Countdown is one of the market leaders in the FMCG industry in New Zealand where the customers are changing rapidly. The author has chosen Countdown for the study as it has a well-known history of success in satisfying multicultural customers in New Zealand and also it is on a continuous look out for the possibilities in growth.
The author has selected two models which are Porters Five Force and Value Chain and has applied these models on Countdown. Woolworths, Progress Enterprises and Countdown supermarket’s web sites are the key resources for this report.
A thorough study of the IT systems in Countdown supermarket has been made by various methods such as personal visits to the branches, oral interviews with Countdown staff and also by studying the resources available on the websites. The assumption that has been made after reviewing all the available resources is that the Countdown is still using a legacy mainframe system for their Payroll management system.
The Author has analysed the company based on the information that has been gathered and aims to make an IT plan. This IT plan would include current and proposed IT systems and its processes. The new IT systems may include CRM, CPFR and web based approach for payroll management.
To enable successful execution of the new IT plans the author plans to move ahead with the planning on SLA (Service Level Agreement) with third party IT vendors, IT Security and plan to mitigate risks. The author has prioritized the proposed
This case analysis will be focused on the company QVC (Quality, Value, and Convenience). We will perform an analysis review, which, will provide a comprehensive insight into the company’s historical and current business structures, strategies and efficiencies in their operations. It will include a detailed SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) (Humphrey) and the primary activities of the Value Chain Analysis (Porter), to provide greater insight into the firms’ competitive advantage. These key concepts will be used to analyze QVC’s business model, define potential challenges and initiate a plan of execution. We will then recommend solutions
We need to have a secure services and network and also it must be available sometime up to 24/7/365. To make sure that we are close to our Service level agreement (SLA) with our clients, we must check our performance to find the bottleneck. After identifying our bottlenecks we can plan and see what changes can improve our performance.
IT organizational restructure includes; hiring 3 more application developers and hiring two more people in the networking team in order to reduce the number of the networking issues for the applications maintained within WW. Application developers will decrease development time of the applications. Current implemented technology for the accounting processes, route optimization, freight tracking and fleet maintenance will need to be improved. All these applications are based on an older technology. In order to improve the overall functionality and to reduce the cost associated with IT requires the organization to implement a cloud computing based ERP solution systems. This system will improve the overall performance and will reduce the cost associated with the implementation. The cloud based applications can be accessed from anywhere and anyone authorized to access the system can access the system easily. The next set of changes that are required in the internal IT strategies are the improvement in the internal processes; all the internal operations are managed in a better way through the new systems. The new systems are targeted to improve the overall operations within the organization (Chand, S 2014). The next change in the IT internal strategy is the IT portfolio. IT portfolio includes implementation of the
Like many of its most profitable competitors, Alcan has grown quickly through insightful series of mergers, acquisitions and rapid product development and launch strategies throughout the major markets it sells into. The company has settled on a highly decentralized divisional business model that has to the point of the case study served them well. Their IT systems are showing signs of massive overduplication of expense, with a $500M level of spending on enterprise applications with SAP being the majority. There are further signs of massive waste in their highly diversified organizational structure. There are 400 systems in the company all dedicated to pricing, a massive duplication of costs, time and effort on the part of IT across the five divisions. There are also over 1,000 concurrent enterprise-class IT systems being used throughout the company at any point in time. Conservatively speaking the company is spending 20% of their total enterprise software spend on maintenance costs alone. This is forcing the CIO, Robert Ouelette, to re-evaluate both the organizational structure and IT systems supporting it. The goals of this analysis are to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the existing application or IT management structure. An analysis of the proposal by Robert Ouelette is also provided along with an assessment of it potential effectiveness in solving the challenges is facing today.
The major goal is to integrate Information Systems/Information Technology with the corporate strategy to use information for better governance and management. This has improved with the connectivity and networking and also the shrinking cost- performance ratios in technology. IT governance thus is a result of the complete merger of computer and communications technologies, like data processing and high advancement in networks, and integrated systems. (Bloomfield; et al, 2000) To this extent the software of the stand alone systems have to be converted to a single functional system for all requirements and the system involves the creation of a network with the following functionality:
Since customer need system for manage their payroll of the company, we have successfully identified
The increased number of IT investment is applied in organization. It is clear that information technology has become the competitive fact in world business. Collaboration is the new trend in business world. No one can deny the importance of information technology application. Besides the profits outcome, the impacts of information technology deployment also create commitment, trust and value. Advanced information system can improve each steps of business process. It enables people to share information, performance task simultaneously and making decision efficiently. IT companies designed different products to satisfy each step of business operation in terms of manufacturing and human resources. Seminole should apply this new IT infrastructure to business operation. Firstly, company can use the transaction processing systems (IPS) to keep track of all business activities and transaction of the organization such as payroll and employee record keeping. IPS also shows all information from internal and external operation. Secondly, Business intelligence systems are designed for decision-making support. Management information system (MIS) is a system that helps managers to keep track of company performance status, which purposed for decision-making and evaluation. Decision-support system (DSS) is purposed for future business decision-making. Thirdly, Enterprise application systems are designed for integrating business process from different functions, such as supply chain
In this assignment I will identify what competitive factors and changes Tesco faces in the retail sector and how it might respond to these under the following headings; retail environment using PESTEL, and competitive environment based on overcoming barriers to entry, pricing, new markets and mobile population. In this assignment I will be talking about how Porter’s five forces are being used by Tesco.
The objective of this study was to compare WestJet’s IT cost, resources, and budget to the industry standards. The observation was: WestJet’s IT was right on target regarding the total number of employees, but there were problems regarding the IT employees, firstly there were many IT employees who started their careers with WestJet and they only knew “The WestJet IT way”. Also, there was a mismatch in the number of employees within the skill sets as compared to other similar sized companies. System operations and procedure were somewhat matching to the industry standard but were not up to the mark. IT budget was the main concern, every month meetings were scheduled among the VPs of business unit and VP of IT regarding the negotiation of the priorities and resources, but business unit VPs were not able to prioritize the things which resulted in pressure on IT unit that eventually caused longer time in the execution of projects. The IT organization at WestJet was Structured as per the IT’s group’s conventional internal function of planning, Building, operating, maintaining and
In this case study “Kerr Deliveries” is a service oriented organization. They are doing courier service. The purpose of this case study is to solve the problem as an IT expert. Without information technology it is really difficult to develop the business. This modern era is about globalization. Company should adopt different system for their business to stay safe in the right track. Robert Kerr is a successful delivery company based on NSW since 1995. I am working as his assistant. In this report i will recommend which computer to buy for the
For the IT Management area, I put a low level of risk assessment. For the information technology management, the company has a specific IT strategic plan, which is consistent with the Company’s strategic plan. In addition, based on the company’s organization cart, I found out the company have a clear reporting and response system. The responsibility for chief information officer clearly classified to four parts, application, operation, information security and database administration. Above all the key aspects we take a review about IT management, the company have a good internal controls for it. There is unlikely happen a risk in this area.
This portfolio focus on what I have learned during the whole IT Strategy and Control paper, a critical reflection of this paper would be provided. This reflection includes the key points, support reference and the demonstration of my own understanding about the paper itself and all of my personal understandings are based on the learning outcome of this paper. In the first part of this portfolio, I would discuss all the key IT Operations Management framework which have been introduced in the paper, the analysis of the processes based on my own understanding would be given. In the second part, analyze processes required for aligning IT infrastructure and operations with the business goals of an organization would be talked about, and I would focus a business organization which has been mentioned in the caselets as a sample. In the third part, some critical evaluate operational IT organizations and their processes against the studied models would be listed and analyzed. In the last part, the recommendations and analysis of my own would be given against those organizations (caselets) which have some problems and current issues arising from the implementation of the IT framework.
The value chain analysis (shown in appendix) was also generated by Michael Porter. This model is referred to “identifying ways to increase the efficiency of the chain” (Investopedia, n.d.). Furthermore, the overall objective is to produce maximum value with minimum total cost and establish a competitive advantage.
This paper will discuss the processes and pitfalls faced by Information Technology managers in today’s world of business. Today’s IT managers need not only be savvy about existing equipment and upcoming technology; but must also understand the budget issues they face and how to properly address them. The IT manager is asked to look into a crystal ball and predict what products will be beneficial and which requirements can be cut from the budget. They must be able to differentiate between the new shiny fad and products that will be a true asset to the company’s visions and goals. An IT budget can no longer be a static number on the company’s finance sheet; it must be a clear vision of the department’s future spending while falling in line with the goals and expectations of the company.
Porter’s Value chain model has clearly influenced the understanding of how the management system works. But in spite of the importance of the value chain model very less is known about the determinants of failure or success through these techniques.