Bakery Mobile Ordering: Full POS Replacement or Web Front End
FreshLine Bakery operates 40 stores and wants mobile pre-orders within nine months. Its POS is three years old and has no supported API; loyalty data sits in 40 spreadsheets updated nightly by store managers. Online coupon redemption is 12%, and app-based pre-order is expected to lift basket size by 8%. The board has approved ¥30 million and two in-house developers. A vendor offers a full POS replacement with native mobile ordering for ¥28 million and 12 months, or a lightweight web-ordering front end for ¥9 million that would require CSV exports from POS every 15 minutes. The COO wants the full replacement because it is 'strategic'; the CFO wants the web front end because it fits the budget. Store staff turnover is 35%, and the IT manager is also running a payment-terminal upgrade. The nine-month window is fixed by a lease event.
1. Evaluate the two vendor options against the stated constraints. Which one fits the nine-month window and why?
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The full replacement fails the fixed nine-month window: the vendor quotes 12 months, so it would overrun by at least three months and consume nearly the entire ¥30 million before contingency, training, and integration. It also lands on an IT manager already running a payment-terminal upgrade and on store staff with 35% turnover, which raises training and change risk. The web front end fits the nine-month and ¥9 million constraints, but the 15-minute CSV sync can oversell stock and the spreadsheets are fragile. The judgement is to treat the web front end as phase 1, not as the strategic end state, with inventory buffers and a later decision on replacement. 'Strategic' does not justify missing a lease-driven deadline.
2. Identify two risks of the lightweight option and propose a specific mitigation for each.
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Risk 1: stale inventory. With 15-minute CSV exports, two customers can order the last item. Mitigation: reserve a per-item buffer (for example, hold back 10% or a fixed two units for in-store sales), cap pre-orders per store per slot, and show 'confirming availability' for high-demand items. Risk 2: spreadsheet and CSV fragility under 35% staff turnover. Mitigation: automate validation of the export (row counts, price checks, duplicate SKUs), send an exception report to a named store champion, and keep a one-page SOP with a fallback phone order process. Both mitigations are operational and do not require the POS API.
3. Define a first-phase KPI set that would tell the board whether to fund the full replacement later.
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First-phase KPIs: (1) mobile pre-order share of transactions, target at least 10% by month 3; (2) average basket size for mobile vs in-store control, target +5% before claiming the 8% assumption; (3) oversell/stock-out cancellations, target below 2% of mobile orders; (4) order-ready-on-time rate, target 95%; (5) support tickets per 100 mobile orders, target below 5. The board should fund full replacement only if adoption and basket lift hold while oversell stays controlled; otherwise the lightweight option is not proving the strategic case.