Conclusions

Information systems are indispensable in retail companies to avoid silos and GNC is one of the world’s largest retailers of vitamins, minerals, and supplements. This means it is important to have a reliable information system; a main reason that GNC uses Oliver Solutions.  

After talking to Adam Sharpe, the store manager from GNC, we analyzed this information system to be extremely effective in terms of pretty much eliminating the worry of silos. Not only does this information system keep track of sales, inventory, customer information, and the ability to train employees, every GNC uses this software. This allows for data to be streamlined to corporate easily and without any transferring of data through different software making analysis of data easy and as efficient as possible.  

Although this system is so effective and reliable in terms of eliminating silos, when it crashes, GNC has no back-up systems at all to keep the store running which usually resorts to the store having to close. It is recommended for GNC to have at least one or two cross dock bar code scanners to ensure that inventory and reorders can be kept to keep the store running in case a system crash does occur.   

Mr. Sharpe also stated another slight problem with the internet provider that is being used. Comcast is GNC's current internet provider and the only other internet provider out in the are of GNC is Verizon DSL which is still too slow of a connection for this kind of business which needs high speed connectivity to maximize its information system. This was not included in the recommendations due to Adam Sharpe saying how corporate will be dealing with this issue, because they know how important is to have good information systems and to also maximize the potential of this system.