Hot Chile Surfwear has its head office in Cancun and retail offices are spread at 23 locations within Mexico at present. Knowledge Management System would require as a first step to invest in data acquisition mechanism.
Currently the practice is that each store sends some data either in spreadsheets or hard papers to be collated at the head office. In order that this data becomes important information can be translated into knowledge, it is essential that some vital statistics and information be captured periodically. Depending upon the source of the information, we would be classifying this into two categories – internal and external.
Internal Source: This would refer to all the information which exists within the stores and the head office and can be pulled out without any dependence on an external agency (Christopher, J. 1994). Some of the examples are -
 Sales figures at each store
 Customer foot fall at each store
 Merchandise wise sales
 Enquiries for product line unavailable
 Customer Segmentation at each store – by age, gender, personality types
 Salesperson wise sales or units sold
 Productivity rate i.e. Number of people who bought something vs. total foot fall
 Advertising Campaigns/ POS used at each store
 Sales increase post advertising , in-store marketing
External Source: In addition to the above, it would be essential that the company also gathers data from outside agencies, from secondary sources like research firms, market, Television, competitors etc. Examples of such data and statistics would include the following –
 Number of competitor outlets in the region
 Total Market Share of Hot Chile in Mexico
 Most popular Surfwear store in the region
 Sales Trends in the industry
 Growth rate expected over next three years
 Government bulletins and reports
 Focused group discussions of customers, interviews or surveys