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IS440Deliverable3example.docx
IS 440
Mao Gao
Yunpeng Xu
Deliverable 3
Project Management Professional
The Global Trading categorized their company into three businesses. infrastructure management, customer relationship, and product innovation. The purpose of the infrastructure management is to reduce cost. The Global Trading is the company that cares about the quality of their products, so they try to reduce cost by renting cheaper warehouse in urban area and hiring less employees. The goal of the customer relationship business is service. Customer service has always been first priority in a business. But since the Global Trading is not a really huge business company, they are trying to reduce spend. Therefore, they did not set up customer service online chat. The customer service they have is through phone calls. Mostly, whoever is available would pick up the phone, and answer the questions for customers. The goal of product innovation is speed. They have to create more new products to attract their customers. The Global Trading is trying find out what type of products their customers need the most and put more new products on the shelf for their customers to choose.
8 Areas in Managing staff
Every company has a different way to manage their staffs. The Global Trading recruits new employees by posting hiring information on different platforms online, and newspaper. Then, they interview the candidates, and select the candidates they wanted. Since The Global Trading is a medium business company, the Global Trading has a small group of Human Resource department. They select the candidates and decide the salary for new hires. Every new hire has 3-4 weeks of training depending on how fast the new hire learns. They do not have a complete computer training program. Instead, the boss would assign a experienced employee to stay with new hires everyday to teach new hires about their jobs. The manager will have a meeting monthly with employees talking about how did they do every month, and coach them what they suppose to do to make it right. Then, they would do a performance appraisal to summarize the total items sold, the type of product sold the most and least. He would assign works to employees as well.
Project Management
The CIO Andy who is in charge of the various elements of a project are properly coordinated. As well as all the requirements that included in the project. He will make sure everything in the project they are doing meets the requirements and on time. There is another manager in that team who is in charge of controlling the budget to make sure everything they purchased is under the budget. Also, she checks the quality of the products to ensure they are in high quality. Human resource department will make sure they hire enough employees to support the project. Since they use a third-party tool for database, the third-party would take care of the online risk of the tool.
Risk Management
There are three steps of risk management. Assess the risks, mitigate the risks, and adjust the project management approach. For assess the risks, the Global Trading tries to follow the decision tree to determine the risks. Then for mitigate the risks, it involves identifying, evaluating, prioritizing, and implementing. The CIO Andy is the person who identifies the risks of the project. When he thinks there is an unsafe situation, he usually brings it up during the meeting, and let every employee discusses the risks, and then make decisions. Lastly, for adjust the project management approach, the Global Trading would adjust the detail of the project if there is any high risks.
Relate what security needs they have
The network sales department of Global Trading Unlimited has just started, because it is the network sales so most of the funds will be transferred to the online accounts. It needs a lot of network security measures to ensure the security of the funds of the account. The network security measures that are needed now are protection against attack-type viruses, customer data security and some hacking organizations. For enterprises, the security of user data is very important. If they are stolen by hackers, companies will greatly reduce the trust of customers.
Relate the pillars of security
There are 5 pillars make up today’s security techniques, they are Authentications, Identification, Privacy, Integrity and Nonrepudiation. Global Trading Unlimited just use several of them such as Authentications, Identification and Privacy. In their network department, if you want to log in to view any of the company's information you need to log in to view the account, which means that you first need to authenticate your identity to view company information. Then it will allow you to view the information within your permissions based on your account permissions. If some of the data exceeds your account privileges, you cannot view it. At the same time, the privacy of the customer is very important. If there is no special situation, the company cannot disclose the user's information to others.
Relate what the company does in terms of the scope of security management
In the scope of security management, Global Trading Unlimited uses personnel security, application security, operating system security and network security. The personal security is mainly the staff's account rights, and the resources that can be used according to different levels of authority are also different. Application security is mainly the use of procedures in the employee's operating procedures and the use of security tools to eliminate security risks. Operating system security is through the Firewall and other security measures to ensure the safety and normal operation of the system. Cyber security is also one of the most important aspects. It is mainly to avoid malicious destruction, leakage, and change. The main measure it takes is the control of the other side, which can isolate the vast majority of attacks.
Relate what technical countermeasures they employ
The technical strategy of Global Trading Unlimited for security measures is to establish a backup data center so that it can guarantee its integrity even if the data is lost. It also uses online and offline data storage to prevent potential data disasters and recover data quickly.
Relate what technology they take into account that can support decision making
They usually make decisions based on market sales and customer feedback. At the same time, they will also collect the type of customers like, and then according to the preferences of these customers for the next quarter of the purchase. First, they will sell new furniture at some retail stores, and then make final decisions based on sales and customer feedback to increase purchases. They will also enter several different types of furniture, and it will choose the type of home with the highest sales volume as the flagship product for the next quarter.
Relate Simons Theory
According to Simon’s theory first step intelligence, Global Trading Unlimited made the decision based on the previous quarter's report and customer feedback. Such a comprehensive consideration can make the most appropriate decision. The second step is the design, which means that you need to select several different types of products to sell at the same time, and which type of sales will be the highest in the end. The third step is to choice, according to the second step to select the product with the highest sales volume as the flagship product in the next quarter.
How do they use/could use an EIS?
The EIS of Global Trading Unlimited is managed separately by different departments. The network sales department is only responsible for selling products online and does not participate in physical store sales. Of course, physical stores will not interfere with sales on the Internet. At the same time, their other departments also do not interfere with each other and are all independent.
How do they use/could use an ES?
Global Trading Unlimited is a small company, it doesn’t use ES, but their CIO says it will use ES when the company expands.
What App could you develop that would be useful for the company?
Collaboration application allows organization to communicate effectively and efficiently, according to company’s scale and need, the collaboration application requirement can be different from an organization to another. Global Trading is a multi-location company which based in Maryland, however, they also have their own manufacturing facilities overseas, which lead to the communication and collaboration different time and different place.
For Global Trading, GSS is extremely important because as an organization in supply chain industry, efficient and effective communication can mean the world to the business. Real-time communication is the ideal collaboration tool for Global Trading, because this allows different departments to communicate in real-time, and it can reduce the bullwhip effect in supply chain.
Would the App deliver business intelligence, transactions, or multimedia content?
For Global Trading, as an organization in supply chain industry, real-time collaboration is extremely important. The App will need to deliver transaction content in real-time, thus, the manufacture facility will receive order status in real-time, which will allow Global Trading to reduce time, and save costs. Because in case a end user (customer) cancel the order, if the supplier does not receives the message on time, they might send out the order, which can bring bullwhip effect to the entire supply chain. Therefore, real-time transactions content are extremely necessary.
Moreover, multimedia content can be helpful for the customer to have a better understanding of the product, and it is easy for supplier to quickly locate and recognize the product. In addition, business intelligence can be extremely useful for Global Trading. Business intelligence can provide the ording instruction and prediction for the company, which will allow Global Trading to save cost and improve efficiency. It will utilize data from the past to predict how many products to order from supplier each time, and how often to order every year, what is the lowest cost way to order products, etc.
After going through their website, what do you like and what would you change?
Although Global Trading mostly uses 3rd party websites such as Amazon and Ebay for their ecommerce department, they also have their own website: http://www.globaltradingunlimited.com/Index.html The website is outdated to today’s standard due to the amount of people visit their own website. The website contains high definition product pictures, and brief product descriptions, however, the user interface is poorly design and not user friendly. For example, product names are in codes such as “U9400”, products are poorly organized, information about the product are extremely limited, etc.
If I were the CIO of Global Trading, I would redesign the entire user interface of the website to improve the user experience. Because the current focus of the CIO is mainly on 3rd party websites, the CIO have not been able to improve their own website yet.
List/explain the Pros and Cons of yourgroup dynamics (your IS 440 group, not the company you chose group).
Our group is the only group in the class with only 3 members: Shiliang Liu, Mao Gao, and Yunpeng Xu. Our group is a peer group, the group has closed membership since we don’t have any additional member during the semester. Our group have a tightly coupled interaction, which involves multiple times group discussions every week throughout the semester. Group members are close friends, and each group member have their own right to speak their opinion freely, therefore there is no hierarchy structure within the group. The group members collaborate through Google Doc and group chat most of the time, and meet at least once a week for further collaboration.
There are some advantages and disadvantages based on our group dynamics. For advantages, our group has only 3 members, which makes meeting arrangements easy and less groupthink. Without hierarchy, the group has a friendly environment and group members do not feel pressure by other member. Since 3 of the members formed friendship, it is easier to communicate to each other, and understand each others difficulties. However, there are some disadvantages with our group dynamics as well. Because there are only 3 members, it require more participation for each member than other groups with 4 or 5 members. Moreover, the 3 members group also means more workload for each member in compare to other groups.
What could you have done to improve group process? Did you use Virtual Collaboration? How else could you have used Virtual Collaboration?
The environment of our group has been friendly and efficient throughout the semester, since we only have 3 group members, it is easy to plan for interview, group meeting, and presentation rehearsal. We have mainly used Google Drive, Google Doc, and Google Slide as our virtual collaboration tool, which allow us to work on the project all together in real-time in different locations. We also have used Skype for video chat for a few group meets, which allow us to communicate with each other face-to-face without being in the same location. In addition, there was a time that one of our group member could not come to the interview due to work, we have used our recording app on our cell phone, and shared the file via Google Drive, which allow the group member understand what happened in the interview, and also gave all of us a chance to listen the interview.
Benefits of using a GSS
There are many benefits of using a GSS, including: more opportunities for discussion, more equal participation, permanent record of discussion, improved feedback to presenters, improved learning, remote and asynchronous participation. In fact, throughout the semester, our group have benefit for using GSS, and it has improved overall efficiency and effectiveness.
Relate what technology supports knowledge work
Knowledge refers to what we know about the subject, and know-how, which is usually accumulated through experience combined with accumulating certain information. There are three main phases for knowledge management. First is also known as expert system, which transfer individual knowledge into databases. Secondly, filter and separate the most relevant knowledge. Third, organize that knowledge in databases that either allow other employees to easily access the knowledge or “push” specific knowledge to employees based on their prespecified need.
In Global Trading, they uses database to input knowledge since most of the knowledge can be input into the database system. They also have group chat for the company, which allow staffs to share knowledge.
Relate how they use the knowledge management life cycle
There are six steps in knowledge management life cycle: create knowledge, capture knowledge, refine knowledge, store knowledge, manage knowledge, and disseminate knowledge. In Global Trading, Andy told us a example of Mr. Gao who worked in Global Trading since the company started in 1998.
Mr. Gao is considered as a senior level manager in the warehouse who knows literally everything of the company. He knows exactly how many products are on the shelves by heart, and he knows exactly where the products are located in the warehouse. Mr. Gao was trained to be able to do this, due to the inventory system back in the days were not well-developed. He has the knowledge, but those are intellectual property which other staffs weren’t able to access, unless they ask Mr. Gao.
Nowadays, the knowledge of Mr. Gao are able to access by all the staff, because of their knowledge management which includes human capital, structural capital, and customer capital. Andy told us that when they first started with knowledge management, they spent almost a month to shadow working with Mr. Gao to understand how he organize the warehouse, how he remembers the products. Then, they record the knowledge from Mr. Gao, refined the knowledge and created a database system for the warehouse. Later on, the database for the warehouse was able to access by all staff by using mobile device, and it has improved efficiency and effectiveness for the company.
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