ICT in Tesco's.

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ICT in Tesco's

This essay is going to be about Tesco's and the IT that they use

within the organisation to help them function.

Tesco's is the largest food retailer in the world. Like lots of other

big supermarkets, Tesco's concentrates mainly on building their stores

in out of town locations with petrol stations, cafes and large car

parks.

[IMAGE]

One of the technologies used is a barcode reader. Tesco's was among

the first few stores on the high street to start using barcode

readers. Since then barcode readers are now called laser scanners.

Almost every item that you purchase in a shop has a barcode on the

packaging. These look like a series of thick and thin black lines. The

barcode contains details about the product. It also contains a check

digit, so that the computer can validate that the data has been read

in correctly. The barcode details are scanned into the system by a

laser scanner on the till. The check digit is calculated and compared

to the scanned one. The till beeps if they match.

The first section, highlighted blue identifies the country. The yellow

section identifies the manufacturer, the orange section is the product

code and the red section is [IMAGE]the check digit.

The function of the barcode reader is to read the barcode on packaged

goods, but what it's actually doing in that process is reading the

numeric code at the bottom of the barcode without needing the number

to be typed in. The scanner reads the number as the barcode is passed

through, and as a result of that the price and description of the

products are then obtained from the computer, the sale is registered

and an itemised receipt is produced.

The barcode reader helps electronic communication greatly, because

instead of having to type in the number manually, with a chance of

human error, it's all done electronically and it's very rare for there

to be any mistakes.

Bespoke software is used to transfer the data from the barcode to the

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