Week 12 - Chapter 11 - Project Management

Weekly Questions - Project Management

Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

Project Management is the act of organizing resources such as scope, time and cost to bring about a desired result. The triple constraint involves making tradeoffs between scope, time and cost for a project, this is used to analyse whether a projects objectives and goals are being met. It is inevitable in a project life cycle that there will be changes to the scope, time or cost of the project. Time, cost and scope are interdependent. All projects are limited in some way by these three constraints, you cannot change one variable without changing the others. If you increase the timeline of the project, costs will likely increase and scope will increase. Therefore, organisations need to plan adequately to ensure projects do not fail.

Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

PERT Chart (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) – Graphical representation of a project’s schedule, showing the sequence of tasks, the relationships between those tasks, such as, which tasks will be performed, and the completion of tasks.

Shows the relationships of different jobs in all the projects, the proceeding job and subsequent jobs, what identifies what jobs need to happen before other jobs start.

Available: http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/p/pert_chart_expert-88105-1.jpeg

Gantt Chart – a graphical representation of the duration of tasks against the progression of time (i.e calendar). In a Gantt chart, tasks are listed vertically and the project’s time frame is listed horizontally. A Gantt chart is a useful tool for planning and scheduling projects. A Gantt chart is also helpful when monitoring a project's progress.

- Shows the schedule of job completion, what jobs must be done before other jobs start, assigning resources and materials for each job and working out the cost of each jobs.

Available: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/infokit-related-files/Resources/Images/gantt-chart-viewable.

Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success.

1. Managing People – Ensuring conflict doesn’t arise within a team, balancing the needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the team are two of the challenges facing project managers. Project mangers need to manage the development of the team.

2. Managing communications – project managers need to ensure communications within the organization is managed between functions to produce a project. The project manager distributes timely, accurate, and meaningful information regarding project objectives that involve time, cost, scope and quality. The use of planning and scheduling tools such as Microsoft Project, blogs and wikis are communication tools, to inform the team about the projects status.

3. Managing change – ensuring employees adapt to change and react appropriately will lead to a successful project completion.

Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects suceed.

Projects fail because:

- Failure to align project with organizational objectives.

- Unrealistic expectations. Expectations of an organization can be too high and thus an unachievable goal.

Projects succeed because:

- Project sponsorship at executive level.

- Good decision making structure, appropriate and realistic decisions and goals.

Week 10 - Chapter 9 - Customer Relationship Management and business intelligence

Week Ten - Weekly Questions

Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM involves managing all aspects of a customers relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention as well as an organizations profitability. Through individualization organizations can interact with customers and increase their loyalty schemes, through catering for customer needs and preferences on an individualized base. Customers are then satisfied with the service or product and will be repeat buyers. Example, on the Nordstrom website, once a user accesses this shopping website and starts to browse or shop, the company identifies what the customer is looking for and tailors their next visit to their similar needs and wants. i.e if a customer is looking to buy a pair of black high heel boots, the next time the customer visits the website, there would be a section on the website where there would be promotions and latest arrivals of boots and other accessories to match this item eg a clutch. Thus, the company is tailoring the website to individual preferences and tastes. Organisations can increase customer loyalty also through emailing promotions and call centres.

This picture is available: http://misbridge.mccombs.utexas.edu/images/knowledge/en/crm.jpg. This image focuses on customer relationship management, what it is and what it focuses on. That is the primary focus is on customers, and the way organisations focus on customers is through sales, services and marketing. Front office is the interaction with customers on a daily basis, the back office is generating this information from front office i.e sales, profit and analysing it to make future strategic decisions.

Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM and analytical CRM are two components of a CRM strategy. Operational CRM is the day-to-day front office operations or systems that directly deal with a customer for example a customer service system or a sales system. i.e transactional.

Image available at: http://www.radisson.com/rad/images/hotels/CHNSGHNW/Shopping_450.jpg. This is a form of operational CRM, selling a product directly to a customer. This information of a sale is then analyzed. Refer to the picture below.

Analytical CRM supports strategic analysis and includes systems that do not directly deal with customers and are mainly used by managers and executives to make strategic decisions for the company over a long term. Moreover, analytical CRM is collating information from the operational CRM systems and using it for analysis and strategic decision-making. Analytical CRM is based around the concept of data mining, looking at customer trends, strategic goals and other organizational information from a database to generate new information about the business in order to make long term strategic decisions.

Available: http://static-p3.fotolia.com/jpg/00/09/15/76/400_F_9157677_e0r31JwPKhBanRyOFxWTwZ5u5Dgc4JJY.jpg. Analysing information to make strategic decisions.

Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

Marketing Departments

1. List generators – compiles customer information from a variety of sources such as website questionnaires, flyers, website visits etc, and segments the information for different marketing campaigns. After the information is compiled, a company can sort and filter such as household income, education level, and age, and identifies potential and existing customers. Moreover a list generator enables an organization to make strategic decisions.

2. Campaign management systems – guides users through marketing campaigns performing tasks such as scheduling, segmentation and success analysis. Campaign management system looks at cost associated with campaigning, who an organization is going to target, determining costs of inventory, opportunity management, amount of sales customers, provide and suggest how there going to make sales, how they are going to spend money etc.

Image available at: http://www.exilant.com/images/fg_cms_overview.png. Campaign Management system.

3. Cross – selling and up- selling. Cross selling is selling additional products or services to a customer for example if a customer wants to buy shoes, the employee might also sell a bag to match the shoes. Up – selling – increasing the value of a sale. Eg McDonals will ask a customer if they would like to super-size their meal to increase the value of a sale.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJV_UZfX38o. This video provides what is cross selling and upselling and examples.

Sales Departments

Sales force automation (SFA) Automating - is a system that automatically tracks all of the steps in the sales process. SFA products focus on increasing customer satisfaction, building customer relationships and improving product sales by tracking all sales information.

4. Sales management – automate each phase of the sales process, helping individual sales representatives co-ordinate their jobs eg contact management and organize all of their accounts. E.g. calendars to help plan customer meetings and appointments.

5. Contact management – maintains customer contact information and identifies prospective customers for future sales. Contact management systems include such features as maintaining organizational charts. An example is a contact management system will display caller id, name, and notes of the contacts details, this allows the sales representative to go recall the previous conversation and follow up on the previous conversation with this customer. For example a sales representative will phone a customer, saying “Hello Bob, how was your holiday to Mexico?”. Bob feels valued since the sales representative knows his name and details from the last conversation. Furthermore, contact management deals with existing customers.

6. Opportunity management – target sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales. Opportunity management systems determine potential customers and competitors. Furthermore, opportunity management deals with new customers.

How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

CRM components that were built to help address these issues were the sales force automation component, which is a system that automatically tacks the steps in the sales process. This system focused on increasing customer satisfaction, building customer relationships and improving product sales by tracking all sales information.

Operational – day-to-day, transaction type jobs, e.g. list generator, providing information through sorted lists.

Campaign management – performing tasks like planning, scheduling, segmentation

Cross selling is selling additional products or services to a customer for example if a customer wants to buy shoes, the employee might also sell a bag to go with the shoes. Up – selling – increasing the value of a sale. Eg McDonalds will ask a customer if they would like to super-size their meal to increase the value of a sale.

Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business Intelligence refers to the applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to, and analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts. Business intelligence systems and tools allows a business to receive reliable, consistent, understandable and easily manipulated information. Many oranisations need to adapt and meet the high demands and fast changing needs of customers in order to stay competitive, in today’s consumer-centric market. Business intelligence determines information such as; the best and worst customers thereby gaining insight into where a company needs to concentrate on for future sales, identifying exceptional sales people, determining if companies resources are successful and determining the activity in which causes an organization to make or loose money. Moreover, business intelligence is the use of data mining, which is the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by raw data alone, all to support decision making.

Available: http://www.microsoft.com/korea/dynamics/images/screenshotimages/Business_intelligence_circle_page3.jpg. What is B.I. The use of strategical, tactical and operational decisions.

Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem

Challenges:

§ Collecting information

§ Discerning patterns and meaning in the information

§ Responding to the resultant information

§ Failure to recognize BI projects as cross-organizational business initiatives, and to understand that as such they differ from typical standalone solutions.

§ No work breakdown structure(no methodology).

§ No understanding of the necessity for and the use of meta-data.

They have so much data being processed and going around and organizations have difficulties in understand and knowing what their competitors are doing, organizations also don’t know what tactical or strategical tools/goals to make. Business intelligence can reduce the latency in making good decisions.

What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Data mining is the process of analyzing information to extract valuable information that cannot be extracted from raw data alone. Data mining includes, statistics, mathematical techniques and computer science to extract strategic information.

A company using data mining obtains:

- Increase profit

- Better sales

- Better deployment of resources.

- Data mining uncovers business intelligence in vast amounts of data

Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7252045691453600738#docid=-8328334832425023023. Example of Walmart.

Week 9 - Chapter 8 - Operations Management and Supply Chain

Chapter 8 Weekly Questions

1. Define the term operations management
(OM)

Operations management, is the management and responsibility of systems or processes that convert/transform resources into goods and services. That is, identifies strategies to turn inputs into outputs.

Three Foundational Components of Operations Management; Product Design (planning the processes and design of the product or service) Product Development (i.e manufacturing, turning inputs into outputs), Supply Chain (the processes involved, directly or indirectly, in the procurement of a product or raw material). This photo is available on: http://www.ocw.nur.ac.rw/NR/rdonlyres/Global/4/485BFEBE-85DD-49B7-9E93-802DA4390769/0/chp_ops_mgt_foundation.jpg.

Turning inputs into outputs through the implementation of design, plan, scheduling and improvement of the product or service. This photo is available on: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/dt31/TOMI/images/om-model.gif

2. Explain operations management’s role in business

Operations management is responsible for managing the core processes used to manufacture goods and produce services. OM perform the following activities; forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, managing inventory, assuring quality processes, motivating, training employees, and locating facilities. Reviewing these activities for any service will allow a business to understand how an operations management team adds value.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeeTy3YaMu0, to identify and learn more about the role of operations management, how it plays a part in every product and service in the world.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT6LnqNe-NI&feature=related. The significance of operations management in the world and in every business.

3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology


Managers use IT to influence OM decisions, these include: productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. Benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions as OM’s influence over an organization is crucial to objectives and goals for a firm. OM information systems are critical for managers to be able to make strategic decisions. A large amount of information and activity is involved within the role of OM, therefore OM rely heavily on information systems to provide them with the visibility over an organization, that is, for example, processes are either productive or nonproductive. Information systems enables OM to identify:

- What types of resources or employees they need. Also what will be needed and what amounts.

- How much resources are needed or how will be the product or service be designed. How will business processes such as wireless technology track customers, giving real time information to the firm for decision making.

- When will each resource be needed (scheduling) or when will materials be ordered. Further, ensuring adequate inventory is available, implementing a just in time method for ordering supplies.

- Where will work be performed, i.e. OM chooses best locations to work, eg close to transport, close to suppliers.

- Who will perform work i.e. either firms are going to insource or outsource

4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business


Supply chain are sequences or processes involved in the production and distribution of a commodity ie all the links involved, in the procurement of a product or raw material, that is having goods and services moving information backwards and forwards (upstream, downstream). Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. i.e flow of produces from suppliers to manufactures to distributors to retailers to customers. A productive supply chain enables a firm to decrease cost of goods sold and become efficient in manufacturing, supplying and distributing goods and services.

watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1QBxVjZAw. What is supply chain management?

5. List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain


Movement of materials from raw materials to finished goods.

1. Plan (focusing on Customers)– companies must have a plan for managing resources that go toward meeting customer demands for products or services.

2. Source (Supplier) – companies choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products, either outsource or insource. Companies also develop set pricing, delivery and payment with suppliers.

3. Make (Manufacturer) – companies manufacture their products or services, such activities for production include: testing, packaging and preparation for delivery.

4. Deliver (Distributer) – logistics – the processes that plans how a product or service is to be delivered and ensuring effective processes from distributers to retailers then customers

5. Return (Retailer) – companies ensure they have enough inventory and there not defective, organisations can implement a just in time method for inventory. If companies have excess products then they must have a way for returning these products.

Steps of a supply chain - available: http://www.hoyer-group.com/en/images/supplychain.gif & http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39816/ESD-260JFall2003/NR/rdonlyres/Engineering-Systems-Division/ESD-260JFall2003/C63EDF2B-1583-46F8-A430-5A2330821E3A/0/chp_supchain.jpg

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.

Advancements in technology including the five SRM components have significantly improved companies forecasting, scheduling and business operations. Integrated systems provide companies with greater visibility over the supply chain inventory levels. IT’s primary role is to create integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within an organization such as creating tight process and communication between the sales department, the marketing department, etc. This will allow for a smooth, effective flow of information and service of products between customers, suppliers and transportation across the supply chain.

The Supply chain is very complex and it involves movement of materials, information and funds up and down stream along the chain. IT gives firms visibility of inventories, it helps manage complexity & information flows between suppliers are more accuarate and faster. Wireless technologies are helping with inventory tracking and auditing such as RFID.

Supply chain management relies on IT to make accurate decisions regarding each step in the supply chain, i.e, enabling the firm to identify decisions surrounding, forecasting, scheduling, and additional business processes.

Example, imported extranet, each stage of the supply chain companies use electronic data in exchange, meaning systems from suppliers can see systems from manufactures, and triggeres of events such as if too much supply exists, an organisation can hold back supply. This allows for a more efficient supply chain and further reduces cost of goods sold.

Disintermediation refers to the situation when intermediaries are removed from the supply chain, cutting out specific processes within the supply chain. For instance, if you buy a product from eBay, the retail store is not required in the process, thus cost effective and efficient for the customer and firm. IT can identify steps in the supply chain that aren't effective and can eliminate and discover new ways of cutting costs and making a product more effective.