Food-Lion MVP Program
Charles A. Kennedy
BUS_120
February 7, 2009
Mr. Belflowers
Fayetteville Technical Community College

Located throughout different parts of the eastern seaboard, there is a popular food store called Food-Lion. The main goal for the store is to provide quality food products at reasonable affordable prices that other stores cannot compete with. With this as their main goal, the store believes it will greatly gain profit and exposure leading to the company growing. Food-Lion is seeking to expand its operations by improving their quality and providing enough quantity. Food-Lion is seeking to take their business in a whole new direction with a Most Valued Product (MVP) program. The proposed system requirements are the system shall have three tiers of users; customers, users, and managers. Users in the “customers” tier represent customers of Food-Lion and account holders. They will be able to view their MVP savings and instantly get other coupon rewards. Users in the “Users” tier represent employees of Food-Lion. They will be able to view their MVP savings from each customer in their area. This would allow them to track pacific items. Every customer will specifically be assigned one account number that will identify the customer within the Food-Lion MVP Program. Whenever a purchase has been made and the customer uses the MVP Card account number, the savings will automatically be credited to customer purchase. When customers want to use their MVP Cards, they will receive a weekly list of all MVP items offered that week. Food-Lion system will allow the option for customers who have lost or forgotten their MVP card, so that they be allowed to still purchase items at MVP prices. There are three methods that an employee can use to search for an account. The three ways are to search by first and last name, the account number, and the customer’s phone number. The account number search method will only populate and provide one result for the customer. The first and last name search method will populate accounts that the customer may have, and the user can choose which account is the correct one to view. The phone number search method will populate accounts associated with the number and the correct one can be chosen for viewing.
Food-Lion system will allow only the users in the management tier to apply any necessary adjustments to customer accounts. Only users in the “Managers” tier shall have access to processing adjustments. An adjustment may be a credit or a debit to an account balance. Whenever an adjustment has been performed to an account, important data needs to be entered to the system to complete the transaction; Credit/Debit explanation why adjustment was made.
Legal Considerations of MVP Program Food-Lion will be conducting their MVP program through the Electronic Commerce. With the legalities that Food-Lion will have to take into consideration involving the creation of the MVP Program. Some of the legalities of the E-commerce include Food-Lion needing to adhere to Privacy and Electronic Communication Guidelines by having to sign an opt-in consent form for making any commercial e-mails and commerce on the system. According to the Information Principle, the business organizations are required to verify specific information about their business that it wants to provide to the recipient on the online service to the E-Commerce Regulations. Food-Lion will need to adhere to regulations set forth by E-Commerce. Any advertising and promotions will strictly meet these guidelines. Business transactions conducted online will require a digital and physical signature to provide security. Any customer who wants to conduct business contracts online will be provided a copy of terms and conditions of the business contracts.
Legal rules mentioned herewith are to be implemented and followed once introduced into Food-Lion regulations and policies pertaining to the company and the MVP program. Ethical considerations of MVP program following the legalities of Food-Lion, the company will need to introduce ethical values for the MVP program. These include some of the following: a customer’s privacy is the most important aspect dealing with electronic commerce. The company will promote and always conduct integrity when dealing with sensitive and personal customer information. No other personal Internet use will be provided on this system, to avoid any possible inappropriate behavior. Other Internet use will be automatically blocked and unavailable for use on company’s terminals. Information posted on the company’s system will be accurate and understandable. The system will be user-friendly for the user to navigate effectively. These are some of the minor ethics needed to be implemented Food-Lion MVP Program involving E-commerce. Security considerations of MVP program to add to the legal and ethical improvements, Food-Lion also needs to add a very critical part in the E-commerce family: security. Security is a serious requirement for the business. The MVP Program will include the following in its security. Food-Lion will need to have their data secure and private. Information is very personal and carelessness can hurt the organization and its customers. Transactions conducted by customers will have to be personal and private. The system will have implemented security software to prevent any leakage of data to unknown people. The system will need to be protected from unwanted hackers, Cyber-terrorism, which is very important when dealing with E-commerce. These security measures mentioned provide only the security that its customers are seeking and wanting to feel a sense of comfort and safety. A customer wants only to have the freedom to shop comfortably. These measures will allow the MVP Program to a successful one. Food-Lion will need to review their finances by conducting a Financial Analysis of the company. This will be conducted to determine what kind of budget will be and is needed to take the MVP Program to a whole new level with these implementations. Analyzing the budget, Food-Lion will be able to compare the revenue and profit from the previous year by the current one and see if the current year has improved in terms of revenue. In fact if it has, this will in turn allow the company to know that MVP Program has been a successful venture for both the customer but mainly the company.
Conclusion
As with any organization starting a new program, there are several and very important steps needed to make it a safe and successful venture. Starting a new venture within any organization can be a scary yet exciting time. It takes carefully well thought planning to implement creative, helpful ideas to improve its purpose on improving ways for the customers to continue their business with the company. Food-Lion is already a successful company that meets and exceed customer’s needs already and by improving their company system will only in turn allow more online traffic for the customer and allow Food-Lion to gain more confidence from its customers and gain growth.
References
Turban, E., & Volonino, L. (2008). Information technology for management: Improving performance in the digital economy (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Effy Oz (2009)Management Information Systems Sixth Edition Thomson Course Technology