Scenario:
Delicious Designs is a retail clothing store with over 3,500 locations and 100,000 employees throughout the world. In addition to their brick and mortar locations, the company has over five million dollars in sales from their recently launched website.
Delicious Designs is focused on providing the latest trends in fashion to men, women, teens, and children. They have two brands that cater to different customers. The first brand focuses on money conscious consumers who want quality clothing at an affordable price. The second, higher-end brand, is for customers who desire the highest quality clothing and the latest fashion trends.
Delicious Designs' Slogan: "Great shoes, great shirts, great service."
Delicious Designs' Mission: Provide quality fashions to individuals throughout the world, great customer service for all patrons at all locations and online, increase shareholder value, foster a positive environment that promotes teamwork and co-operation between employees.
At the most recent strategic planning meeting the executives of the organization outlined the following goals:
1) Increase revenues by at least 10% annually over the next five years
2)Open 200 additional stores throughout the world over the next three years
3) Expand operations in three new countries in South America this year
4) Improve communication and operations between the central corporate location in Chicago and the other satellite offices and stores throughout the world.
Corporate IT Strategy:
Leverage IT in an effort to improve communications between the corporate headquarters and satellite offices/distribution centers, shorter just-in-time inventories for widgets to distribution centers and from distribution centers to customers, and easier access to corporate records and customer accounts for employees in distribution centers and salespeople while traveling.
This organization is currently debating among three information technology projects to implement. Although three projects have been identified as important for the organization, they can only afford to implement one of the options. You need to select, research, and plan implementation of the best option. Throughout each unit of this course you will be completing the steps in this process.
Chosen Project:
Implementation of a Wireless Network to connect offices, stores and sales people in the field. Wireless Networks provide organizations with the ability to have communications and share information from internal and external locations and makes tracking inventories faster by having access within one's warehouse. However, Wireless Networks need to have access locations / hubs that are either installed or leased for access and systems, such as laptops or PDAs, to access information remotely.
Other Projects:
Implementation of a Collaboration System to improve communication among internal employees located throughout the world. Collaboration Systems assist organizations by providing readily accessible web-based or local area network-based communications between corporate and satellite locations, and for those at remote locations within the field (e.g., salespeople on the road), provides functionality for both synchronous and asynchronous communications, makes sharing of information and working in teams convenient, and provides an archive for all collaborations. However, Collaboration Systems require the implementation of a new software system and the necessary training for all employees.
Implementation of a CRM (Customer Resource Management) System to improve service to customers by tracking customer purchases at both the brick and mortar stores and online. Customer Resource Management (CRM) systems provide seamless access to customer's information, ability to leverage this information quickly for trends and analyses while working with customers, and well organized information that is retrievable from multiple access points. However, CRM systems often require an organizational wide implementation, which may replace already proven systems, would require substantial installation time for mapping existing data, and significant training time for all employees.
Task:
Develop a proposal for the "Implementation of a Wireless Network" to connect offices, stores and sales people in the field and discuss what the benefits of implementing this project will be for the organization. Compare this with the other options listed in the attachment and address how this technology fits the mission of the organization and how it will help Delicious Designs to achieve the goals that were set in the strategic planning meeting.