Robi:
I honestly didn't mean to pick ToysRUs out of the crowd of many
dot com failures during the holidays. They were the ones that made
headline news because of disappointed children and frantic parents.
It sounds like you have inside information and reading your
message I you have hit on areas where few fear to tread |-).
On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, robi sen wrote:
> Toys R US has realized this from day one and has continuously used their stores
> synergistically with their website not only to deliver product but to do cross
> promotion. As for Toys R US vaunted failures.. these where failures mostly
> associated with bad management of different consulting groups. The one major
> outage Toys R US had was not actually from load but was actually from one
> consulting group which did not communicate with another changing code which
> destroyed their database.
Was the bad management a result of not managing resources or bad
communications? It sounds like it may have been a little of both.
Management not conveying the necessary requirements to the consulting
groups and the consulting groups not communicating effectively to
Toy R Us management what they were doing.
I am just going by media reports and understood that the problem
was in the supply chain.
>
> Toys R US's failure is like many other dot coms and is one of
> management and process not technology or vision. They just where not
> prepared to scale up their staff the way they needed to and did not
> have processes in place to allow large groups of consultants and
> employees to work together.
>
A very good point is that before traditional and new businesses begin
something new, they need to model the entire process. You bring up a
really good point here. Forget that I am a consultant because I am taking
my consultants hat off for the moment.
I have seen a lot of organizations hand off a big portion of their
business to consultancy companies. I think this is very dangerous.
Organizations need to have their employees and consultants working
together. I think a successful model is for consultants to work
with employees and mentor employees. The consultants understand
their area of expertise and the employees understand the business.
Even when consultancy companies come into a business and do a bang-up
job, they eventually leave and take all the knowledge of the system
they have developed with them. I have seen this many times.
> I suspect that next Christmas will be very smooth for Toys R US and
> unlike many of its competitors it makes very good margins on its
> products becuase its ability to use its advanced robotic warehouse,
> distrabution chain, and extensive supply lines.
Thanks for the clarification!
Betty
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Betty Harvey | Phone: 301-540-8251 FAX: 4268
Electronic Commerce Connection, Inc. |
13017 Wisteria Drive, P.O. Box 333 |
Germantown, Md. 20874 |
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Washington,DC SGML/XML Users Grp
URL: http://www.eccnet.com | http://www.eccnet.com/xmlug/
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\\/\/
==========================================
XML/EDI Group members-only discussion list
Homepage = http://www.xmledi.com
Brought to you by: Online Technologies Corporation
Home of BizServe - www.bizserve.com
TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Leave the subject blank, and
In the body of the message, enter ONLY: unsubscribe
Questions/requests should be sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To join the XML/EDI Group complete the form located at:
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Floor/5815/mail1.htm
