Other considerations include that the majority of in store product is sold by weight and that we wish to accept multiple payment forms including credit card and EBT payments.
There are many POS systems to choose from for today’s brick and mortar locations however we will be choosing a system based on its functionality in a butcher shop and its data integration capabilities with other systems. Most POS systems today accept credit cards however special attention should be paid to whether or not the POS system will accept the EMV chip on today's modern cards. One POS system which will meet all of these considerations is the Clover. Clover will truly bring the butcher shop into the 21st century because of its many features including; EMV chip card capabilities, data interface capabilities, and a variety of accessories are available for it including a scale. Clover offers a convenient lease program to help Filet Cuts enter the 21st century with as low overhead as possible. The company also offers a scale accessory capable of weighing up to 20 pounds. This is necessary for the butcher shop as its main product line requires measurement of pounds in order to sell. The system carries a leasing price tag of $59 per month while purchasing of the scale will cost around $320.
Technology or business practices used to augment this solution
Filet Cut will make a leap into the 21st century by establishing an online marketplace. The ecommerce platform must take minimal effort to manage as the staff is minimal in size and does not have a technical background. The variety of ecommerce platforms available today is breath taking however in order to narrow it down to the best choice for our client we must make several considerations. The first consideration to make is choosing a system that will be able to integrate with our POS system. This will keep our inventory and reporting centralized and up to date in the Clover database. Our next consideration is how we will fulfill orders and manage shipping and logistics. To keep staffing minimal and not increase overhead we believe the best option would be have a third party manage order fulfillment. Had we chosen to try and offer fulfilment from the butcher shop would mean using up valuable retail space and the time and effort of the staff. After considering several e-commerce platforms we have found that Shopify.com offers the best integration capabilities to meet all the business goals in this project. Shopify.com is simple to use, offers low priced payment processing fees, and it offers integration to several order fulfilment companies. Shopify.com offers simplicity to our business processes by having available a plugin which interfaces Clover. Shopify.com will update the Clover inventory to keep all of our data consistent and synchronized. Shopify.com has proven itself to be a dependable organization, in 2016 it served the online retail needs for more than 400,000 organizations and brands. Baldwin, S. M. (2017).
In order to save space in our small butcher shop and to keep costs down we will use an order fulfilment company which can handle frozen food orders. For this we have chose. frozenfulfilment.com as our vendor. This vendor is FDA and USDA compliant, facts that are appreciated by a company who offers high grade food products.
Finally our upgrade for Filet Cut will include the account system Intuit otherwise known as QuickBooks. In order to keep administrative overhead to a minimum we have chosen QuickBooks since it will integrate with the POS system and automatically synchronize all of our commerce data. QuickBooks is an established company which can be trusted to deliver a time proven quality solutions. It has several data integration capabilities being the main reason why it was chosen. The seamless integration between the chosen e-commerce platform, POS system, and accounting system make for a minimal effort transition business operations into the 21st century.
New business operations will also be established for marketing the company. Since the core competencies of the company do not include social media marketing we chose a third party company to take of the entire online marketing platform. We will want to look at a company that will establish our social media accounts and create content on the platforms in order to take advantage of other companies expertise in the area and minimize time required by internal staff. Studies have shown that facebook likes equate to more revenue, specifically likes that are generated from using facebook as an ad platform vs organic likes. MOCHON, D., JOHNSON, K., SCHWARTZ, J., & ARIELY, D. (2017). This makes it apparent that having an internal employee generate a simple facebook page for the company is not enough to use it as an effective marketing tool. We will need to chose a company that can create daily ads and create a social media presence with an active following. After careful consideration of several vendors in this market space we have chosen to use 99dollarsocial.com as our online marketing platform. This company will create our social media accounts, curate content, and lead marketing campaigns including daily postings. We have chosen this company both for its recognition as a top company in the online marketing space but also for their very reasonable rates including the basic package which is $99 per month.
Conclusions and overall recommendations
Overall we are recommending solutions based on what is the simplest to implement with our customer yet products which provide a high value both from what they can deliver and in terms of standing in respective markets. We have chosen to go with companies which have a strong brand establishment since we are not willing to risk our customers business on untried products. We have also made our decisions to provide a solution which requires minimal investment from the company. The company in question is already financially unstable possibly from having waited so long to make these critical business infrastructure upgrades. Finally we are not looking to overwhelm the staff. We would like to keep the effort required by the store staff to a minimum during the transition in order to ensure a smooth transition. All of the solutions described in this proposal leverage the technical expertise and capabilities of other companies for us while providing the service at a low price point. Clover is a tried and proven POS which has taken the world by storm in terms of adoption. Clover has a entry price and delivers a product which is known for quality. The company is also offers free support with even its basic package. Key points to making us chose this POS over others is that it easily integrates with several e-commerce platforms, including Shopify.com.
Entering e-commerce can be a daunting chore for many small businesses. Given that there are so many ways solutions today, companies need some sort of guidance when choosing a path to e-commerce. Given that in this project we are looking at a small butcher shop entering the 21st century for the first time we must chose the option which required no technical expertise from the organization. Because of the options that exist today luckily, the entry barriers into e-commerce have been minimized. We no longer have to worry about establishing an entire technology platform including servers, telecommunications equipment and heavy technical know how. There exist a multitude of e-commerce platforms today which have thousands of web portal designs to chose from and provide a wide array of services including payment management and order fulfillment.
High level Implementation
Entering the 21st century would have been a daunting task for any small business owner however through the careful consideration and planning, implementation can be achieved in a successful manner. The initial phase of our implementation will include setting up our new in store POS, setting up accounting software and setting up the integration between them. Setup of the POS system should be complete within a week of receiving the hardware. Careful testing should be done of the POS system to ensure functionality and accuracy. After the POS system has been successfully integrated with the store we can begin at expanding the storefront using e-commerce. Establishing a database where our entire catalog of offerings exist in the POS system ensures that we will minimize data entry requirements when establishing the e-commerce platform. Approximately one week will be given to establish and update the Shopify.com account Filet Cuts. Finally during this week we will also begin talks with a third party company to manage order fulfilment.
Summary
Filet Cut can achieve their goals by incorporating several different technologies into their current work processes and expanding their operating scope. Using Shopify will help expand their consumer base while creating an online identity to build upon. The Clover POS system will make Filet Cut not only more accessible to potential consumers but often a more robust solution to everyday transactions. Having Quickbooks allows an easy way not only track finances but also tie data between the other solutions together. To help assist with order management, Frozen Fulfillment will be used to make sure Filet Cut can manage any influx of orders. With these recommendations, Filet Cut can successfully transition into a company set up to strive in the present day market.