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Zara Case Question 4

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Question 4
The first problem to be dealt with is if the investment is necessary or not, as there are advantages and disadvantages to the choice.

One disadvantage is that there is a risk in the stability of the POS terminal after the OS upgrade, for the reason that the POS application runs stable on the DOS-system at the time. But, after upgrading the OS and porting the POS application, there is a risk of reducing the stability of the POS application due to bugs in the application (after porting). At the same time the investment costs could be avoided if choosing to remain at the old DOS system.

One advantage of upgrading the OS is the fact that the PDAs can become interconnected with other stores or the headquarters. This can increase efficiency as employees will be able to look at the inventory of other stores and search for the products which are sold-out at their own store for instance.

Another advantage is that the MS DOS system became obsolete and unsupported as of 2003, which means that the POS terminal will not be compatible with the POS software, and in such manner a change in the OS is inevitable.

Therefore, we are in favour of investing in a new OS, and the next question is which OS is the best option.

When looking in a short-term view, Linux comes out as the best option, as of €0 license cost and only an annual maintenance fee to be paid. As Zara intends to invest in the OS for long-term period, then UNIX is the best choice for a new OS, in the first place because of the low annual maintenance fee, despite the high license costs. The tables below provide us with the costs necessary for the DOS upgrade of the POS terminals (per store). Software | Type of cost | Value | Windows | One -time license cost | € 140 | | annual maintenance fee | € 30 | | costs/store | € 850 | Unix | One -time license cost | € 160 | | Annual maintenance fee | € 25 | | costs/store | € 925 | Linux | One -time license cost | € 0 | | Annual maintenance fee | €10-€150 | | costs/store | €50-€750 |

Hardware | Value | POS Terminals | € 5.000 | Wireless Router | € 180 | Wireless Ethernet Card | € 50 |

Connectivity(annual cost/store) | Value | High-speed internet connection | € 240 |

Overall programming time required to | number of hours | Value | Port existing POS application to new OS | 15000 hours | € 843.750 | Expand POS application to include: | | | 2.) Lookups of same-store theoretical inventory | 3000 hours | € 168.750 | 3.) Lookups of other-store theoretical inventory | 1000 hours | € 56.250 | 4.) inventory transfers | 1000 hours | € 56.250 | total(1+2+3+4) | 20000 hours | € 1.125.000 |

Time required per store to: | hours | value | Install new POS terminals wit new POS application | 16 hours | € 4.000 | Establish wireless network | 8 hours | € 2.000 | train staff on new POS application | 8 hours | € 2.000 | total | 32hours | € 8.000 |

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