Week 6_Petrie's Electronics Cases Closeout_ESSAY
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petries_electronics_chapter_1-10.docxChapter 2:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
The Sources of Software
Jim Watanabe looked around his new office. He couldn’t believe that he was the assistant director of information technology at Petrie’s Electronics, his favorite consumer electronics retail store. He always bought his new DVDs and video games for his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s. In fact, he had bought his Blu-ray player and his Xbox 360 at Petrie’s, along with his surround sound system and his 40" flat-screen HD LED TV. And now he worked there too. The employee discount was a nice perk1 of his new job, but he was also glad that his technical and people skills were finally recognized by the people at Petrie’s. He had worked for five years at Broadway Entertainment Company as a senior systems analyst, and it was clear that he was not going to be promoted there. He was really glad he had put his résumé up on Monster.com and that now he had a bigger salary and a great job with more responsibility at Petrie’s.
1 perquisite
Petrie’s Electronics had started as a single electronics store in 1984 in San Diego, California. The store was started by Jacob Rosenste in a strip mall. It was named after Rob Petrie, the TV writer played by Dick Van Dyke in the TV show named after himself. Rosenste in always liked that show. When he had grown the store to a chain of thirteen stores in the Southern California area, it was too much for Rosenstein to handle. He sold out in 1992, for a handsome profit, to the Matsutoya Corporation, a huge Japanese conglomerate that saw the chain of stores as a place to sell its many consumer electronics goods in the U.S.
Matsutoya aggressively expanded the chain to 218 stores nationwide by the time they sold the chain in 2002, for a handsome profit, to Sam and Harry’s, a maker and seller of ice cream. Sam and Harry’s was looking for a way to diversify and invest the considerable cash they had made creating and selling ice cream, with flavors named after actors and actresses, like their best selling Lime Neeson and Jim Carrey-mel. Sam and Harry’s brought in professional management to run the chain, and since they bought it, they added fifteen more stores, including one in Mexico and three in Canada. Even though they originally wanted to move the headquarters to their home state of Delaware, Sam and Harry decided to keep Petrie’s headquartered in San Diego.
The company had made some smart moves and had done well, Jim knew, but he also knew that competition was fierce. Petrie’s competitors included big electronics retail chains like Best Buy. In California, Fry’s was a ferocious competitor. Other major players in the arena included the electronics departments of huge chains like Wal-Mart and Target and online vendors like Amazon.com. Jim knew that part of his job in IT was to help the company grow and prosper and beat the competition—or at least survive.
Just then, as Jim was trying to decide if he needed a bigger TV, Ella Whinston, the chief operations officer at Petrie’s, walked into his office. “How’s it going, Jim? Joe keeping you busy?” Joe was Joe Swanson, Jim’s boss, the director of IT. Joe was away for the week, at a meeting in Pullman, Washington. Jim quickly pulled his feet off his desk.
“Hi, Ella. Oh, yeah, Joe keeps me busy. I’ ve got to get through the entire corporate strategic IT plan before he gets back—he’s going to quiz me—and then there’s the new help-desk training we are going to start next week.”
“I didn’t know we had a strategic IT plan,” Ella teased. “Anyway, what I came in here for is to give you some good news. I have decided to make you the project manager for a project that is crucial to our corporate survival.”
“Me?” Jim said. “But I just got here.”
“Who better than you? You have a different perspective, new ideas. You aren’t chained down by the past and by the Petrie’s way of doing things, like the rest of us. Not that it matters, since you don’t have a choice. Joe and I both agree that you are the best person for the job.”
“So,” Jim asked, “what’s the project about?”
“Well,” Ella began, “the executive team has decided that the number one priority we have right now is to not only survive but to thrive and to prosper, and the way to do that is to develop closer relationships with our customers. The other person on the executive team, who is even more excited about this than me, is John [John Smith, the head of marketing]. We want to attract new customers, like all of our competitors. But also like our competitors, we want to keep our customers for life, kind of like a frequent flier program, but better. Better for us and for our loyal customers. And we want to reward most, the customers who spend the most. We are calling the project ‘No Customer Escapes.’”
“I hope that’s only an internal name,” Jim joked.
“Seriously, I can see how something like this would be good for Petrie’s, and I can see how IT would play an important, no, crucial role in making something like this happen. OK, then, let’s get started
Chapter 3:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Managing the Information Systems Project
Jim Watanabe, the assistant director of information technology at Petrie’s Electronics, a Southern California–based electronics retail store, walked into his building’s conference room. It was early in the morning for Jim, but the meeting was important for him. Jim was going to put together his team for the customer relationship project he had just been named to manage. It was Jim’s first big project to manage at Petrie’s, and he was excited about getting started.
“Hi Jim,” said Ella Whinston, the chief operations officer. With Ella was a guy Jim did not know. “Jim, this is Bob Petroski. I’ve asked that he be on your project team, to represent me.”
Jim and Bob shook hands. “Nice to meet you, Jim. I’m looking forward to working with you on this project.”
“And Bob knows how important this project is to me,” Ella said, “so I expect him to keep me informed about your progress.” Ella smiled.
Great, Jim thought, more pressure. That’s all I need. Just then, John Smith, the head of marketing walked into the conference room. With him was a young woman Jim recognized, but he wasn’t sure from where.
“Jim,” John said, “Let me introduce you to Sally Fukuyama. She is the assistant director of marketing. She will be representing marketing, and me, on your ‘No Customer Escapes’ project.”
“Hi Jim,” Sally said, “I have a lot of ideas about what we can do. Even though I still have my regular job to worry about, I’m excited about working on this project.”
“Hi Jim,” Sally said, “I have a lot of ideas about what we can do. Even though I still have my regular job to worry about, I’m excited about working on this project.”
“Who else will be on your team?” Ella asked.
“I am bringing Sanjay Agarwal from IT,” Jim said. “He is in charge of systems integration in the IT department and reports to me. In addition to myself and Sanjay and Sally and Bob, we will also have a store manager on the team. I’m trying to get Carmen Sanchez, the manager of the store in Irvine (California). Like the rest of us, she is really busy, but I think we have to have a store manager on the team.”
“Irvine?” Ella asked. “That’s one of our top stores. Carmen should have a lot of insight into the issues related to keeping customers, if she is managing the Irvine store. And you are right, she is going to be very busy.”
“So,” John asked, “When is your first meeting
Chapter 4:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Systems Planning and Selection
Now that the “No Customer Escapes” project team has been formed and a plan has been developed for distributing project information, Jim began working on the project scope statement, workbook, and baseline project plan. He first drafted the project scope statement and posted it on the project’s intranet (see PE Figure 4-1). Once posted on the intranet, he sent a short e-mail message to all team members requesting feedback. Minutes after sending the e-mail, Jim’s office phone rang.
“Jim, it’s Sally. I just looked over the scope statement and have a few comments.”
“Great,” replied Jim, “it’s just a draft. What do you think?”
“Well, I think that we need to explain more about how the system will work and why we think this new system will more than pay for itself.”
“Those are good suggestions; I am sure many others will also want to know that information. However, the scope statement is a pretty high-level document and doesn’t get into too much detail. Basically, its purpose is to just formally announce the project, providing a very high-level description as well as briefly listing the objectives, key assumptions, and stakeholders. The other documents that I am working on, the workbook and the baseline project plan, are intended to provide more details on specific deliverables, costs, benefits, and so on. So, anyway, that type of more detailed information will be coming next.”
“Oh, OK, that makes sense. I have never been on a project like this, so this is all new to me,” said Sally.
“Don’t worry,” replied Jim, “getting that kind of feedback from you and the rest of the team will be key for us doing a thorough feasibility analysis. I am going to need a lot of your help in identifying possible costs and benefits of the system. When we develop the baseline project plan, we do a very thorough feasibility analysis—we examine financial, technical, operational, schedule, legal and contractual feasibility, as well as potential political issues arising through the development of the system.”
“Wow, we have to do all that? Why can’t we just build the system? I think we all know what we want,” replied Sally.
“That is another great question,” replied Jim. “I used to think exactly the same way, but what I learned in my last job was that there are great benefits to following a fairly formal project management process with a new system. By moving forward with care, we are much more likely to have the right system, on time and on budget.”
“So,” asked Sally, “what is the next step?”
“Well, we need to do the feasibility analyses I just mentioned, which become part of the project’s baseline project plan. Once this is completed, we will have a walkthrough presentation to management to make sure they agree with and understand the scope, risks, and costs associated with making ‘No Customer Escapes’ a reality,” said Jim.
“This is going to be a lot of work, but I am sure I am going to learn a lot,” replied Sally.
“So, let me get to work on the feasibility analyses,” said Jim. “I will be sending requests out to all the team members to get their ideas. I should have this email ready within an hour or so.”
“Great, I’ll look for it and respond as soon as I can,” answered Sally.
“Thanks, the faster we get this background work done, the sooner we will be able to move on to what the system will do,” replied Jim.
“Sounds good, talk to you later. Bye,” Sally said.
“Bye Sally, and thanks for your quick feedback,” answered Jim.
Chapter 5:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Determining Systems Requirements
Although the customer loyalty project at Petrie’s Electronics had gone slowly at first, the past few weeks had been fast paced and busy, Jim Watanabe, the project manager, thought to himself. He had spent much of his time planning and conducting interviews with key stakeholders inside the company. He had also worked with the marketing group to put together some focus groups made up of loyal customers, to get some ideas about what they would value in a customer loyalty program. Jim had also spent some time studying customer loyalty programs at other big retail chains and those in other industries as well, such as the airlines, known for their extensive customer loyalty programs. As project manager, he had also supervised the efforts of his team members. Together, they had collected a great deal of data. Jim had just finished creating a high-level summary of the information into a table he could send to his team members (PE Table 5-1).
PE TABLE 5-1: Requirements and Constraints for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Requirements
• Effective customer incentives—System should be able to effectively store customer activity and convert to rewards and other incentives
• Easy for customers to use—Interface should be intuitive for customer use
• Proven performance—System as proposed should have been used successfully by other clients
• Easy to implement—Implementation should not require outside consultants or extraordinary skills on the part of our staff or require specialized hardware
• Scalable—System should be easily expandable as the number of participating customers grows
• Vendor support—Vendor should have proven track record of reliable support and infrastructure in place to provide it
Constraints
• Cost to buy—Licenses for one year should be under $500,000
• Cost to operate—Total operating costs should be no more than $1 million per year
• Time to implement—Duration of implementation should not exceed three months
• Staff to implement—Implementation should be successful with the staff we have and with the skills they already possess
From the list of requirements, it was clear that he and his team did not favor building a system from scratch in-house. Jim was glad that the team felt that way. Not only was building a system like this in-house an antiquated practice, it was expensive and time consuming. As nice as it might have been to develop a unique system just for Petrie’s, there was little point in reinventing the wheel. The IT staff would customize the system interface, and there would be lots of work for Sanjay’s staff in integrating the new system and its related components with Petrie’s existing systems, but the core of the system would have already been developed by someone else.
PE TABLE 5-2: Alternatives for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Alternative A
Data warehousing-centered system designed and licensed by Standard Basic Systems, Inc. (SBSI). The data warehousing tools at the heart of the system were designed and developed by SBSI, and work with standard relational DBMSs and relational/OO hybrid DBMSs. The SBSI tools and approach have been used for many years and are well known in the industry, but SBSI- certified staff are essential for implementation, operation, and maintenance. The license is relatively expensive. The customer loyalty application using the SBSI data warehousing tools is an established application, used by many retail businesses in other industries.
Alternative B
Customer relationship management (CRM)-centered system designed and licensed by XRA Corporation. XRA is a pioneer in CRM systems, so its CRM is widely recognized as an industry leader. The system includes tools that support customer loyalty programs. The CRM system itself is large and complex, but pricing in this proposal is based only on modules used for the customer loyalty application.
Alternative C
Proprietary system designed and licensed by Nova Innovation Group, Inc. The system is relatively new and leading edge, so it has only been implemented in a few sites. The vendor is truly innovative but small and inexperienced. The customer interface, designed for a standard Web browser, is stunning in its design and is extremely easy for customers to use to check on their loyalty program status. The software runs remotely, in the “cloud,” and data related to the customer loyalty program would be stored in the cloud too.
Just as he was finishing the e-mail he would send to his team about the new system’s requirements and constraints, he received a new message from Sanjay. He had asked Sanjay to take the lead in scouting out existing customer loyalty systems that Petrie’s could license. Sanjay had conducted a preliminary investigation that was now complete. His e-mail contained the descriptions of three of the systems he had found and studied (PE Table 5-2). Obviously, Jim and his team would need to have a lot more information about these alternatives, but Jim was intrigued by the possibilities. He sent a reply to Sanjay, asking him to pass the alternatives on to the team, and also asking him to prepare a briefing for the team that would include more detailed information about each alternative.
Chapter 6:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Structuring Systems Requirements: Process Modeling
Jim and Sanjay chatted in Jim’s office while they waited for Sally to arrive.
“Good work on researching those alternatives,” Jim said.
”Thanks, replied Sanjay. “There are a lot of alternatives out there. I think we found the best three, considering what we are able to pay.”
Just then Sally walked in. “Sorry I’m late. Things are getting really busy in marketing right now. I’ve been putting out fires all morning.”
Sally sat down at the table across from Jim.
PE TABLE 6-1: Four Core Functions of Petrie’s Customer Loyalty System
Function
Description
Record customer activities
When a customer makes a purchase, the transaction must be recorded in the customer loyalty system, as the rewards the system generates are driven by purchases. Similarly, when a customer uses a coupon generated by the system, it must also be recorded, so that the customer activity records can be updated to show that the coupon has been used and is now invalid.
Send promotions
Data about customer activities provide information about what types of products customers tend to buy and in what quantities. This information helps determine what sales promotion materials are best targeted at what customers. Customers who buy lots of video games should receive promotions about games, game platforms and HD TVs, for example.
Generate point-redemption coupons
Data about customer activities is used to generate coupons for future purchases. Those coupons must be made available to customers, either as paper coupons sent in the mail or online, in the customer’s private account area. Once created, the customer activity database needs to be updated to show the creation of the coupon. The loyalty points needed to create the coupon must be deducted from the customer’s total points.
Generate customer reports
From time to time, either in the mail or electronically, customers need to be sent account reports that show their recent purchases, the coupons they have been issued that have not yet been redeemed, and the total points they have amassed from their purchases.
“I understand,” Jim said. “But to stay on schedule, we need to start focusing on the specifics of what we want our system to do. Remember when you wanted more details on what the system would do? Well, now we start to spend some serious energy on getting that done.”
“Awesome,” replied Sally, as she pulled a Red Bull out of her oversized bag and popped it open.
“I’ve got a list here of four core functions the system must perform,” said Sanjay, pulling copies of a list from a folder on the table (PE Table 6-1). “Let’s look at these.”
After reviewing the list Sanjay had given them, Jim said, “Nice job, Sanjay. But we need to put this in graphical format, so that everyone can see what the inputs and outputs are for each function and how they are related to each other. We also need to see how the new system fits in with our existing data sources. We need ₀”
“Some data-flow diagrams,” Sanjay interrupted. “Exactly,” said Jim.
“They are already done,” replied Sanjay, handing diagrams to both Jim and Sally. “I’ve already created a first draft of the context diagram [PE Figure 6-1] and a level-1 diagram [PE Figure 6-2]. You can see how I’ve defined the boundaries of our system, and I’ve included our existing product and marketing databases.”
PE FIGURE 6-1 Context diagram.
PE FIGURE 6-2 Level-1 DFD.
“What can I say?” Jim said. “Again, a nice job on your part. These diagrams are both good places for us to start. Let’s get copies of all of this to the team.”
“I’ll be right back,” Sally said, standing up. “I need to get some coffee.”
Chapter 7:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Structuring Systems Requirements:
Conceptual Data Modeling
Jim Watanabe, manager of the “No Customer Escapes” project, and assistant director of IT for Petrie’s Electronics, was sitting in the company cafeteria. He had just finished his house salad and was about to go back to his office when Stephanie Welch sat down at his table. Jim had met Stephanie once, back when he started work at Petrie’s. He remembered she worked for the database administrator.
“Hi, Jim, remember me?” she asked.
“Sure, Stephanie, how are you? How are things in database land?”
“Can’t complain. Sanjay asked me to talk to you about the database needs for your new customer loyalty system.” Stephanie’s phone binged. She pulled it out of her oversize bag and looked at it. She started to text as she continued to talk to Jim. “How far along are you on your database requirements?”
That’s kinda rude, Jim thought. Oh well. “We are still in the early stages. I can send you a very preliminary E-R diagram we have [PE Figure 7-1], along with a description of the major entities.”
“OK, that will help. I suspect that you won’t have too many new entities to add to what’s already in the system,” Stephanie responded, still looking at her phone and still texting. She briefly looked up at Jim and smiled slightly before going back to texting. “Just send the E-R to me, and I’ll let you know if I have any questions.” She stood up, still looking at her phone. “Gotta go,” she said, and she walked away.
OK, Jim thought, I need to remember to send Stephanie the preliminary E-R we have. I should probably send her the entity descriptions too (PE Table 7-1), just in case. Jim stood up, carried his tray over to the recycling area of the cafeteria, and went back to his office.
When Jim got back to his office, Sanjay was waiting for him.
“I’ve got more information on those alternatives we talked about earlier,” Sanjay said. “I had one of my employees gather some data on how the alternatives might satisfy our needs.” (See the descriptions of the alternatives in PE Table 5-2.) Sanjay handed Jim a short report. “The matrix shows the requirements and constraints for each alternative and makes it relatively easy to compare them.” (See PE Figure 7-2.)
PE FIGURE 7.1 Initial E-R for Petrie’s customer loyalty program.
PE TABLE 7-1: Entity Descriptions for the Preliminary E-R Diagram for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty System
Entity
Description
Coupon
A coupon is a special promotion created specifically for an individual customer. A coupon is for a set dollar amount, for example, $10. The customer may use it like cash or like a dollars-off promotion when purchasing products or services. Coupons can only be created for an individual customer based on the points in his or her customer loyalty account. For each dollar value of a coupon, a certain number of points must be redeemed. Coupons must be accounted for when created and when redeemed.
Customer
A customer is someone who buys products and/or services from Petrie’s Electronics. Customers include both online customers and those who shop in Petrie’s Brick-and-Mortar stores.
Product
An item made available for sale to a Petrie’s customer. For example, a product is a 40” Sony LCD HD television. Products can be purchased online or in Brick-and-Mortar stores.
Promotion
A promotion is a special incentive provided to a customer to entice the customer into buying a specific product or service. For example, a promotion intended to sell Blu-ray disks may involve 2-for-1 coupons. Promotions are targeted to all customers, or to subsets of customers, not just to individual customers.
Service
A job performed by one of Petrie’s associates for a customer. For example, upgrading the memory in a computer by installing new memory cards is a service that Petrie’s provides for a fee. Services may only be ordered and performed in Brick-and-Mortar stores, not online.
Transaction
A record that a particular product or service was sold to a specified customer on a particular date. A transaction may involve more than one product or service, and it may involve more than one of a particular kind of product or service. For example, one transaction may involve blank DVDs and prerecorded DVDs, and the prerecorded DVDs may all be of the same movie. For members of the loyalty program, each transaction is worth a number of points, depending on the dollar value of the transaction.
“The matrix favors the XRA CRM system,” Jim said, after looking over the report. “It looks like their proposal meets our requirements the best, but the Nova group’s proposal does the best job with the constraints.”
“Yes, but just barely,” Sanjay said. “There is only a five-point difference between XRA and Nova, so they are pretty comparable when it comes to constraints. But I think the XRA system has a pretty clear advantage in meeting our requirements.”
“XRA seems to be pretty highly rated in your matrix in terms of all of the requirements. You have them ranked better than the other two proposals for implementation, scalability, and vendor support,” Jim said. “The ‘5’ you gave them for proven performance is one of the few ‘5s’ you have in your whole matrix.”
“That’s because they are one of the best companies in the industry to work with,” Sanjay responded, “Their reputation is stellar.”
“This looks really promising,” Jim said. “Let’s see if reality matches what we have here. It’s time to put together the formal request for proposal. I’ ll get that work started today. I hope
PE FIGURE 7-2 Evaluation matrix for customer loyalty proposals.
Chapter 8:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Designing the Human Interface
Jim Watanabe, project director for the “No Customer Escapes” customer loyalty system for Petrie’s Electronics, walked into the conference room. Sally Fukuyama, from marketing, and Sanjay Agarwal, from IT, were already there. Also at the meeting was Sam Waterston, one of Petrie’s key interface designers.
“Good morning,” Jim said. “I’m glad everyone could be here today. I know you are all busy, but we need to make some real progress on the customer account area for ‘No Customer Escapes.’ We have just awarded the development of the system to XRA, and once all the documents are signed, they will be coming over to brief us on the implementation process and our role in it.”
“I’m sorry,” Sally said, “I don’t understand. If we are licensing their system, what’s left for us to do? Don’t we just install the system and we’re done?” Sally took a big gulp of coffee from her cup.
“I wish it was that easy,” Jim said. “While it is true that we are licensing their system, there are many parts of it that we need to customize for our own particular needs. One obvious area where we need to customize is all of the human interfaces. We don’t want the system to look generic to our loyal customers—we need to make it unique to Petrie’s.”
“And we have to integrate the XRA system with our own operations,” added Sanjay. “For example, we have to integrate our existing marketing and product databases with the XRA CRM (see PE Figure 6-2). That’s just one piece of all the technical work we have to do.”
“We’ve already done some preliminary work on system functionality and the conceptual database,” Jim said. “I want to start working on interface issues now. That’s why Sam is here. What we want to do today is start work on how the customer account area should look and operate. And Sally, the customer loyalty site is a great opportunity for marketing. We can advertise specials and other promotions to our best customers on this site. Maybe we could use it to show offers that are only good for members of our loyalty program.”
“Oh yeah,” Sally replied, “that’s a great idea. How would that look?”
“I have ideas,” said Sam. Using a drawing program on a tablet PC, he started to draw different zones that would be part of the interface. “Here at the top we would have a simple banner that says ‘Petrie’s’ and the name of the program.”
“It’s not really going to be called ‘No Customer Escapes,’ is it?” asked Sally.
PE FIGURE 8-1 Preliminary design for the customer account area.
“No, that’s an internal name,” replied Jim, “but I don’t know what the real name will be yet.”
“OK, so the real name of the program will go in the banner, after ‘Petrie’s.’Then on the left side, we’ll have a sidebar that has overview information about the customer account, things like name and points balance,” said Sam, drawing in a sidebar on the left of the screen.
“There will also be links to more detailed information about the account, so the customer can see more details on past transactions and on his or her profile.”
“So the rest of the screen is open. That would be a perfect place for marketing information,” suggested Sally. “Would we want just one big window for marketing? Maybe we could divide it up into additional windows, so we could use one to focus on general promotions and one to advertise ‘member only’ promotions?”
“Yeah, we can do that,” said Sam.
Just then Jim’s phone beeped. Jim looked at it. Uhoh, it was an urgent message from his boss, the director of IT. “Sorry, I need to take care of this immediately,” he told the group. “Can you guys work on this some more and then send me some of the screen designs you come up with?”
Later that afternoon, after the crisis was over, Jim sat back down at his desk for the first time in what seemed like a very long time. He glanced over his e-mail and noticed there was a message from Sam. Attached was a preliminary design for the customer account area. Jim opened it and looked it over (PE Figure 8-1). Hmmm, not bad, he thought. This is a good place for us to start.
Chapter 9:
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Designing Databases
Jim Watanabe, assistant director of IT for Petrie’s Electronics and the manager of the “No Customer Escapes” customer loyalty system project, was walking down the hall from his office to the cafeteria. It was 4 P.M., but Jim was nowhere close to going home yet. The deadlines he had imposed for the project were fast approaching. His team was running behind, and he had a lot of work to do over the next week to try to get things back on track. He needed to get some coffee for the start of what was going to be a late night.
As Jim approached the cafeteria, he saw Sanjay Agarwal and Sam Waterston walking toward him. Sanjay was in charge of systems integration for Petrie’s, and Sam was one of the company’s top interface designers. They were both on the customer loyalty program team. They were having an intense conversation as Jim approached.
“Hi guys,” Jim said.
“Oh, hi, Jim,” Sanjay replied. “Glad I ran into you—we are moving ahead on the preliminary database designs. We’re translating the earlier conceptual designs into physical designs.”
“Who’s working on that? Stephanie?” Jim asked. Stephanie Welch worked for Petrie’s database administrator.
“Yes,” Sanjay replied. “But she is supervising a couple of interns who have been assigned to her for this task.”
“So how is that going? Has she approved their work?” “Yeah, I guess so. It all seems to be under control.”
“I don’t want to second-guess Stephanie, but I’m curious about what they’ve done.”
PE Figure 9-1 Memo on issues related to physical database design for Petrie’s Electronic’s customer loyalty program.
“Do you really have time to review interns’ work?” Sanjay asked. “OK, let me send you the memo Stephanie sent me [PE Figure 9-1.
“You’re right, I don’t have time,” Jim said, “but I’m curious. It won’t take long to read the memo, right?”
“OK, I’ll send it as soon as I get back to my desk.”
“OK, thanks.” Jim walked on to the cafeteria, and he poured himself a big cup of coffee.
Chapter 10:
Systems Implementation and Operation
Jim Watanabe was in his new car, driving down I-5, on his way to work. He dreaded the phone call he knew he was going to have to make.
The original go-live date for a pilot implementation of Petrie’s Electronics’ new customer relationship management (CRM) system was July 31. That was only six weeks away, and Jim knew there was no way they were going to be ready. The XRA CRM they were licensing turned out to be a lot more complex than they had thought. They were behind schedule in implementing it. Sanjay Agarwal, who was a member of Jim’s team and who was in charge of systems integration for Petrie’s, wanted Jim to hire some consultants with XRA experience to help with implementation. So far, Jim had been able to stay under budget, but missing his deadlines and hiring some consultants would push him over his budget limit.
It didn’t help that John Smith, the head of marketing, kept submitting requests for changes to the original specifications for the customer loyalty program. As specified in the project charter, the new system was supposed to track customer purchases, assign points for cumulative purchases, and allow points to be redeemed for “rewards” at local stores. The team had determined that those rewards would take the form of dollars-off coupons. Customers who enrolled in the program would be given accounts that they could access from Petrie’s Web site. When they signed on, they could check their account activity to see how many points they had accumulated. If they had earned enough points, they were rewarded with a coupon. If they wanted to use the coupon, they would have to print it out on their home printers and bring it in to a store to use on a purchase. The team had decided long ago that keeping everything electronic saved Petrie’s the considerable costs of printing and mailing coupons to customers.
But now marketing had put in a change request that would give customers a choice of having coupons mailed to them automatically or printing them from the Web site at home. This option, while nice for customers, added complexity to the XRA system implementation, and it added to the costs of operation. Jim had also learned yesterday from the marketing representative on his team, Sally Fukuyama, that now Smith wanted another change. Now he wanted customers to be able to use the coupons for online purchases from Petrie’s Web site. This change added a whole new layer of complexity, affecting Petrie’s existing systems for ordering online, in addition to altering yet again the implementation of the XRA CRM.
As if that wasn’t enough, Carmen Sanchez was now telling Jim that she would not be ready to let the team pilot the system in her Irvine store. Carmen was saying her store would not be ready by the end of July. Maybe that wouldn’t matter, since they were going to miss the go-live date for the pilot. But Carmen was hinting she would not be ready for months after that. It seemed as if she didn’t want her store to be used for the pilot at all. Jim didn’t understand it. But maybe he should try to find another store to use as the pilot site.
Jim was almost at his exit. Soon he would be at the office, and he would have to call Ella Whinston and tell her the status of the project. He would have to tell her that they would miss the go-live date, but in a way it didn’t matter since he didn’t have a pilot location to go live at. In addition to going over schedule, he was going to have to go over budget, too. He didn’t see any way they would be ready for the pilot anytime close to when they had scheduled, unless he hired the consultants Sanjay wanted. And he would have to stop the latest change request filed by marketing. Even more important, he would have to keep the rumored change request, about using coupons for online purchases, from being submitted in the first place.
Maybe, just maybe, if he could hire the consultants, fight off the change requests, and get Carmen to cooperate, they might be ready to go live with a pilot in Irvine on October 15. That gave him four months to complete the project. He and the team were going to have to work hard to make that happen.
Jim realized he had missed his exit. Great, he thought, I hope it gets better from here.
