Analysis Structured Process

 Target's Sales Process                                                                                     (Greg)

    A structured process is one that is stable and almost fixed. It repeatedly occurs within the organization and uses the same means in order to achieve a goal. One of the most common structured processes within organizations occurs when sales are being made. Our group chose to focus on Target's sales process as they use a personalized system to support it. 

    More specifically, the sales process we focused on encompassed everything from transactional data to inventory management data. In order to support this process, Target uses a Point of Sale (POS) system. While POS systems are used throughout the business world in order to support the sales of goods, Target has created their own customized, in-house POS system that only they can use. This system runs servers that can support up to thirty self-checkout and conventional cash registers at a time. While these systems run on Microsoft software applications for the sale of retail and grocery items, the pharmacy operations are run on Linux software. The POS software used to make and record credit card transactions and signatures is run on "Elo" touchscreen hardware that is custom to Target. 

    Overall, the POS system is a very effective way to store transactional data, additionally, being able to support self-checkout registers is a great way for an organization to greatly increase efficiency at checkout.