Custom Made Apparel and Individualized Service at Lands End

Custom Made Apparel and Individualized answer at Lands EndMany telephoner uses the nett target as well as bulge outlets and catalogs as musical modes of selling their products directly to the clients. At the beginnings since it has founded in 1963 in Chicago, Lands Ends website offered only limited products, however by the time the site offers either Lands End products such as clothe whether they are sports or uniforms for wo hands, men and children, luggage, overstocks, shoes and home furnishings. As of recent, the company has had success with its Custom vesture line. The enunciateing demonstrate is not civilise by the companys web site a node would answer a variety of simple questions regarding his or her body type and style preferences in order to create the immaculate shirt or pants. The order is processed by dint of a sophisticated technology carcass, which sends the appropriate information to the respective destinations. Lands End operates on the way that tries to achieve the best services and products for the client. As a result, customers shit intentional to expect a high level of service at on the whole times from the beginning of the order, to receiving help and advice, to speedy raptus, and further follow-up when necessary. It is increasingly becoming larger every course of study as well as making itself known a lot more on the lucre as well. However, catalogs do and belike will for the rest of their lives continue to be the first in their marketing strategies although it costs less when they bring customers to its commove through e-commerce. Also the company is now also selling its products at Sears breeds most of their gross sales come from within their products being sold at Sears stores because by the f every of 2003, the company lines were to be available in all Sears full line stores. Sears Roebuck acquired Lands End in 2002 then they were bought by Kmart Holdings which is currently Sears Holdings.Key issuesIt faces some challenges in increasing its marketplace Lands End mat up a growing need for enhancing and dieing its marketing strategies, multi-channel marketing campaigns, and a shifting management focus from product-centric ( customization ) to customer-centric strategies. Their end goal was to ontogenesis customer trueness with the intent of increasing revenue. So, the stupefy some issues or challenges in brinytain their war-ridden favour in its industry regarding its product class and price. For precedent, the existing and new competitors like Amazon and Sears could threaten its brand discover and position in marketplace and the appropriate use of IT to sustain its free-enterprise(a) of profit in the light of up coming new technologies and trends. outline and InterpretationWho are the stakeholders that should particularly involve in this face? and that nourish the major influence to measure the companys strengths and weakness. in that respect are two main stakeholder gr oups that deal with Lands End. The customers and the investors. The customers are the spate who drive all the sales through buying the get dressed. They also have the greatest affect through having their feed indorse well-nigh the store as well as the web site. So, without the internet, the customers satisfaction would not be existing and could not be measured or investigated by the investors to manage operational aspects of marketing campaigns through achieving the alignment between patronage dodge and IT strategy. So, the internet acts as a major advertisement because it contains all their financial information and since the company is so successful.The criteria that categorized Lands End as a leader in marketing are quality of products, committal to services and customization through its effectual website. This discount be defined as its strengths or its powerful guarantee to develop customer relationships and profession dialogue to increase sales and market share.Website (customization-website-customer service)The web site itself is particularly lax and makes the shopping unique, interesting , easy and root forive. The web site design is make regarding ordering online process, its exciting products because it presends variations and manufacturing a variety of similar but mortalized. This is an example of a good companys position and strategic methods because it supports and maintain customer loyalty as Lands Ends senior vice president for e-commerce said customer loyalty to our custom tailored clothing has surprised me. The level of feeling that customers have is amazing. This is particularly true for women. Once they get a pair of jeans to upheaval some will order every color in every fabric ( Piccoli, 2007 ). Some of the advantages of customization are building and maintaining customer loyalty, pricing and avoiding somatic s basening and body measurement if they go to the shop. (My Virtual Model) is one of the company innovative shopping to ol. According to it, customers can create a three-D instance of themselves by providing critical measurements, which are then applied to the individuals ain Virtual Model. Once a virtual model is created the customer can use it to try on items to see how they will look on his or her body. Outfits can be stored and recalled for later reference. Moreover, the model created, a persons model can also be used at other apparel web sites in the My Virtual Model network, and can be e-mailed to family and friends. Also, from the customers perspective, the web site allows you to be aware of everything close Lands End from the beginnings to the end. Lands End knows how to attract customers as well as keep them on the site through an easy way which to buy. Its divisions are very organized starting with grammatical gender of sex starts off with gender of sex. then it will divide it up in pieces of clothing whether its pants, shirts, skirts, shoes and so on. Moreover, it has section to measure the customers willingness to have a bun in the oven through identifying the amount they like to pay to present all the products that have the certain price range. This way saves a lot of time and probably bullion so it gives the customer a quick inside online store of what a normal outlet store would look like in person. . If the web site is unorganized or running slow, that is going to circle customers away from the web site. But Lands End website guarantees its customers security policies and provides them with a extremely standard of customer service if they order using phone. Through the website they can get the required information approximately their customers whether they are old, current, new or future.It is very useful to collect the information the organization needs about the customer to actually increase the level of knowledge for the company about the customers and it allows them to know a lot more about each individual customer especially because they have profil e of their customers.Strategic Alignment genius of any organisation factor of success strategically and technologically is obstetrical delivery both It and IS strategies within the organisation strategy. This is called strategic alignment which means the effective correlation between internal and impertinent domains. Internal domain comes out the integrating between business strategy and IT strategy while the external domain is involved in the integration between organizational foot and process and IS infrastructure and process. In this case, Lands End achieves a high course of strategic alignment through using archetype solutions for custom-tailored clothes, a process engineering approach that included developing a corporate careful model and mind map that anticipated the specific ways that instrument managers would use them to improve and develop business strategy. Inventory management system is used to help ensure customer satisfaction by avoiding unpredicted backorders. Orders are electronically sent to the warehouse, where the goods are big bucksd, shipping labels are printed, and the package is sent out to a delivery service. Alternatively, orders that include customized items are sent to a mainframe which computes estimated measurements based on user data, which is used to develop a pattern to be used in the manufacturing of the item. It supports fast shipping and embroidering. As it mentioned before the high performance of customer service is preferably a good evidence of the systems ability to retrieve orders quickly and accurately. Moreover, deject prices comes out the efficiency and effectively resulting from sending the orders to the warehouse in electronic form. That is why the web site adds the competitive advantage to Lands End. The organisations business strategy is presented to achieve its scope, marinating competitive advantage and reaching business governance. It shows in the case through providing each customer with a personal ex perience that builds a good standard relationship to last for long time. Also, its successful business strategy shows through dependable quality, fair prices, efficient service, call back program and positive employee experience. To achieve its scope, it depends on archetype solutions that fits mass customization and custom-clothing service and web based services in clothing industry. As a result of AS, the company has made big investment in people and technology to achieve the competitive advantage and get the expected profits. later on looking at Exhibit 1 and 2, the financial situation in Lands End shows its progress which indicates its position. The first table shows their revenue in millions from 1999 to 2002. There is a big jump of about 197 millions dollars from 1999 to 2002 in the company. Each year they will continue to make a little more money mainly from increasing cliental and offering a wider span of products.Challenges (competitive advantage)/ RecommendationsLands End s mass customization and web-based customer service initiatives provide a great opportunity to discuss the sustainability of competitive advantage derived from IT-driven strategic initiatives. Although AS, Inc allows the company to maintain its competitive advantage, Ends Ends mainly has competencies in apparel manufacturing and retail efficiency. Therefore it should consider those areas in its operational integration to have the link between the organisational infrastructure and IS, It should pay its particular prudence to its use of IT. The most important opportunity that Lands End should take advantage of is to place Internet terminals along with the clothing displays in the Sears stores. This would allow customers to seek clothes, feel fabrics, and test sizes inside the Sears store, yet still place an order for a specific item that is not offered in the store. This would increase sales by eliminating the loss of sales from stock-outs, as well as increase brand awareness. With the invention and innovation of new textiles, Lands End can diffuse its current ordering system to include new fabric choices on many different products. This would allow customers to both customizing their own clothing and electing a colour, which would increase customer satisfaction and as a result customer loyalty. Lands End should also market towards young customers aging from ( 10 20) in order to increase sales both presently and maintain them in the future (by retaining customers). It can do this by designing new styles and advertizement through its web site. Lands End should stay a competitive advantage in its industry regarding its operations to keep going in custom-tailored clothes and the required enhancement of its industry is necessary and essential to product category and price. It also should have the ability to use It in the light of up coming technologies and trends. Lands End might lose its competitive advantage repayable to fallen barriers, technology replicati on cycle.