IT Decision Paper

Rusty Rims ITSP 2

Rusty Rims ITSP Part 2

Business Statement

Rusty Rims (RR) Distribution Company is a regional and distribution company that has been in operation for over 60 years. RR is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware and they serve major cities in the Mid-Atlantic region. WW has a staff of 400 employees, 6 distribution terminals Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Washington, Newark, and Wilmington, 100 delivery vehicles, 40 box trucks, and 40 panel vans. Currently RR operations are around the clock, 7 days a week. Due to the slowing economy, RR’s profit runs at about 4% but the company president would like to see a growth of 5% per year to apply towards new initiatives and at the same time wants to trim expenses by 5%. Recently the management team decided to change the strategic plan to set pace for the goal of growth.

Business Strategic Objectives

According to Audra Russell (2008), business strategy is a company’s plan for controlling and utilizing its resources in an effort to promote and secure its interests and can be summed up as a broad formula for how a business is going to compete. RR has set new objectives to meet the new goals outlined by management. First, they desire to provide warehousing services for customers who want to reduce delivery time to their customers by having product available locally. Second, they want to improve the percent of loaded miles in their fleet to reduce costs by coordinating the pickup and delivery of freight at the same time in the same geographic area. Third, they want to track the whereabouts of freight both in the terminals and on the trucks to provide customers with accurate delivery dates and times. Fourth, to establish compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and induce management's responsibility to establish internal control over financial reporting and will require management to evaluate the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting (https://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/090903tswhd.htm).

Rusty Rims ITSP 3

IT Vision and Mission Statement

Rusty Rims vision strives to be the best and most efficient freight distribution company in the Mid-Atlantic region. We will modify our plan of attack for solving our customer’s logistics processes and freight management needs and ensure to provide our customers the highest level of satisfaction. As Rusty Rims our mission is to serve the logistic needs of our customers by providing dependable logistic solutions by decreasing freight management inefficiencies. Our commitment to personal service will be accomplished by effectively combining and managing our key resources, innovative personnel, experience and latest technology.

Governance

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) shall: implement and or design the strategy that determines which projects support the direction RR is heading. With his or her involvement in the projects selected, a legitimate influence will make the project a priority for RR. The Chief of Information Officer (CIO) shall: undertake challenges and opportunities to implement world-class IT strategy. Additionally, the CIO will assist RR in increasing the capital with emerging growth prospects and high level of IT efficiency. The CIO must ensure there is an effective integration of IT strategies with business strategies. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) shall: be responsible and consulted on all areas that impact finances of RR. These actions include all IT purchases, as well as personnel hiring. The Fleet Manager (FM) shall: be responsible for all assets used for pick-up, delivery, maintenance, and storage of freights. While the FM does not have a significant role in the strategic direction of RR, his or her involvement is crucial to the success of RR and its customers.

Inventory of current IT projects

Current IT project inventory shows planned and current investment into systems, their functionality, their alignment to the strategic goals, the new IT projects, and how they will benefit RR in the future.

Rusty Rims ITSP 4

Rusty Rims ITSP 5

IT Strategies

The president of RR has hired their first Chief Information Officer because it’s now relized that business strategy can be enhanced and driven by information technology strategy. RR has highlighted three new business strategies which need to be tied into IT strategies. First is a business enabling strategy for the desire to provide warehousing services for customers who want to reduce delivery time to their customers by having product available locally. Second is to improve upon the percent of loaded miles in their fleet to reduce costs by coordinating the pickup and delivery of freight at the same time in the same geographic area. Third is to have the ability to track the whereabouts of freight both in the terminals and on the trucks to provide customers with accurate delivery dates and times. To assist in this improvement of business process, IT can implement a business intelligence solution which will optimize hardware and software. This can deliver dashboards and up to the second reports by extracting necessary data to dispatchers and terminal offices. Another business enabling strategy could be the installation of an enterprise application to provide necessary tools for supporting the entire organization. As people are the key to success in any organization, RR will also invest in training in parallel with technology to ensure that employees can use that technology effectively and proficiently. As an internal IT strategy, the CIO will head the creation of a security plan for RR. Under the security plan, RR will develop and implement security policies, procedures, and practices to ensure compliance requirements are met. Policies include change management, incident response, etc. This initiative will also prepare security awareness training for all employees.

IT Portfolio

As the RR CIO Carol has assessed the current state of the organization and defined a future vision, a six quarter roadmap is outlined to project the time needed to implement current projects from the portfolio.

Rusty Rims ITSP 5

Proposed Project

Carol has gained interest in incorporating an automated inventory system. Automated inventory is a system of keeping track of inventory. This type of inventory control ensures items are accounted for and that inflow and outflow status is updated on a continual basis.

Risk Management

Carol

Business Continuity Planning

Business continuity is all about having plans in place to enable a business to cope if disaster strikes. RR needs to create a business continuity plan. Stakeholders need to be involved in the development and process of BCP because all members of the business will be affected in case disruption. The critical steps in creating a robust BCP involve first defining the objectives and determining the impact. Then the BCP strategy needs to be identified for corrective and preventative remediation actions.

References

Lane, Dean. ( © 2011). The chief information officer's body of knowledge: people, process, and technology. [Books24x7