IT Decision Paper

Rusty Rims IT Strategic Plan

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Rusty Rims IT Strategic Plan

BUSINESS STATEMENT

Rusty Rims Company deals with transportation and distribution and has been in operation for more than 60 years with headquarters are at Delaware at Wilmington. Having a workforce of 400 employees, RR has six distribution areas and 100 delivery trucks. Major freight volumes are made between New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, which accounts for 70% of the total volume transported. Due to the competitive business environment, the company’s growth has been stagnant, with the profit running at 4% annually. The company management team desires to see 5% growth per year and to ensure costs incurred are cut by 5% to help fund new initiatives thus maximize revenue

BUSINESS STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

Warehousing Services

To provide warehousing services so as to ensure that the products from the clients are locally available, thus, help in reducing the delivery time of products to customers. This means that the products shall be easily accessible thus making the clients’ business more profitable, in turn resulting in higher profits earned by RR.

Increasing the Vehicle Load per Trip

The management aims at improving coordination between the receiving and delivery of products simultaneously. This way they shall be able to improve the efficiency of the trucks’ operation. Dispatchers at terminals use a routing system to determine the sequence of zip-codes. Local maps within a zip code are used to map out the specific order of pickups. Many drivers have complained that this pickup order is inefficient.

Freight Tracking

The management aims at tracking the freight in the terminals and on the trucks. This shall ensure that deliveries are made to the client at the appropriate time and avoid lateness, which may contribute to loss of clients. This shall also ensure that the drivers stay within the 10 hours limit as per the federal regulations.it is required that they have a maximum of 10 hours of driving at a time after which they need to take an 8 hour break.

Compliance with Federal Regulations

State and federal regulations affect the way companies and businesses carry out their operations. The CIO after visiting various customers have realized that some of their customers are being affected by certain regulations. The company`s drivers are also affected by regulations pertaining to the cargo weight, driving hours, and speed limits. In turn, this affects the freight lead times which is a threat to the business-customer relationship as well as the supplier reliability. As a result, the CIO has resolved to ensure that federal regulations are complied with to the letter.

Ensuring Efficiency in Workforce

To ensure recruitment procedures are thorough to ensure employment of highly efficient and competent employees. It was noted that some members of staff were not meeting the expectations set. The helpdesk personnel takes too long to respond to problems thus rendering them incompetent. These problems can be avoided by ensuring those employed are strictly vetted before being given the job. Even managers in billion dollar corporations such as Telstra, Qantas and McDonalds are involved in recruiting employee candidates (Stephen P Robbins, 2014).

IT VISION AND MISSION STATEMENT

Vision Statement

To ensure optimal satisfaction of our customers while keeping costs to a minimum. Considering that the company’s growth rate has been stagnant because of the slow economy, the management has a vision that the customers are content with the quality of service provided by the firm thus help in maximising the firm’s profits? It has been proven that that ensuring customer satisfaction is a key factor in building customer loyalty (Frank, 2007).

Mission Statement

The mission of Rusty Rims is to ensure convenience, efficiency and timeliness in providing transportation and distribution services in the region. We intend to make a long lasting impact in the transport industry by ensuring that we are the number one providers of freight transport services in the areas we are already dealing in even as we look forward to extending our services to the rest of the state.

GOVERNANCE

The company top management is made of the president at the top, operations vice president, a chief officer in charge of information and one for finances, sales manager as well as a logistics manager. The top management is responsible for:

• Formulation of relevant strategies to ensure the success of the company by ensuring growth and reducing cost.

• Ensure compliance with the set federal rules and regulations affecting the business.

• Discussing challenges faced during operation and coming up with relevant applicable solutions.

The President is the highest ranking personnel in the business. He ensures performance management, serves as the face of the organization and is largely involved in strategy development. The chief information officer handles all issues pertaining to information technology and computer systems that in turn supports company objectives. He/she is primarily responsible for network operations and security.

The chief financial officer is charged with the overall duty of managing the business’ financial risks, ensure record keeping and facilitate financial reporting. The sales manager is in charge of selecting targets for the products, defining time guidelines on the delivery and monitoring compliance with these guidelines.

The fleet manager is important as he has to ensure that risks associated with vehicle investment are minimized, ensure efficiency, productivity and reduce transport costs associated

The IT staff consists of 22 people comprised of the programmers, financial systems specialist, network engineers, a computer security expert, helpdesk personnel and supervisors. This section of the staff operates under the Chief Information Officer. The IT staff operate the Wilmington terminal servers containing all software and data pertaining accounting, marketing, IT, administration and management.

Governance Framework

The governance framework to be adopted at RR IT department is one that outlines how the activities are managed and controlled. To ensure that the framework is effective, it will be laid under the fundamental principles of accountability, efficiency, leadership and most importantly integrity (Mallin, 2011). In terms of accountability, every person under the department will be accorded with specific responsibilities. To ensure efficiency, the department will ensure that every important resource is made available. Leadership will be effectuated with supervisors at every activity level within the department who are answerable directly to the CIO. Every employee will be expected to display high level of integrity in carrying out their duties.

The general responsibility of the governance board will be to oversee the implementation process of the new strategies and decide whether the organization is moving towards the right direction. Also, the board will regularly evaluate the success of the implemented strategies and access its benefits to the organization as a whole. Prioritizing the projects will be determined by the following factors; one, the resources required, second, the urgency of the project and finally its benefits to the organization.

INVENTORY OF CURRENT IT PROJECTS

There still exists older technology for finance and accounting department, used in routing, tracking freight as well as fleet maintenance. The IT staff uses 15 servers containing software and data and 30 pcs for accounting, marketing, IT, administration and management. These products have however proven ineffective as the dispatchers complained about routing being time-consuming. The bookkeepers and accountants complained about the current financial system being slow and data entry being tedious. Terminal managers felt that they had the capacity for some storage to enable warehousing services but keeping track of the shipments is a problem.

The following table presents a summary of the RR current systems and how they will be aligned to the strategic goals develop, indicating the resources required to implement these strategies.

There are however efforts to replace the current systems, through the projects which are now underway. Such as new finance and accounting system to replace the current so as to ensure accurate financials. This system shall require the owner to customize it not to interface with other systems they may own. A management reporting system will enable the management to be up to date with its financial information. This will also require a system to convert the data into an easy to use format.

Mobile Marketing App that will be used by the sales staff to show potential customers much needed information such as fleet photos and specifications, information about the distribution services and pictures of the terminals.

Strategic project selection has to be ensured by making sure that the team involved implement projects that are aligned to the business goals and strategies.to increase the success rate of the ITPM are to ensure that they start small and add capabilities as they progress .they can also opt to involve stakeholders who provide much needed information on portfolio metrics, criteria and prioritization (Susan, 2006).

References

Frank Withey,Geoff Lancaster (2007) CIM Coursebook: marketing fundamentals, London

Mallin, C. (2011). Corporate governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stephen P. Robbins, Rolf Bergman, Ian Stagg, Mary Coulter (2014) Management, Canberra: National Library of Australia

Susan Snedaker (2006) Syngress IT Security Project Manangement Handbook, Rockland