JCPenney Comprehensive Report
Accounting Information Systems (F13)
December 21, 2013

J.C. Penney is a retailer known for their leading sales in apparel and home furnishings. They strive to offer high quality items at low prices. J.C. Penney was originally founded by a man named James Cash Penney (J.C.P.) in 1902. Early in the 21st century, J.C. Penney operated nearly 1,000 stores in the U.S. as well as in Puerto Rico (J.C. Penney Corporation, Inc., n.d.) and their headquarters are in Plano, Texas. As of February 2, 2013, J.C. Penney had a combined total of full-time and part-time employees at $116,000 (J.C. Penney Employees, 2013).
This company is said to be rated at fifth overall in comparison to the amount of employees at other companies. The total number of employees to currently work in the department store industry is 942,240 (J.C. Penney Employees, 2013). The company has had to do some layoffs in the last couple years due to a big company change that was introduced when Ron Johnson was hired as the new CEO. He came in with a vision of “re-doing” the company to a manner that ran parallel with that of Apple products. When things did not turn out the way he intended and instead of gaining customers, J.C. Penney lost more customers than they could afford and therefore had to let go of numerous full and part time employees.
The diagram below depicts an imaginary data flow diagram of what could possibly take place at J.C. Penney. Their websites does not offer a clear illustration of how their data flows through the company but after reading more into their different departments and operations, one could get a good idea of how it would be.

I~~~~~
Print Statement
I~~~~~
Refill Inventory
~~~~~I
I
I
Inventory~~
~~~~~~I
I
I
I

I
Inventory
I
I

I
I
I
Customer
~~~~~~~~~~~
Ship Goods
~~~~~I
I
I

I
I
I~~~~~~
~~~~~I

I
I

Process Order
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Customer
Transaction
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~I

J.C. Penney has stated that there are numerous risk factors that they could possibly face in the future. Some of their main risks to be aware of include not knowing if customers are going to accept their new marketing and merchandising strategies, their uncertainty of how to respond to any increased competitive pressures from others in their industry, their ability to achieve profitable sales as well as to make adjustments in response to changing conditions (J.C. Penney Annual Report, 2013). Some other risks that the company is facing include their ability to effectively manage their inventory, their ability to react to any possible unanticipated changes in expected cash flows, liquidity, cash needs and cash expenditures (J.C. Penney Annual Report, 2013).
Ron Johnson, the new CEO, came in with some major strategic changes in mind. There is absolutely no assurance that they will be able to successfully implement their strategic initiatives. If they are unable to do so, however, J.C. Penney could face some severe adverse results. When J.C. Penney first started their marketing ideas, they aimed to target women, whose household income is between $35,000 and $80,000. That strategy worked great for the company for years, until recently. When they set their goals to become