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IIM-A to develop retail management software for Nike
By    siliconindia news bureau
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Ahmadabad: IIM- Ahmadabad (IIM-A) has signed an online project with Nike, one of the major sportswear and equipment manufacturers, to develop a software which intends to make Nike's retail management effective and effortless. It also aims at creating a cohesive system based on Graphic User Interface (GUI) in order to offer a user-friendly system of managing the retail store.


"The user can easily access details related to a customer like payment details, purchases made in the past and other details which may aid the store in keeping a track of its regular customers, sales and other important data effortlessly," an IIM-A spokesperson told Business Standard.

The project is expected to be completed by the first week of September and the software will be deployed at Nike's retail outlet in Goa. Sources say that the software will ensure high data security and is less complex due to factors like less control.

The source added, "Earlier the entire exercise, based on MS DOS, was done through a direct entry by staff, which led to cases of losing important data about customers and other security threats. Also, the software used was based on an old model that allowed limited database storage and it was difficult to retrieve data."

According to the new program, the store manager would be provided with a password to access the customers' profile using an ID.

     
   
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Reader's comments(11)
1 One wonders how Nike , the most reputed company in manufacturing sports goods
can commit such a blunder. IIM-A or B whatever may be, is NOT a specialist
agency in Software generation. Management is NOT a [repeat NOT a] specialized
subject. So no management institute whether IIM or not, is a specialized or
expert agency. To build up software package for any type of activities is
absolutely NOT the job of any management institute in India [in US the scenario
is different]. So it is a very wrong and absurd decision taken by Nike. It
appears, the management in such type of international organizations is not
functioning properly. It seems, in the face of severe competition in the global
market, such type of MNCs have lost their head, and are getting bewildered. Thus
they are driven to commit such blunders. I feel very sorry in forecasting their
downfall in the global market in near future based on the this fact of blatantly
incorrect decision.

Prasanta K. Saha, FRSS(UK), CStat(UK), Chartered Statistician, Calcutta, India.
The 30th Aug.,08
Posted by: PRASANTA K. SAHA
2 Hi,
There is nothing wrong in IIM-A writing software program for Nike. The article
does not talk much about the program environment. I wish they use open source
technology (Like Linux, JBoss, Java, Apache, MySql). This will make their effort
more praise worthy as it will also help IT industry to break proprietary
shackles, and deliver cost effective solution
Posted by: rajeshwar
3 Why is everybody upset at IIM A collaborating with industry ? Stanford &
Harvard do it all the time and in fact patent innovations by students. If IIMs
can do it, it will help them financially as well and the money can be ploughed
back into supporting more student - faculty - industry projects.

Keep it up IIM !
Posted by: Deb
4 Great to see a real Industry-Academia interface developing. We'd like to look
into collaborating with IIM-A or any of the other IIMs in order to create supply
chain solutions.How do i get in touch with IIMs team?
Posted by: Arun Kumbhat
5 Is IIM a management institute of Sotware company ?
Posted by: Munish Raghuwanshi
6 Should everybody end up in bits and bytes
Posted by: Ram
7 When IIMs does it, it makes the headlines!!!

This is really surprising. These are applications/features of other CRM
packages, which are implemented by most of the big corporates eons ago. Even the
market for this in SMBs is stagnated.

I would appreciate you not wasting our time posting these articles...

Thanks
Posted by: Irshan
8 oh!!! why are you advertising all these student projects? dont you have enough
news to publish
Posted by: Natarajan
9 Is iim is a management institution or IT Company jusy confused!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Sandeep
10 This is ridiculous, why on earth shud IIM-A create a software for a commercial
company. firstly, it is an Institute, secondly its a management institute.
Are the people of IIM board going cross their field but why and what is that
they want to prove in software side????
Really confused...
Can anyone throw some light???
Posted by: arif
11 Why are you creating a hype like this. Any tech company can create this. It is
just off the shelf that IIM-A is creating one to Nike.
Posted by: A R Sudhindra