Individual Service Request: Kudler Fine Foods
Austin Okoh-Esene
University Of Phoenix
BSA 310
January 20, 2014
Ed Ruppel

Kudler Fine Foods would like to start a program called the Kudler Fine Foods Frequent shopper program. This program will be different than other supermarket programs. Kudler Fine Foods will be offering their customers an experience that is based on loyalty points, but give customers perks such as high-end gifts, airline tickets and specialty foods and wines. The supermarket’s new initiative tracks customer behavior would be based on their purchase patterns and provides customers with new high-value incentives to shop with Kudler Foods. Kudler Fine Foods new program can help the company increase revenues to the business, but they will have to address the potential legal, ethical, and information security concerns that are related to the new business initiative. Since a significant part of the program involves storing customer information, Kudler Fine Foods will need to invest their capital to have a robust information security database to protect their customers from potential hackers. The supermarket brand will also need to create more stringent ethical policies for their employees to follow due to the increase critical information that would be voluntarily given to Kudler Fine Foods staff by their customers. The legal ramifications can easily be tied in along with the ethical concerns. The risk of having stored data that were to be compromised by internal or external entities can be disastrous for the business. To get this program up and running properly, the costs of the upgrades regarding information security, legal and ethical concerns would have to be examined.

Legal To begin with, the Kudler Fine Foods legal team would have to address customer privacy. The company would need to create and release a privacy statement for its customers to ensure that the information given to Kudler Fine Foods would not be shared with third parties. Additionally, Kudler would need to describe to the public why they would need to use the information requested from customers. Kudler Fine Foods personnel will need to be trained in handling important information from customers and to be aware of the importance of keeping the information private and to answer some of the concerns that potential enrollees may have about the new program.
Ethical
The plan that Kudler Fine Foods has for its frequent shopper program is that customers will be willing to give their information to begin receiving benefits. Some of these benefits can be airline fares, vacations and other larger gifts. A newly developed comprehensive ethical policy followed by management and staff would be needed to cover the changes due to implementing this program. To mitigate any costs by possible fraud in the future, Kudler needs to be prepared to start an ethical analysis if valid to do so depending on the circumstances. Investors, and partners with Kudler Fine Foods need to be assured that the advantages of the frequent shopper program go to the customers instead of employees that do not follow proper ethics. If successful as expected, the profits from the program will increase and more businesses would likely want to a partner like Kudler Fine Foods.

Security The cost of securing information from unauthorized use and access would be the most important need for the program to be successful. The customers have to believe that their information would be safe from any criminal activity. Kudler will have to consider the cost to keep the system for being vulnerable from attacks. Kudler management needs to consider the cost of antivirus software and firewall for their network database to protect their information. Management will also have to consider the cost of training their staff to be aware of attackers that use social engineering. Employees that compromise information can be more dangerous than outsiders due to their superior knowledge of the infrastructure. The most important cost that Kudler have to concur will be the technical building process with regard to writing the computer code for the frequent shopper program. Kudler management will need to pay for competent programmers to be able to reduce the presence of computer bugs and for a service contract to maintain the system that enters and sorts the data. Software would be able to fix and issues that may arise after launch that would not add any significant downtime to the system.
FSP Affect On Organizational Structure With the new frequent shopper program, there will be more attention given to the network infrastructure for the business to be able to handle and manage the data properly. Currently the structure has Kathy Kudler as the President with three managers for each location. The Store Operations Director Yvonne Reynolds at this time has a direct chain to the president, but not directly above the store managers. With the addition of accepting critical customer information with the frequent shopper program, the organizational structure needs to change. The Store Operations Director should have CIO (Chief Information Officer) responsibilities and to have a Systems Information Manager under the operations director added to the Kudler Fine Foods payroll. The job of the holder of this position will be to work alongside the managers of each store and to focus employee training and awareness. By still having a direct chain to the president and having a stronger IT influence of operations, it will make it easier to manage the program and will create more efficiency between Kudler Fine Foods management and third party vendors. The frequent shopper program that will be started by Kudler Foods can be a success if the mention legal, ethical, and information security analysis where to be followed and if their organizational structure would be modernized. It is very important to have the shopper program to be implemented without any major problems or complaints. If the program starts well and customers begin to experience the benefits, they will be more inclined to tell others about the shopper program. Management should allow customers to be aware of its privacy policy regarding the use of consumer information. When there are updates to improve the program, management should also let customers be aware with email and/or conventional mail. If the recommendations are followed by Kudler Fine Foods, they will be in position to be able to expand the program and possibly use the increased revenue to add more locations.

Reference:
University of Phoenix. (2014) Kudler Fine Foods Virtual Organizations. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from University of Phoenix.