Club IT Paper

Associate Level Material

Appendix C

Club IT, Part 1

Club IT is a downtown music venue managed and owned by Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada. They both graduated with degrees in Business Administration in 2005 and decided to follow their dream of opening a nightclub. During college, they supported themselves by working as musicians; Lisa played jazz violin and Ruben played drums. They learned a lot about nightclub operations from their music experiences, in addition to business principles learned from their studies.

Lisa and Ruben have just completed extensive remodeling of the interior of Club IT and are pleased with the results. The club’s tall ceilings and high-energy lighting creates an ambience of fun and liveliness. They hire live bands on Fridays and Saturdays and have a live DJ Tuesdays through Thursdays; the club is closed on Sundays. The DJ uses a collection of MP3 playlists, including hip-hop, techno, and electronic with some Top 40s thrown in.

Lisa and Ruben run the office and maintain all financial and business-related records. They realize that while the resources they spent on remodeling are paying off well, their information management is struggling. Their next project is a full analysis of their information needs, and to start it off, they have hired you as an intern.

To prepare for your first day of work, you decide to spend a Friday evening at Club IT with a few friends. Your visit is very enjoyable – you have made some new friends, learned some new dance steps, and enjoyed the great band they had. Reporting to work on Monday afternoon, you wonder how much information technology a nightclub club possibly need. You also question whether there will be enough information and technology analysis opportunities to justify your internship at Club IT.

Sitting in the empty club a few hours before opening, you have your initial meeting with Ruben and Lisa. They give you background on the club and an overview of their need to boost their information technology, data management, and decision-making capabilities.

After reading Chapter Two in the Rainer and Turban text, you have seen many real business cases where IT has helped organizations achieve strategic objectives; for example, the real estate industry, which has seen a major transformation with electronic communications and the Web. Although Club IT does not have the IT resources of Target or Sears, it is much more agile and should be able to take advantage of its information base to help build a community with the support of IT.