About ABC stores

ABC Stores can be found in Hawaii, Saipan, Las Vegas, and Guam. However, the majority of the stores are concentrated in Waikiki. This family-owned company specializes in selling trinkets and other useful products. These are their primary income generators. The shops, however, are not exclusive to these products. During their holidays, both local and foreign visitors frequent these shops. For example, tourism is Hawaii’s biggest source of revenue, so Waikiki stores prosper, as do Las Vegas stores due to the number of visitors. These shops arose from the notion that visitors would need souvenirs and trinkets from their holiday destination. However, they would need a less expensive place to purchase such items away from their hotels. This led to the existence of ABC Stores. The chain of stores prides itself in ensuring excellent customer service and customer satisfaction as well as the spirit of Aloha. Staff members are expected to treat all clients with respect and be courteous as well as friendly to them. However, with recent times the stores are venturing into food and hospitality industry. SidneyKosasa a son to Morita Kosasa, a plantation contract labourer, opened the first store in 1965. Drugs, souvenirs, groceries and other necessities a visitor requires were among the items sold in the shop. Unfortunately, Sidney Kosasa passed in 2006 leaving his legacy behind.

Mr Kosasa believed the company to be successful various goals needed to be achieved. Most of the goals were first centred on ensuring employee satisfaction, treating all employees fairly without discrimination based on gender, colour or race and training of employees. The facility was also cautious on ensuring customer satisfaction and being hospitable to their clients. The organization ensured they adhere to the State and Federal laws as well as comply with the environmental laws to avoid possible legal liabilities.

ABC stores are faced with major hazards that are classified into three categories; natural, man-made and technical. Some of the natural hazards include tsunami, flooding, heavy rain, hurricane and earthquake. For example, many of the shops in Waikiki are based on the bottom floor of most hotels making them vulnerable to disasters such as flooding. Man-made tragedies include shoplifting, food poisoning and accidents at the workplace. Staff members undergo training to help them identify shoplifters and discourage such behaviour among their customers. The stores train their associates as well on food management to avoid cases of food poisoning, which can have negative legal implications on the company. The final category, which is technical disasters, include plumbing challenges, power outage, servers or credit card systems breakdown. The IT department handles hazards such as the servers’ breakdown and network failure. The entity outsources services to monitor plumbing issues throughout the stores operational time.

The potential hazards that face ABC stores will have a negative impact on the management of the company. Some of the negative impacts will interfere with the normal running of the stores. For example, stores in Waikiki are likely to experience tsunami or flooding based on the location of the store. This will cause damage to goods in the premises, which will result to financial losses of the company. Calamities such as earthquake will hinder tourists from visiting the area hence business will be low. Other hazards such as food poisoning and workplace accidents could lead to lawsuits of the firm, which affects consumer confidence and the stores credibility. Credit card failure and servers breakdown will interfere with the delivery of services resulting to poor customer service as well as loss of income.

Assessing risk control is important in identifying gaps in the business on its preparedness towards disaster management. The gaps identified play a crucial role in helping the management improve on their strategies to deal with such calamities. Entities can as well identify control options for the potential hazards. For example, in the case of a robbery, the company can insure its business or in case of power outage have generators for backup power. Such risk control options help minimize losses a firm is likely to experience from such disasters.

According to research, businesses that experience calamities struggle to recover to normalcy. Two out of five businesses collapse after facing such a calamity within five years. This explains the need for businesses to be adequately prepared in case of such hazards. Business continuity planning (BCP) is a concept that helps enterprises to recover within a certain timeline after experiencing a disaster. BCP outlines instructions and a series of steps that help restore an organization back to normalcy within a stipulated timeframe. However, for this concept to be effective certain elements such as business resources and people need to play their role as explained in the plan (Waters, 2011). For example, BCP can be of help to ABC stores in avoiding lawsuits of food poisoning by ensuring they comply with the laws and regulations set by the health boards within various regions. This concept helps minimize the impact of civil liabilities, for example.

Business impact analysis (BIA) helps identify the businesses functions and processes. BIA helps analyse as well as the consequences that will face a company in case any of these processes is interfered with in the case of a calamity. The main functions of ABC stores include inventory management, administration, customer service, information technology, and equipment management. Inventory management helps the business place its orders from the manufacturers to the various warehouses of these stores. Inventory management helps track the distribution of inventory from a specific warehouse to various stores (Ayyub, 2011). ABC stores with the help of inventory management helps transfer slow moving items from one store to another, especially to stores where items are fast moving.

Administration is another function of ABC stores. The administration is responsible in ensuring the business has qualified staff members to run the chain of stores in different regions. They are responsible for overseeing the entities have enough number of personnel to run day-to-day operations. In case one store is understaffed, the administration helps in distributing employees to such stores. Another responsibility that falls under this function is ensuring the different chain of ABC stores have the right certification and proper licensing.

Customer service is responsible for ensuring that employees uphold the goals and objectives of ABC stores. This function ensures that the spirit of aloha is upheld as well as customer satisfaction. It plays a crucial role as well in the maintenance of reports for the business that are useful in other functions such as ordering of inventory. Equipment management plays a crucial role in ensuring the entity’s operations run smoothly. For example, equipment’s such as food coolers and warmers help in the delivery of quality products to the consumers. Other materials are cash registers that help monitor day-to-day transactions.

Information technology (IT) is responsible for overseeing maintenance of technological advances in the various stores. The IT department runs throughout to ensure they deal with issues such as technological threats and keep up with the emerging trends in technology. The department conducts research to ensure they develop preventative measures to deal with potential threats. Maintenance of these technological systems plays a vital role in ensuring the stores operations run smoothly without interruptions.

BIA scrutinizes the operational and financial impacts on the business in case there is interference with the normal operations. Operational impacts are the non-monetary damages the business incurs whereas financial impacts are the monetary damages. The financial impacts include aspects such as loss of sales and assets as well as overtime costs among other aspects. Operational impacts on the other hand include aspects such as poor company reputation, decline in customer satisfaction, and a reduction on employee morale among other aspects. Some of the operational impacts end up affecting the financial aspect negatively. Conducting a BIA in the ABC stores is crucial since it will help reduce some of the crisis through planning.

The BIA helps determine the essential requirements needed to recover from calamities that disrupt the normalcy of the business. This stage in the BCP process acts as a link between the risk management and BCP stage. The business analysis impact helps identify the main areas that are likely to be affected. The business continuity plan then focuses on these aspects. BIA has various benefits towards the businesses. In case of a calamity or disruption on an entity, the business is affected negatively. Some of the negative outcomes the company is likely to face include loss of finances, a negative reputation of the firm as well as a decline in customer satisfaction. The findings from this analysis help in determining whether the stipulated strategies meet the recovery requirements (Ayyub, 2011).

The success of this analysis is not determined by involvement of one department but rather all the departments need to get involved. There should be at least one representative from each department to ensure the success of this process. However, the management should be involved since they play a crucial role in providing directions of elements such as objectives and scope. The finance department should be represented as well to help in the analysis of financial outcomes. The success of this process relies on the information gathered to support this analysis. Information is gathered through three main methods. These methods include workshop, survey and interview. Workshops allow people to work together by sharing ideas, knowledge, and coming up with accurate information. Survey is conducted by sending a couple of questions to different business representatives. The advantage of this method is that an individual answers the questions at their own convenient time. An interview is another method of collecting information where one or more person is interviewed. The main advantage of this method is that questions can be tailor made to suit the interviewee area of expertise (Chapman, 2011). For example in the ABC stores, a representative in the IT department will be asked different questions from one in the administration department.

Downtimes within ABC stores have negative impacts such as financial loss or breaching of contracts. This will affect all chains from those in Oahu to other regions. These negative impacts will affect the operations of the business. Ability to generate sales is crucial in keeping the business afloat. Hence, aspects such as ensuring the store has adequate and skilled personnel are crucial in generating sales. Other aspects that need to be prioritized include inventory and ensuring that stores in various regions are well stocked. Hence, ordering of inventory and tracking of the same is important.Since the ABC is a chain store, proper communication is important among the different stores. Aspects that are of less priority are certification and licenses because they barely have the same expiration date. Hence, gives the store a grace period to renew it license, for example.

Since some hazards in the ABC stores are unavoidable, various guidelines to respond such disasters are stipulated. Some of the major hazards include theft, workplace accidents, fire, flooding, power outage and tsunami among others. With the help of BCP, the entity is able to recover from the interruptions caused. For example, in case of power outage various stores have a backup generator that will provide power to the business. Management is involved in ensuring the safety of its employees and consumers in the store. To avoid injuries and legal liabilities, management should ensure the consumers in the premises during a power outage are evacuated before any more people can access the premises. In case a certain store lacks alternatives sources of power, perishable goods are moved to the nearest store with power. This will help the store curb losses that would have been incurred by the damaged incurred on such perishable items.

Theft is one of the major hazards ABC stores face daily. According to reports, the store loses over $1.5 million dollars yearly from theft. Hence, the need to develop a plan and strategies to help reduce the amount lost through this vice. Some of the measures the organization has taken upon include installing of CCTV cameras to help monitor the store as well as security guards to watch out for suspicious behaviour among clients. Employees are trained on ways to identify shoplifters and strategies to curb theft in stores.

Fire outbreaks can be avoided if the right measures are taken. However, sometimes the situation is unavoidable. In cases of fire outbreaks, people are expected to assemble at the designated area surrounding the premises. The management is expected to inform the fire department in that region. The manager will as well use the duty roster to account for all employees that were present during the fire incidence. In case any staff member is missing, the manager will inform the relevant personnel. In instances of such crisis, the team needs to have recovery options (Chapman, 2011). Hence, the advantage of the business continuity plan and assessing risk management to ensure the business recovers from such disasters. For example, after such a fire incidence the management needs to have an alternative business location to ensure business gets to normalcy. The manager from one store can get in touch with the manager from another store to transfer the goods that have not been destroyed. Other alternatives are having an empty space that can be used in cases of such emergencies. This will ensure the continuity of the business operations and minimize losses incurred.

Employee training is crucial in ensuring the staff works towards implementing the business continuity plan of ABC stores. Employees of this entity receive training and assessment, which takes place within the first thirty days of their employment. The areas that the personnel are trained on include their reporting procedures in cases of an emergency. They are assessed how to fill out reports and whether they do follow through their reports. Other areas the trainees are assessed on include alarm, notices and announcements. The induction process involves new staff members being notified where alarms are located in the premises and the type of alarms in the premises, where to find notices and who to go to in case they have questions. Emergency exits and assembly points need to be clearly labelled and made known to the employees. This ensures in case of an emergency that the response from the staff will be adequate. They are as well trained on their emergency duties and who is responsible during such emergencies. To ensure the training is a success, management offers questionnaires and exercises to the trainees. A record of staff who has taken part in these training programs is kept for future references. Managers should note that this training should take place frequently.

ABC stores need to adhere to the business continuity plan to ensure the business operations are uninterrupted and in case they do, they are able to get back to normal operations. BCP helps outline a guideline of how the company will get back to its normal operations in the event of a disaster or calamity. The entity does a risk management assessment and develops risk control strategies based on the location of the store. For example, most ABC stores are found in Waikiki and on the bottom floors of most hotels. Hence, they are more prone to hazards such as floods. Hence, the store should have risk control procedures such as insuring the store. The insurance will cover losses incurred in such an event as opposed to the store baring all the losses. This cushions the ABC stores against heavy financial losses. In occurrence of disasters such as power outage, the management should have a backup source of power in place. Assessing risk management and developing risk control processes helps in minimizing losses the business is likely to incur.

Assessment and analysing the business impacts on the ABC stores will help the management to develop strategies to deal with such crisis. This helps the manager aware of impacts likely to be experienced in each department. Strategies to counter such risks are developed and they help reduce the losses that are likely to be incurred in scenarios where such assessment fails to take place. For example, the IT department is operational throughout to ensure they have preventive measures to handle cases such as system failures. Lack of counter measures to preventive these risks will have a negative impact both financially and operationally. Some of the financial impacts that ABC is likely to experience is a decline in sales. Operational impacts on the chain of stores may include bad reputation and customer dissatisfaction. A business continuity strategy report then stipulates on possible means of recovering the business in the event of a possible disruption from calamities, for example.

References

Waters, D. (2011). Supply Chain Risk Management: Vulnerability and Resilience in Logistics. Kogan Publishers.

Ayyub, B. (2011). Vulnerability, Uncertainty and Risk: Analysis, Modelling and Management. American Society of Civil Engineers.

Chapman, R. (2011). Simple Tools and Techniques for Enterprise Risk Management. New Jersey: Wiley