The supermarket chain Sainsbury’s was founded in 1869 as a partnership. Once Sainsbury’s grew in success it became a private company, then even becoming public. It is now the longest-standing major food retailing chain with 788 stores. Sainsbury’s is a national commercial company who provides financial services but is mainly a supermarket retailer; selling food, clothing and home products. Sainsbury’s current goal and mission statement is “… to be the consumer’s first choice for food, delivering products of outstanding quality and great service at a competitive cost through working faster, simpler and together. ”

Please see attached sheet Data handling needs Since Sainsbury’s store a lot of information about people, products etc it is essential that they have a reliable and secure system to store it all in. This data ensures that Sainsbury’s functions correctly. Sainsbury’s processes data from all aspects of their company, but primarily process’ data of about 30 000 products, 178 000 staff and 22 million nectar card holders. The main information about products must be stored in the computer system so that Sainsbury’s knows not only how much to charge for each product but also stock levels within the store and stock-warehouses.

The products will be automatically linked with prices, offers and stock levels. This information can be output in the form of receipts and also in the form of reports about stock levels, these would be useful when organising which products need to be ordered from suppliers. Details will need to be stored about each of the customers with nectar cards; for example their name, address and telephone number. This data can be used so that the company knows whom to reward with ‘nectar points’ and where they can send additional information (e. g. leaflets, statements).

Sainsbury’s also processes data of customers within their financial sector; this will mean more in depth details of each customer, such as bank and credit card details. This is used for customer related financial transactions, for example withdrawing of money or taking out loans. This data is needed for Sainsbury’s to function correctly in this department as they need to safely and efficiently organise this data. Employee details should be stored so that Sainsbury’s can work out timetables of each member of staff and calculate how much an employee is liable to earn.

They can then calculate their wages and this will be output in the form of a payment statements or payrolls. The company may also want to create reports on what staff are working and when etc. ICT system One of the main ICT systems used that Sainsbury’s needs to function is the CRM manages the relationship between Sainsbury’s and their customers and sales, suppliers and internal information in order for Sainsbury’s to keep record of their sales each of the products. Sainsbury’s uses ICT systems to function efficiently.

The main being the electronic scanning process, the other being Customer Relationship Management (CRM). CRM manages the relationship between Sainsbury’s and their customers, sales, suppliers and internal information. For Sainsbury’s to find this information about their product sales they use the main ICT system that processes details of the products purchased through the tills. The barcodes are scanned when they pass an infrared ray and the system uses optical mark recognition to process data about the product.

The data from each of the products is displayed on screen, and so is the sum that is numerically calculated. Details of each product and the calculations are also output physically in the form of receipts. If a customer has a nectar card Sainsbury’s can make a profile of which items a customer buys and this data is processed and stored in the system. This system within Sainsbury’s meets data handling needs in that the company is able to efficiently process data and meet the company purpose.

The scanning process is especially useful in making Sainsbury’s function correctly as the data is output on screen and on receipts and means Sainsbury’s can process the products, prices and sales. This meets the organisation goal in that it provides an efficient service; it aims to work ‘faster, simpler and together’. This scanning system does this due to making it a quick process whereby the product information is quickly scanned through the computer system and output for the customer.