Costco Is Week 6

Costco Information System Plan

Team B

Edgar Onukwugha, Lisa Walters, Ibrahim Kamara, Debra Phelps

CIS/568

February 9, 2015

Sandra McDavid

Costco Information System Plan

Costco Information Systems Plan

Costco Wholesale Corporation and its subsidiaries (Costco or the Company) began operations in 1983 in Seattle, Washington. In October 1993, Costco merged with The Price Company, which had pioneered the membership wholesale warehouse concept, for consumers and small business owners and formed Price/Costco, Inc., a Delaware corporation. In January 1997, after the spin-off of most of its non-warehouse assets to Price Enterprises, the company changed its name to Costco Companies, Inc. Costco's operating philosophy is keeping the cost down while passing the savings on to their members. Costco is a global company that exceeded 64 billion dollars this past fiscal year, which gives them tremendous buying power to purchase goods and services for less than retail prices, and then pass a percentage of the savings to their members. Costco has proven this business concept to be successful and has structured their business in five processes through operations, human resources, accounting, information system (IS) plan and marketing.

Information Systems

In order to develop an IS plan for the other four processes identified earlier, the organizational strategic plan must be reviewed and aligned with business strategic goals. Costco must define their future goals to fulfill their mission. The strategic plan is a fluid document and making changes along the way and planning for modifications is needed to meet the changing and challenges of the business (Rainer & Cegielski, 2012). It is critical to select a system that is robust enough to meet the future strategic challenges for the company. The business initiatives are the entity that drives the attributes for the IS plan. The IS attributes are to a) provide a database of all private and business members’ data; b)...