Summer Internship at K12

Final Report
On

Easing the inventory management and distribution through IT and workforce management

By

Sonam Patel- 21PGP235

Organization
K12 Techno Services Pvt. Ltd.

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CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL

This internship report based on the SIP project entitled as “Easing the inventory management and
distribution through IT and workforce management “ , is hereby approved as a creditable study in
management carried out and presented in a satisfactory manner to narrate its acceptance as
prerequisite for the Post graduation in Management studies.

Summer internship report examination committee for evaluation of Summer Internship Report

Name Signature

1. Faculty Examiner

2. PGP Summer Internship Coordinator

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CERTIFICATE OF INTERNSHIP

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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 : ACKNOWLEDGMENT ................................................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER 2 : ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER 3: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 7
3.1 General.......................................................................................................................................... 7
3.2 Function ........................................................................................................................................ 7
3.3 Problem Statement ....................................................................................................................... 7
CHAPTER 4: DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANISATION ...................................................................................... 8
4.1 ABOUT K12 ...................................................................................................................................... 8
4.2 BUSINESS MODEL CANVASS ............................................................................................................... 8
4.3 THE KEY ACTIVITIES– ........................................................................................................................... 9
4.4 THEIR PRODUCTS ................................................................................................................................ 9
4.5 K12’s RESOURCE MANAGEMENT- .................................................................................................... 10
CHAPTER 5: PROJECT .................................................................................................................................. 11
5.1 MY ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AS AN INTERN- ........................................................... 11
5.2 THE PROJECT- .................................................................................................................................... 12
5.2.1 Work on daily basis- ....................................................................................................................... 12
5.2.2 Work on weekly basis- ................................................................................................................... 13
5.2.3 THE STORE -.................................................................................................................................... 13
5.2.4 THE PROTOCOLES - ........................................................................................................................ 14
5.2.5 THE UNIFORM MARCHANDISE - ................................................................................................... 14
5.2.6 MEASUREMENT PROCESS- ............................................................................................................. 15
6. CHAPTER 6: REPORT ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................... 15
6.1 PROBLEMS WITH THE DEPARTMENT-............................................................................................... 15
6.2 ISSUES WITH ORGANISATION ..................................................................................................... 16
CHAPTER 7: RESULTS, CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION .............................................................................. 17
7.1 MY CONTRIBUTION- .......................................................................................................................... 17
7.2 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 19
CHAPTER 8: RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................................................................................. 19

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CHAPTER 1 : ACKNOWLEDGMENT

My SIP experience has been full of interesting and learning challenges which I could only overcome
because of the people around me and who availed the different situations for me. Hereby, I would like to
thank IIM Raipur for giving me such an opportunity to explore the corporate life during my MBA journey.
It added another gem in my experience workbook. Also a special credit to Mr. Ashish Kumar who has been
my mentor first and managing director later, who guided me through the internship and enabled me to
make good use of this opportunity. As an intern in K12, this organization which includes the people within
it, has given me a consummate experience of work culture and professionalism. This thank giving will be
incomplete without mentioning my team which was responsible for the operations in my branch. Thereby
I would like to thank my manager Mrs. Seema Gowda Ma’am and Operations manager Mrs. Latha Reddy,
who has been a consistent confidant and supporter.

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CHAPTER 2 : ABSTRACT

My project deals with easing the operations of my company via workforce management and IT
infrastructure. It primarily counters the issues that were faced by my hiring company during the peak time
of sales. It concerns to the issues related to different department in general and distribution department
in particular. The scope of this report presents a brief about my learnings, growth and contribution during
this course of my internship and defined project in K12 as an operations intern. It will include my
understanding and experiences in the organization within the specified roles. The primary focus of this
report are K12’s Operational activities, problems regarding it and my analysis of them with solutions.
There also will be a cursory introduction on K12 Organizational structure, Growth perspectives and
recommendations.

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CHAPTER 3: INTRODUCTION
3.1 General
As India is growing country the search for better in every field is even greater. It has no exception for
education industry too, In India where taking education is fundamental right government keeps spending
more and more every financial year but the quality education is yet to be attained. Wherein in such
conditions private players has taken the cudgel in their hands and showed the better way ahead at least
to the people who can afford. However, government’s initiatives have also played a role for these private
players to thrive in education industry.

Apart from schooling there are other needs of our youth that is external educational support to pass in
any exam that is coaching classes. This sector is also growing at a fast pace. For students to enter and
excel in the field they want to go, Coaching classes have played a great role like Akash, Fitjee, Byju,
Unacademy etc.

3.2 Function
The race of different examinations and career making has led to another section that is preparing apt
material for kids to pass the exams. Majorly it is seen that the players try their hands in one of the sector
of the industry, there are less examples of such players that can take more than two tasks in their hands.
For example Byju’s- it is centered towards providing better coaching and tuition services whereas it barely
provides schooling or any degree. Even probably it is trying to concentrate only on these two services by
acquiring Akash, Whitehat Jr, Osmo etc. Wherein it provides material and classes to up skill the students
from pre-k to the professional people.

3.3 Problem Statement

Primarily the services that K12( recently entered) is providing are concerning this industry that is
educational service, However It enroots itself in all the administrative activities that an educational
institute will require that are Books distribution, uniform distribution, transport, Campus cleanliness etc.
This is where the catch is, engulfing all the activities in one’s work horizon is somewhat rewarding and
tricky at the same time. So many verticals in the same organization makes the lower level of execution
fields less controllable and more organic. This results in heavy workload and different execution
protocols followed in different branches under same head company, which makes the branches distant.

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CHAPTER 4: DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANISATION
4.1 ABOUT K12
K12 Techno services was incorporated in 2010 under companies’ act 1956. Its branches are over West
Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka wherein their major customer is Orchids International School which
includes all its branches. There is a nominal veil between the schools and K12. Since almost everything is
regulated by K12. K12 is primarily an educational and academic support services provider but for Orchids
schools it has greater to authority to change or create any procedure according to its wish.

Moreover the administrative people of K12 has always kept it asset light by giving the major chunks of its
work to its partners. The partners have a major equity from K12 which eventually gives higher hand in
their administration and if they get profitable K12 also has its share of profit in it. K12 has its own
manufacturers, vendors and distributors whom it itself has funded.

4.2 BUSINESS MODEL CANVASS

Fig. 1.1

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4.3 THE KEY ACTIVITIES–

K12 is primary is primarily an asset light company-

 End to end school management under Orchids International School which includes 44 branches
and 31000 school.
 Providing Curriculum and IT structure to 101 institutions.
 Facilitates online tuitions, Do It Yourself kits and SBS
 Provides preparation material for IIT and CA-CPT tests.
 AOL school – a startup by K12.

4.4 THEIR PRODUCTS -

 Sparkle Box- Sparkle box is a company which is indirectly handled by the same people who run
K12. It is an online store therefor it is open for all the institutes who want to buy it. The company
pitches about the product to the different institutes. This is to crack a deal by taking contractual
promise by these institutes to make it part of the academic course that they will mandate for their
students. K12 make it compulsory for Orchids’ students to buy these books only. From this
business only the company makes a turnover of around 14cr.

 Unleash- This is another production line by another company that specialize on making the
languages books. These books are on major languages like English, Hindi, French, Spanish etc.
These books are also pitched to the different institutes so that they get the tender for the bulk
production.

 PLUFO- This is an online class platform availed by K12 for the students in orchids school. It makes
the online learning easier and fun learning.

 Eduvate- This ERP is customized by K12 to maintain the whole ecosystem of the school and the
institutes who buy this from them.

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However, the catch is here, since there are many branches and K12 has been an adamant to integrate to
everything. Scaling the business model of K12 becomes difficult when it comes to manufacturing of the
product and its distribution. For this proper demand and supply network should be there with good
inventory management.

4.5 K12’s RESOURCE MANAGEMENT-

 GreyTHR – It is the ERP system that is to regulate working hours of employees. This ERP was really
productive because nobody had to speak anything to anyone regarding their timing for coming
to office, this ERP was connected to biometric which allowed it to check and give data for monthly
salary depending on the time an employee has spent in the organization. Also employees had a
great satisfaction since if you are doing overtime, it is being recorded also.

 Eduvate - It is the ERP system where a consumer get registered and an identification number is
given. By this number one could know by which branch a student was registered and had been
studying.

 ZOHO - Zoho has been a boon to the companies like K12 who has to handle all the operations
from top to bottom. It gives most of the service that are required by a company with high
operations like providing services and goods simultaneously. In Zoho inventory books all the data
related to books and uniform that are distributed and all the stock that is received by a particular
branch.

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  JODO - During covid period there was great disruption for the companies which did not have an
integrated online payment platform, For oK12 too this was a challenge thereby they came across
this JODO platform and made the admission process even simpler.

GreyTHR Eduvate Zoho Jodo

Employees Students Inventory Consumers

Employees Sales Sales

Fig. 1.2

CHAPTER 5: PROJECT
5.1 MY ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AS AN INTERN-

On 11th April 2022 I began my internship as an operations intern in K12 Techno Services. After being
incorporated officially in the organization I was assigned one of the K12 branches that were working for
Orchids schools (one of the prestigious schools), On 12th April I was given the introduction of my role as
an intern in coming 2 months by Operations Head Latha Shetty. As per the introduction I will be working
under her and during this internship I am supposed to build a good understanding of operations of K12 in
the school by working in every department of the school. I am particularly inclined to work in accounts
department during this internship. However Areas of my work during the whole internship will be-

1. Sales
2. Inventory Management
3. Customer Handling
4. Accounts
5. Coordination among these department and the Head quarter

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In each of these departments I will be given one week to understand the process. I am allowed to give
suggestions and change the process for its betterment. However everything that I want to change will
require approval of the heads of the particular department.

5.2 THE PROJECT-

As an operations intern within two weeks I was assigned uniform department. My duties as per the assigned
department –

 Supervising the distribution process

 Doing audit and reporting the discrepancies
 Maintaining the records
 Curbing the inventory leakages
 Raising invoices for the distribution
 Handling Parents’ grievances
 The Uniform Department

5.2.1 Work on daily basis-

1. Taking Measurements of the students- K12 made it mandatory that every student who has paid
will have to give measurements based on which uniform of the fitting sizes will be dispatched to
them. There is a trial room in the store where students take trial of different sizes and quote the
sizes that they want to take to the measurement takers.

2. Making acknowledgment slips- On the counter there will be a person to make acknowledgment
slips based on the sizes that the student want and the state of a particular piece of uniform, like
Issued, Pending and Exchange.

3. Excel Updating- In every branch primarily excel sheets are updated to keep the track of what has
been distributed and what is left pertaining to every student who has made payment. The
identification number is generated by the ERP system ( Eduvate) that register every student.

4. Maintaining the vouchers for the sales- To vouch whether one has paid or not, voucher keeping
is still followed in the organization. It is the responsibility of the distributor that s/he should justify
the sales whenever asked for.

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 5. Customer handling- Since the stores are in the school campus only therefore parents come there
frequently for complaints and grievances that they have regarding uniform. Their doubts and
issues are solved there in the store only.

5.2.2 Work on weekly basis-

Auditing the new stock- Every other day new stock used to come, that stock comes with delivery challan
and quantity mentioned. That quantity has to be checked whether in physical stock it is there or not. Any
discrepancies have to be reported to HQ and with pictures for justification had to be taken.

1. Updating the records – Generally it has to be done in the organization according to the rules but
in my branch there was no stock updating and prior knowledge of inventory that is available. So
whenever you want to know whether a particular piece of particular size is available or not, you
have to go to the store find the box where that piece is kept and see if its available or not.

2. Reconciling stock report with distribution- when the distribution happens there are many
possibilities that can happen due to which stock in reports and stock in reality may differ. Due to
this it has to be reconciled time to time to curb leakages

3. Checking the availability- Once in a week all the uniform pieces and their different sizes were
checked to confirm their availability. The same is reported to the HQ.

4. Making a request report- On the basis of availability, a report is made wherein branch requests
those stocks of which it is falling short. Based on this report further stocks are dispatched for any
branch.

5. Maintaining the work force- The workforce in the branch is not skilled, and in uniform
department there was a new worker every day, to bring standardization in the process there had to
training of each worker which will make them understand the process. Also there was high
shortage of workforce. And for uniform department there is always a need of workers as there is
work of audit, work of taking measurement, store room maintenance, making acknowledgment
slip etc.

5.2.3 THE STORE -

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There were two stores one was for uniform and the other one was for books. For uniform the store was on
first floor and scheduled. There is a trial room and sample pieces in front area with a cabin to attend the
customers. In the back side there is keeping of stocks.
Moreover, to understand the whole operation in this department one has to understand the uniform
parameters for the students studying under the school. The rules regarding the uniforms are-

S.no Pre-Primary Q. S.no Primary Q.

1 Yellow T Shirt 3 1 Maroon T Shirt 3
2 Denim Pants 1 2 Denim Pants 2
3 Denim Shorts 1 3 Blue Sports T-Shirt 1
4 Green Sports T-Shirt 1 4 Blue Sports Track Pants 1
5 Green Sports Track Pant 1 5 Pullover 1
6 Pullover 1 6 Socks 2
7 Socks 2 7 Bag 1
8 Bag 1 8 Shoes
9 Shoes 1

5.2.4 THE PROTOCOLES -

In the school there were some parameters that have to be followed once a kid takes admission, those are-

1. New admissions have to buy the uniform in whole set, they can’t leave any uniform piece. They
can buy extra but a full set has to be taken as it is.
2. It is mandatory that a student take measurement and then collect the uniform, parents alone can’t
take the uniform.
3. Bag is mandatory for new admissions.
4. Old admission can customize the set according to themselves, Bag is also optional for them.
5. Once a kid passes pre-primary, he has to change the uniform from yellow T-shirt to maroon ones.
6. Also one has to wear Blue colored sportswear once he passes pre-primary.
7. Payment receipt is compulsory for taking measurement of a kid.

5.2.5 THE UNIFORM MARCHANDISE -

The uniform department is overwhelming in the whole operations of the branch because of the quantity of
the SKUs that they have. There are majorly 7 pieces for pre-primary with an average sizes for each of them

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are 13. In total there were 169 SKUs. To maintain inventory of such big number of SKUs has always been
a big task for the branch considering the constrained space.

5.2.6 MEASUREMENT PROCESS-

Since K12 makes it mandatory that students only have to buy the uniform from the school stores and thereby
makes most of the situation. They earn great margin on every piece of uniform, and to justify that good
quality of apparels are given with a compulsion to try the uniforms out in the stores only so in case
something is not fitting then and there it gets resolved. There are steps for the measurement –

1. The student has to shoe the payment receipt with clear and right mention of the pieces and the
quantity they want.
2. They have to try each and every piece of the uniform.
3. After trial they have to quote the sizes they want to the person who is making the acknowledgement
slip.
4. After the receptionist mention the sizes and the pieces a student has taken, the student’s parents
have to sign the slip and check the uniform for whether they are given the right sizes or not.
5. No exchange is entertained after 5 days of dispatch.

CHAPTER 6: REPORT ANALYSIS

6.1 PROBLEMS WITH THE DEPARTMENT-

Since the department is one of the major part of revenue, it is likely that problems will be there. And
during the SIP I was majorly focused on lessening the issue that the department had, that are as follows-
1. Less workforce leads to enhanced waiting time for parents. This is because every student has to
give trial of the 6-7 uniform pieces, and for every piece there are on an average 3 trials that means
the person who is taking the measurement has to attend the student 7*3=21 times. And for them to
try one piece there is a minimum time of 50secs and maximum 3 minutes. With this calculation
minimum time taken by a student to try a full set of uniform is 17 minutes (21*(5/6)) and maximum
is 1 hour. This shows the extent of waiting time that parents had to go through.
2. The trial uniform pieces were not kept on defined places rather in a heap. This made the
measurement taker muddle through all the pieces to find the right one, which again increased the
queue timing

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 3. Due to less space the inventory management was very difficult in the stores.
4. There used to peak hours when parents used to come to the store, And the waiting time for each
parent increases, which results in frustration among the parents resulting in dissatisfaction.
5. No beforehand knowledge of the inventory that is distributed, pending and available.
6. Inconsistency in the stock dispatches from the headquarters leads to prolonged interaction with
parents and on an average 3-4 visits by them.
7. Creating customers on Zoho, making acknowledgment slips, Storing the payment receipts,
updating the excel with same sizes, making the invoices for the same on ZOHO, led to redundancy
of work and pushed the need of workforce further.
8. No proper communication between accounts department and distribution department. Which led to
the discrepancies in their data of people who paid for the uniforms and who actually have collected.

6.2 ISSUES WITH ORGANISATION

Apart from the uniform department I had the opportunity two weeks I was being circulated in every
department, few issues I came across with the management. Those are as follows-

 Improper Delegation of work – Since K12 is a growing company, there is considerable workload
which results in informal communication and informal work delegation. No clarity in work limits
results in frustrated workforce, which is counterproductive.

 High Iteration Rate- the Company has faced and is facing high resignation even from passionate
people. The very reason is less satisfaction among employees, which gives

 Discrepancies in product- There is less quality standarisation in K12 as different vendor keep
changing the quality to increase their margin. Also due to Covid situation there was a big gap and
hike in raw material which resulted in defection of vendors.

 Demand Supply Mismatch- There are 25 branches of orchids and in every school there is uniform
and book distribution. There is limited space and there are different requirements based on the sizes
and uniform pieces particularly. The inventory mismatches result in unnecessary stock which
requires space. Most of the time there was no heed paid to what exactly a branch has asked for,
instead whatever used to be present they used to deliver to the branch.

 Less Space- since K12 has vision to provide all the services that is needed in an educational
institute single handedly. Thereby all the services related to distribution happen in school campus
only. However, The schools that K12 rented were primarily built to conduct classes but under K12
stores were also needed in the campus. Moreover no separate construction was made, only some

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 classes were vacated and inventory is kept there. This resulted in congestion of space and inventory
mismanagement.

Photograph 1: Store

 Redundant Work - K12 tried its hand in IT also, they made their own ERP system that will manage
their resources wherein every student and employee is registered. But with less experience in IT
K12 could not scale up with their own ERP, thereby they bought services from EDUVATE and
used their ERP system. But now they maintain both the ERP systems know as old ERP and new
ERP in the organization. The same information has to be uploaded twice in the ERP system
manually, that creates unnecessary workload.

CHAPTER 7: RESULTS, CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

7.1 MY CONTRIBUTION-

1. Sample uniform pieces were kept handy and arranged –

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For the assistant workers it was very important that they know where the particular piece of uniform is,
they should not struggle to find it. I primarily made a student locker available over there with only few
pieces of uniform in each locker with the sizes mention over the lockers. Also it was made necessary for
the assistants that they put the uniform in the right places, so the other worker can come and find the same
thing on the place. This reduced the queue timing and workload of the workers.

Photograph 1.1: Before trial Photograph 1.2: After trial

arrangements arrangements
2. Two trial rooms were introduced-
The more number of trial rooms the lesser would be the queue timing for the parents. For this a separation
in the same trial room was provided which made two students take the trial at the same time.

3. Spread Sheet Model-

To know the distributed, pending and available, the previous sheet that is manually maintained in the branch
was connected to a spreadsheet model, which updates itself as per the data fed in the manual excel sheet.
This helped in inventory management as beforehand we knew what are the uniform pieces that are pending,
distributed and available. This helped us predicting the future demand.

4. Bulk uploading of invoices to lessen the work redundancy-

Whenever the invoices are to be raised every item has to be selected and saved in the particular customer’s
invoice. For every distribution first the customer has to be created and then the invoice for their purchase
is made. But considering the peak time of school reopening there used to be 50-60 distribution every day,
which leads to backlog of invoices. The backlog used to go to the number of 300-400, which was very
difficult to overcome in short period of time. For that bulk uploading was used after refining the data in
excel sheet on ZOHO.

5. Automatic customer creation from accounts –

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On making communication with the accounts department, they made changes in the ERP system so that
whenever a customer has paid for something his account is created for the purchases. There was no need to
separately create customer and then make invoices on their name.

7.2 CONCLUSION
K12 as a separate company has a great potential and a great idea to tread the path of success. It has asset
light structure, proper standards to follow and they are also successful in giving brand name to the school
chain they are operating. It can be a unicorn in the next decade. However, there was a big gap in its growth
during the covid-19 which disturbed its operations and all of sudden pressure of opening the school jolted
the management a bit. There are many serious problems like employees dissatisfaction, change of vendors,
discrepancies in products and supply mismanagement, but over a period of time it can be resolved. The
only thing that concerned me is their ownership over their own sellers, which are their own startup. K12 in
a way does not want to any scope of third party, which implies that they themselves have to handle the
manufacturing, distribution, imparting educational services, providing HR solutions etc. Which is making
their operations a big task to manage. Which eventually causing mass dissatisfaction from their customer
base. It needs to be curbed. K12 should focus on the things first that they can do really good and then look
for other avenues, till then they can hire third party. This will insure not only employees’ satisfaction but
also save the brand from dilution

CHAPTER 8: RECOMMENDATIONS

1. K12 has shown exceptional growth in before covid-19 period. The disruption was there this
company has sailed through the odds considerably. However, due to mismanagement in supply
chain has somewhere jolted the organization and it is has been ignoring customer satisfaction. In
Bangalore the brand value has played great role in downturns of the company, but if the customer
satisfaction is not given proper attention this will result in long-term revenue loss.

2. Discrepancies in the inventory should be checked and feedback system should be improved and
should be taken seriously.

3. Maintaining two ERP systems for the same purpose is not doing any good to the organization
instead the workload is increased, moreover for backup they already have data in accounts
department.

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4. Store managers need proper training, because these are the people who can curb the leakages of
inventory. Basic Excel and average proficiency in the ERP system should be taught to these people
rather than letting them doing the work of assistants.

5. The space crunch is a real problem especially when the organization want the whole distribution is
to done in the school campus. Extra floors should be built and should be kept separate from classes
of students.

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