Wk 2 Discussion [requires my answer and a response to 3 peers] all due tomorrow

Review scenario 2 “Starting Your Own Business” in the “Making Business Decisions” section at the end of Ch. 4 of Business Driven Technology.

Thinking about the scenario of starting your own business, including any business technology or otherwise, what business would your start-up be? What three CSFs and KPIs would you use that would help measure success of your business? Be sure that your metrics include CRM and SCM metrics to make the determination. Why are these metrics appropriate and how will they indicate success to you?

Respond to at least three of your peers. In your response, address any thoughts you have on CSFs, KPIs, CRM and SCM metrics.

Students need to contribute three substantive posts in this discussion by the due date indicated. The substantive posts can be any combination of responses and replies.

PEER1

I do run my own business, I do not try to push it or make a lot of money doing it. I design and host websites for non-profits. I got started with one person I know asking for me to do this for him. I now have about 15 customers. I do not push it primarily because everyone and their brother does this and can do it.

KPIs

SLAs not only for uptime, but changes and requests

This business could use time on trouble tickets

number of clients

number of client referrals

number of lost Clients

CRMs

Online sales online vs manual

recurring sales

advertisement leads

upgraded clients

CSFs

High quality hosting and service plans

features such as security and backup, etc

These are only a few of the metrics that could be used. Each one measures something a little different from the sales department, IT department, etc. I wouldn’t ever try to push this without basically trying to open a Co-location hosting company. There is not a lot of money in just hosting or design anymore with all the different technologies available for this type of business.

PEER2

I always thought about starting up a web hosting business. It is a business that does not require a lot of capital to start up and can easily scale as you grow. The downside with this industry is that it is pretty flooded and would require one to find a niche within the industry that is needed or focus on offering better services to their clients such as improved security measures and or improved customer service and uptime availability.

CSFs for my web hosting business:

- Create high quality and high availability of websites and service plans

- Ensure customer satisfaction

- Offer other features such as a unified threat management system

and or VPN services for added security in order to keep the competitive

advantage over your competitors.

KPIs for my web hosting business:

- Service Level Agreements with different levels of uptime (i.e. - %99.999 uptime guarantees)

- Number of cancellation requests

- Number of new clients signing up.

- The number and time frame trouble tickets are being resolved within the helpdesk.

Metrics for SCM:

- Disk Space replenishment cycle time

- Bandwidth increase cycle time

- Number of back orders based on lack of resources

Metrics of CRM:

- Number of completed online sales

- Amount of recurring revenues from monthly subscriptions

- Amount of new revenue from new signups

- Number of existing clients upgrading plans

- Number of leads from online advertising

I Feel that these metrics are a good start for measuring the success of my company. I say this because they measure not only how well our products are received and converting over to sales, but they also measure how much resources the business will be using. Also the metrics will ensure that we have customer satisfaction through the measurement of customer service resolution metrics along with the cancellation and retention of current clients.

PEER3

Business I would start up would be a small electronic company building Integrated Circuits (IC’s) that are military graded components.

Three CSF’s:

Design components to meet temperature specs

Drop Test

Run time specs

Three KPI’s:

Field Testing (pass/fails)

Does the component meet Military’s Standards

Number of returns

CRM Metrics:

Amount of Recurring revenue

Amount of New revenue

Number of Open Leads

Number of New Proposals

SRM Metrics:

Back orders

Customer order Promised cycle time

Customer order actual cycle time

Inventory replenishment cycle time

The reason for these metrics is that the primary customer would be the government and meeting their standards are key, once that the standards are met in the components than the delivery and inventory at hand are a crucial part of the success. Having parts and components ready at hand will increase sales with the government and establish a solid base of a customer.