To think the M&S cyber attack has shown up how awful the shops are?

No they aren't putting stock on the shelves.

But they are also dealing with grumpy customers.

And it's not just the retailer that's dropped staff. It's the warehouse too. So you have hundreds of individual shops and a few of central warehouses - but these warehouses only supply a certain number of products.

The staff in the shop therefore have to know which warehouse each product comes from and then contact each individual warehouse with the right products. And the warehouses have to take multiple calls from hundreds shops often with shop assistants asking for products that come from another warehouse.

The complexity of this and the reduction is staff is MASSIVE.

The thing is that the staff clearly aren't spending time on putting stock on the shelves, so they could be spending that time on writing lists of what's missing instead. Same in warehouses, there'll be staff who are not handling the goods in/out, as nothing is moving.

We do seem to suffer from paralysis in this country when something goes wrong, whether it's motorway crashes, train line blockages, damages to roads or utilities, etc - it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to gets things moving again and during that time, it seems to have become acceptable just to leave people stranded in limbo.

Where are the "Plan B's"? Where are the resilience planners?

And the company at the other end is probably not set up to take orders over the phone...

Just how it was when I worked there 50 years ago!

It's very scary how reliant we are on tech and how easily we can't cope when it's gone wrong.

Power down today and couldn't even make a phone call...

It is possible to make a list without IT.

The problem is partly that companies have reduced staff numbers to levels which are as low as possible for most 'efficiency'. They have the minimum amount of staff they possibly can to function.

This means they don't actually have spare staff to stock take whilst operating the shop...

Its not just retail either. My HA uses SAP which has been installed on the cheap

Okay, but in my local shop,for example, there are no ice lollies. The freezer compartment is empty and someone has put the little labels to say sorry out of stock. As trivial as ice cream might be, that means to order some, as it's clearly not in stock. It is possible to make a list without IT, and it's not the items themselves affected, as shown by the compartment full of frozen veg.

The cost of manual stock takes to restore their stock control system is tiny compared to the millions they're losing in lost sales due to being unable to sell stuff meaning customers are buying from competitors instead. It's insane to deliberately hold stocks in warehouses and not sell stuff just because it'll be difficult and time consuming to get their stock control systems back. It's the tail wagging the dog. The stock control should support sales, not hold them back!

@Paellama because they rely on their IT system to know what stock they have where. Once that information goes to pot, and stock takes aren't being recorded accurately,whether I'm a warehouse or a shop, then they don't know what they have where and they don't know what to order from suppliers.

Obviously this is down to the cyber attack. And there are many sarcastic posts trying to reiterate it.

But how? How is it that some items can be out of stock everywhere (there must be some in a warehouse somewhere?) because of a problem withthe same computer system that allows other things to be delivered and available.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c989le2p3lno

This totally, instead of paying out millions to shareholders and paying a £450,000 salary to their chairman they should have been investing in robust IT systems

Pray tell.. which contractor?

The difference in salaries is why. The India employees are astoundingly cheaper. It's no wonder companies do it if they think they can get away with it.

Yup. I've had a few dozen IT consultant type of clients over the past 25 years and the common theme from them has been gross incompetence of a handful of large IT contracting firms who employ, literally anyone, who can turn on a computer, just to tick boxes and make up the numbers, with a tiny number of genuinely capable IT experts actually trying to do the work and constantly fire-fighting and trying to get the best (or anything actually) out of the staff they're given to work with. The most able clients I've had simply refused to work for these big consultancies as they don't want to be involved with them, and tend to work for smaller firms or directly with the clients.

I've also had "bums on seats" contractor clients working for these big firms who, from talking to them and working with them, are clearly incapable of anything more than the most basic of IT work - people earning several hundred pounds per day, but barely literate and numerate, because the firms involved had to supply "x" number of contractors and don't seem bothered whether they can do the job or not.

I've not been surprised in the slightest when "big" IT contracts like the failed NHS contract go pear shaped as the companies who get these contracts are the ones who employ "bums on seats" rather than competent and capable IT specialists.

^ interesting

There are so many companies that do this( use cheap Indian labour UK staff have to unpick bugs from and sort out the huge amount of issues that come with it), even financial services and the NHS. It’s a massive issue waiting to happen. Why oh why don’t we as a country give incentives to companies to use UK staff. We have so many young people who would excel at coding.

Yep I don’t. I will shop online however there are times when I do need something quick or go into town. Then I just pick the shops that have stock which M&S clearly isn’t and has been clarified. Their loss!

I don't feel sorry for M&S.

The attack was due to shit IT. The contractor they used was one DH has come across before and they have a reputation for being utterly useless.

On company he knows who used them specified a number of IT staff they wanted. But didn't give any criteria for standards of this staff. So they hired anyone they could find in India even if they couldn't code a thing to meet the numbers in the contract.

He's unsurprised this contractor has been involved.

There's a lot of companies that are doing similar and not hiring good quality IT staff or contractors cos they are trying to cut costs and then they wonder why it goes horribly wrong.

M&S probably can reclaim at least some money from the contractor.

I queried this on their Facebook page and got a very unclear answer just a load of waffle. In a different store yesterday and it was the same.
Drumsticks and wings. If they can do these what about the thighs and breasts. Where are they going if they are roasting whole chickens and portioning them at least I assumed that is what they were doing

I'm currently in a large M&S - they've got loads of stock. It's busy with customers. Once I've been to the food hall it'll be clear whether things are getting back to normal.

Unfortunately for you, very many customers prefer to spend their time differently than driving yo and walking around shops which may or may not have their size in stock.

I agree with the OP. Shops in general have woeful in-store stock. I'm a size 8/10, regular length trousers. I like M & S jeans - can I ever bloody find size 8 regular! Other shops are just as bad. They have been since Covid so it's not just the cyber attack.

This - nail on the head. Back in the 80s and 90s, the "big" chains took over the High Street and forced lots of smaller independent shops to close. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as it's the big chains who are struggling due to online shopping that some are really struggling to adapt to cope with.

The thing is, lots of clothes retailers are impacted by the move to shopping online but some still manage to have reasonable stock and size ranges.

Our nearest M&S is one of the biggest in the country but we still rarely found basics like school uniform or gym kit or shoes in a range of sizes. All before the cyber incident.

Equivalent sized H&M, Zara, Mango have all been much better. M&S have been slow to adapt. Slow to see how clothes shopping habits have changed. Slow to respond to feedback. They haven’t even worked out that if basics like underwear are selling steadily don’t just randomly changes the sizing!