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The Black Forest Café: Santa Monica, California  You have recently inherited your grandfather's coffee shop, The Black Forest Café, which is conveniently located on the Santa Monica Pier

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The Black Forest Café: Santa Monica, California

 You have recently inherited your grandfather's coffee shop, The Black Forest Café, which is conveniently located on the Santa Monica Pier. The location of the café is very close to 3rd street Promenade, which is a hub of city activities; shopping centers, a cinema and has many restaurants and modern cafés. The café offers many different kinds of specialized coffees, teas, a full service bakery, and homemade sandwiches, soups, and salads. Your grandfather first opened The Black Forest Café in 1952 and it was a local hotspot for many years. Unfortunately, business has been steadily declining over the last five years. Although your grandfather was an expert at running the coffee shop, it is outdated. There are no computers in the store and all ordering takes place manually. Your grandfather had a terrific memory and knew all of his customers by name, but unfortunately, none of this information is located anywhere in the store. The family recipes for the baked goods and soups are also stored in your grandfather's memory. Inventory is tracked in a note pad, along with employee payroll, and

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marketing coupons. The Cafe does not have a Web site, uses very little marketing except wordof-mouth, and essentially still operates the same as it did in 1952.

Keeping in view the above argument and as the owner and chief operating officer of The Black Forest Café, you will take advantage of your knowledge of MIS to increase profits, keep the business running, and bring the café into the 21st century

 

Q1. (a) Analyze Porter's five-forces model for The Black Forest Café. You also must indicate how you will lower the forces that are either moderate or high, if possible.       (b) Determine which of Porter's Three Generic strategies you will use as you rebuild The Black Forest Cafe for the 21st century.

 

Q2. The case study mentions that your grandfather heavily relied on his memory for supplies, order-taking and built a personal relationship with the customers. Keeping in view that you must rebound in a technology savvy environment; build an MIS system for the Café, where you show how well you can make use of the SCM, CRM and ERP. Make diagrams where necessary. Remember to include all aspects of SCM, CRM and pay a special emphasis on all possible TPS since it's a small business with many transactions taking place

 

Q3. Your grandfather believed in having a personal relationship with customers where he remembered every customer who entered the café. You wish to continue doing that but incorporate technology into it. How can you make use of the social technology, social media and social media networking to promote your business? You can be as creative, while answering this question, as you like.

 

Q4. The case study states that there used to be no record of any information, and whatever information was stored was paper-based, using a notepad. What are your suggestions to improve the data storage and management? What type of DBMS do you suggest? How can the information stored in DBMS help you in social media marketing?