Thistle Farms Business Processes

http://thistlefarms.org/

PROBLEM:


Thistle Farms is a social enterprise that seeks to employ the women of Magdalene House in order to give them valuable job training and improve their future job prospects.  The business manufactures and sells natural bath and body products.  This semester I worked on a consulting project for Thistle Farms in an effort to improve their business processes, specifically as they relate to point of sale data capture and storage.  Most of Thistle Farms' sales are made at events held outside of the store at different locations around Nashville.  Currently, product prices are memorized by the women, sales are written down manually, and the data is manually transferred into an Excel database back at Thistle Farms' facilities.  This system poses a macrergonomic issue as the system involves many variables and users.  The basic problem is that the process is far to manual.  From storing pricing information to transferring sales data, the process is completely manual and therefore, error-prone.  The system is not allowing the women to focus on their primary strength, which is interacting with the customers.  Storing price information can more easily and effectively done by a computer than by a human brain.  Because the system is so manual, there is a huge amount of error in the system, and the data that is captured for use in accounting and inventory management is inaccurate and unusable.


SOLUTION:


The solution to these system flaws is to introduce automation to the system so that the women will be free to sell products and interact with customers.  We recommended a mobile point of sale software that facilitates sales with the use of barcode scanners and credit card swipers.  The sales data is wirelessly transmitted back to a server in the permanent retail store.  This system speeds up transaction time, decreasing customer wait time and increasing customer satisfaction.  The system also captures data much more effectively and removes the error involved in human information recall.  Now reliable sales data can be taken from the server and used for it's various purposes.  The new system streamlines business process by taking human factors into consideration.  Machines are used for their strengths, so that the people involved in the system can focus on their strengths.