3.0 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Information management is an important and critical skill for each business to achieve
their success in business environment. When a company made decisions, at somehow they
should use the management as well as information systems. In making decisions, the
organizer especially managers need to take note about their company’s capabilities so that
they can understand the uses of information and utilize all the information to obtain and
budget the financial recourses. There are no such successful in business for those managers
who do not learned and understand on how to manage and use information.
3.1 ZARA INFORMATION TECHNOLGY
The approach of Zara in utilizing the information technology (IT) is through its
decentralized decision making for the customer’s preferences and quick response demand
5. It can say that the decision making in Zara was decentralized because there is no Chief
Information Officer (CIO) appointed for each store to manage their information system.
Managers are the only one who were responsible in making decisions and directly
submitted the information to the central in Spain. For instance, the decisions are made on
choosing the garment or merchandising to order, re-order or discontinue order. Other than
that, managers also transmitted the data of customers’ own sense on fashion and design
that mostly trendy to Zara’s design teams.
3.1.1 Zara Value Chain
Zara is a success company in the fashion industry that successfully implemented and
utilized IT to enhance their value chain. It was believe that the value chain of fashion
industry is really complex. According to Porter M (2001), father of value chain stated the
definition of value chain which the set of interdependent activities that will contribute on
bring and produce product as well as services to the market. As shown at the Figure 3.1
below, a business was described in terms of support activities and also primary activities.
5Quick response demand: Zara mostly provide garments that are on demand based on
feedback from customers.
Primary activities consist of inbound logistics, operation, outbound logistics, marketing
and last but not least is services. All of them are chained together to a sequences and
describes that how business transformed its raw materials into value-creating products.
Figure 3.1 Business Value Chain
In Inbound Logistics stage, fabrics and material will be shipped to the manufacturer. We
can say as sourcing and manufacturing process in Zara and Zara is not outsource at all
because almost 50% of finished garment were manufactured internally. Furthermore, in the
