V. Recommendations

Nordstrom is a well-known company; the company was built on superior customer service, and today, the company has taken its' core values and is incorporating those values into modern technology. While many big companies witness the fast growth of technology and shy away from it, Nordstrom has decided to take it head on and use it to enhance its business and relationships with customers. However, with that being said, after speaking with Beth Stefanelli we see that there are some points on which Nordstrom could improve on.

As a group, we recommend that Nordstrom needs to improve their mobile point of sale system in order for employees to assist customers faster. The complication with the mobile POS system is that it fails to function properly. It does not always give the employee the most up date information regarding inventory and also customer orders from the online store.  Occasionally, the mobile system freezes up or shuts down while an employee is assisting a customer. Also, Nordstrom fails to train their employees properly with the mobile POS system. These complications cause employees to lose valuable time with a customer and also giving customers inadequate information regarding a particular item he or she is looking for. A solution to this problem could be bringing in a retail inventory management company to figure out a way to keep the mobile POS system more up to date and also making the software simpler for employees to understand. Nordstrom can also incorporate a training class in order to understand and use mobile POS system so employees can use it effectively.

At the end of the night when the store is shut down and customers and employees are all cleared out for the night, hundreds of computers are left to run. These computers run throughout the entire night for approximately 6-7 hours not being used once. There is no benefit to this whatsoever. This is simply hurting the company by running up energy bills. A solution to this problem could be hiring a private company like EnviProt Green IT, who specializes in power management and power saving. This private company would come in to install a very efficient program that will, "take full control of the shut-down, wake-up and sleep modes of your PCs and servers. With a program like this implemented, Nordstrom at Menlo Park saves money and lowers its impact on the environment significantly.

Nordstrom does an entire inventory check twice a year, which is ineffective and also causes Nordstrom to lose money. Nordstrom could also consider doing an entire inventory check of their products so they can minimize theft and loss in their store. A simple solution to this problem is including a quarterly inventory check-ups, this can also help Nordstrom know exactly what’s in their inventory and be more readily available for its customers. This is also a way to encounter act theft and loss in the entire store.