IT Decision Paper
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strategic_plan_2.docx
Rusty Rims IT Strategic Plan
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Rusty Rims IT Strategic Plan
PART 1
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. Majority of RR freight about 70% are made around Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York out of the total quantity transported. The competitive business environment that the company is operating in has led to its current stagnation with annual profits of 4%. To meet its Vision and Mission as well as the strategic objectives, the management has devised the following strategies;
· The management desires to see 5% growth per year which enables the company to remain competitive.
· Another strategy is to maximize revenues by reducing costs by 5% which will provide funds to support upcoming initiatives.
BUSINESS STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
Warehousing Services
RR aims at providing warehousing services for their customers to ensure that their products are locally available which will minimize the time wasted due to delivery delays.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. At regional terminals, the dispatchers use a system for routing that helps in providing Zip-codes in a sequence which makes it easy for dispatch. The Zip-codes are in turn mapped with the local navigation systems to determine where and when the pickups are made. Many drivers have complained that this pickup order is inefficient.
Freight Tracking
The management aims at improving its freight tracking capabilities on the trucks and through the terminals as well. 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 that allows up to 10 hours maximum driving time which shall in turn be followed by a break of 8 hours.
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 staff at the helpdesk has been noticed to take too much time before responding to a problem which renders 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 provide best IT interventions to Rusty Reims and the transport industry in general. The company aims at achieving a constant growth in future and for this, new strategies have to be implemented. Technology is fast changing and to maintain a competitive edge in the industry, the IT department is devoted to providing the best IT solutions for RR ahead of our competitors. Also, this will help increase our flexibility in providing customer satisfaction since our customer needs are changing with changing technology. Furthermore, ensuring customer satisfaction is a key factor in building customer loyalty (Frank, 2007).
Mission Statement
Our mission is to research and develop better IT applications to meet our business strategies. As a department, we aim at achieving 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. Also, the president will be responsible for security as well as network operations.
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 ensures that risks associated with vehicle investment are minimized, ensure efficiency, productivity and reduce associate transport costs. IT staff on the other hand is made up 22 personnel comprised of specialists in systems, programmers, network engineers, as well as security experts. Other subordinate staff in the team include 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 data pertaining functional areas of accounting, IT, marketing and administration.
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 RR`s essential business data. The staff also has 30 pcs allocated to it areas of accounting, IT, marketing and administration. These products have however proven ineffective as the dispatchers complained about routing being time-consuming. The bookkeepers complained about the current financial system being slow which makes data entry to be tedious. Terminal managers agreed to have extra storage capacity to enable warehousing services but would be challenging to track shipments.
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.
|
CURRENT SYSTEM |
DESCRIPTION |
STRATEGIC GOAL ALIGNED TO |
BUSINESS UNIT/ DEPARTMENT |
BUSINESS BENEFITS |
I.T RESOURCES (PEOPLE, EQUIPMENT) |
|
Routing and maintenance of freight system |
Helps the input phase of the fright from origin to the destination. |
Ensure timeliness of deliveries and to make sure drivers stay within the 10- hour driving limit as per federal regulations. |
I.T department. It requires there to be dispatchers who enter origins and destinations of the freight into the system. They also decide on what zip codes should be loaded onto the truck and in what sequence. |
Improve timeliness of deliveries |
Programmers |
|
Fleet maintenance system |
Gives the specifications as well as summary of changes, maintenance record and storage of parts in hand of each vehicle in the fleet and also provides a schedule of fleet maintenance to be performed on every vehicle. |
Minimizing cost incurred during operation |
Transport department. This system involves accounting clerks, purchasing staff, mechanics and any other personnel with information about fleet reliability. |
Reduces cost incurred by RR |
Shift supervisors |
|
Finance and accounting. |
Reporting is mainly done manually with a 95% estimated accuracy. Data needed from the system cannot be easily accessed. |
To improve accuracy, speed and enhance financial reporting in this section |
Finance department |
Improve accountability for financial resources |
Financial system specialist |
There are however efforts to replace the current systems, through the projects which are now underway. Such as the new accounting and finance system to ensure accurate financials. This system shall require to be customized by the owner so as not to interfere with other systems. 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 persons as physical evidence to the customers of the company`s performance. Information includes, fleet specifications, distribution services information and regional terminal pictures.
PART 2
1. IT Strategies
The IT department has been tasked with a responsibility of developing modern technology to help support the business strategies developed by the management. After a review of the current status of the IT department, a lot of issues emerged related to the processes employed. One is that the department`s current leadership is underperforming, the help desk staff is slow in responding to problems, and the system development process takes too long. Hence, as a result, the following strategies will be employed to enhance performance.
Improvement in IT processes
Processes improvement is an internal IT strategy. The IT staff has been found to be slow in response to the current issues which is slowing down the system development process. Hence, to ensure that systems are developed in time and that they are effective in use, the IT processes has to be improved. First, the leadership has to be streamlined to ensure that they achieve the set goals and objectives. Leadership is an important aspect of management and to ensure that IT staff perform, leadership has to be effective (Bonham, 2011). In improving processes, this will work to meet the objective of ensuring efficiency of the workforce.
Second, staff roles will be re-assessed to ensure that the roles are not overlapping which will help to increase employee accountability. Finally, the system development team before designing any system will have to identify the needs critically to ensure that this new system meets the specific user needs. Also, the team will also work within a given timeline to ensure timely development of the systems. Process improvement strategy will help minimize costs incurred due to delays in the systems development or slow response to problems by the IT staff.
Mobile Marketing App
As a business enabling-strategy, the mobile marketing app will help the sales agents provide statistical evidence of the company performance. The IT is devoted to developing a mobile application to help its sales persons in selling out their company to potential customers. The app will assist the sales team in convincing their customers which make their work more effective. Consequently, this strategy is aligned with the RR growth business strategy, in that it helps increase the customer level which brings more business to the organization increasing the revenues. Additionally, this strategy enhances the efficiency of sales workforce which is a strategic objective of RR Company.
Management Information System
The bookkeepers and accountants complained about the inefficiency of the accounting systems being used. The users say that the system is slow and makes the data entry tedious. Also, this makes the process inefficient with many inaccuracies occurring once in a while. Management Information System (MIS) is a business enabling strategy that would help improve this situation. MIS deals with organizing information systems to increase accuracy in reporting which supports decision making (Rausch, Sheta, & Ayesh, 2013). Also, this provides an automation of the reporting process which increases the accuracy in reporting. Additionally, this strategy is in line with the cost reduction business strategy of RR Company as it minimizes cost incurred due to inaccuracies in data entry.
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)
As it was discovered, some customers have better inventory systems to manage their inventory regarding when the stocks need to be replenished, and the information is delivered in time. Similarly, to avoid inconveniences from customers who make almost instantaneous orders, the VMI systems would be a possible strategy. Vendor Managed Inventory is a system that helps a supplier to manage the client`s inventory and can tell when the stock needs replenishment (Rausch, Sheta, & Ayesh, 2013). VMI is a business-enabled strategy and is in line with the business growth strategy of RR as well as the objective of providing warehousing services for their customers.
2. IT Portfolio
In the table below a summary of the projects under the IT department that is in line with the proposed strategies of increasing RR profits and ensuring continuous business growth. The table presents a summary of the projects indicating the functional areas the projects will enhance and the proposed timeline for implementation.
|
Functional Areas and the Projects |
Qtr. 1 |
Qtr. 2 |
Qtr.3 |
Qtr.4 |
Qtr.5 |
Qtr.6 |
|
Finance Accurate Financials Reporting System |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Transport Fleet Maintenance System |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Technical Support Routing and Freight Maintenance system Vendor Managed Inventory system |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sales and Marketing Mobile Marketing App |
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. Proposed Project
The CIO observed that some of the inconveniences facing the dispatch department were due to almost instantaneous customer orders. The observation is that while some customers have inventory systems that help to indicate replenishment requirement in due time, other customers do not have such systems. Hence, these customers make almost instantaneous delivery orders. In return, the dispatch team at times may be faced with problems in meeting such orders as they require enough time to plan for dispatches.
Vendor Managed Inventory is a system that will be linked to the customers and RR systems and will help determine when the customer`s inventories require replenishment. The VMI proves to be a business enabling system as it seeks to provide better customer service and reduce costs incurred due to long lead times. Hence, making the business transaction between RR and their customers smoother and easier.
4. Risk Management
Risk management involves exploring all potential and existent risk factors within the business area that may hinder achievement of strategic business goals. The following section identifies risks that might affect the proposed IT strategies and how to mitigate such risks. Risk management is future oriented and involves a proactive approach as opposed to reactive one.
Dependency
Dependency is a risk that the CIO should be ready to cope with in the development of IT projects proposed. As has been observed, the projects may require experts that RR Company may not have acquired at the time. Projects like the Accurate Financial has employed an external expert who works directly with finance and IT departments. To avoid over-reliance on such experts, the company needs to train its current employees on the systems being implemented.
Technical Risks
Technical risks involve possibilities of the current systems affecting the normal organization functions (Taylor, 2010). A new system may be introduced and may interrupt the normal business operations such as the mobile application may influence normal sales operations. To mitigate the risk, Carol needs to do consultations with the specific functional area to ensure smooth integration of such systems.
Strategic Risks
Strategic risks involve determining that the resources required for the projects do not exceed the assessed current levels and does not affect other business operations as well. The new management information system may overlap with the current reporting system. To avoid such risks, Carol has to ensure that the projects and the resource required are within the budget limits; and determine the relevance of each system to avoid jargon Also, ensure that the project aligns with other strategies and follows other organization structures.
Product Risk
In this risk, Carol should be concerned with how the products or systems developed suits the organization needs. Sometimes, the product developed may be inconsistent with the needs of the user department or the customers as well (Bonham, 2011). In fact, Carol has observed this problem within her IT staff system developers. That they take long to develop systems and later this systems do not meet customer needs. To mitigate such risks, Carol should ensure that before the developing the systems, the complete user needs are identified clearly.
5. Business Continuity Planning
Taylor, (2010) observed that the Business Continuity Plan (BCG) is important in the implementation of new systems.
Commitment to Planning
At RR, the people who will be involved in the BCG will include the CIO, who will act as the team leader. A competent IT head from one of the regional offices who will deputize the CIO and three members from each office. The five member committee will be answerable to the company president.
Defining Objectives
The objectives of this BCG process include;
· To ensure that the resource requirement for the projects is adequately available.
· To ensure that the timelines stipulated for successful completion of the projects are met.
· To access risks associated with the business to ensure that they are avoided.
· To ensure that the IT strategies are aligned with the business strategies effectively.
Determining Impact
The possible threats to the current IT projects is system failure that may be as a result of security threats to the systems. The threats may include; hacking, potential malware and virus as well as system breakdown. The following table is a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) that analyzes the potential threats to the systems, their impacts, and how to respond to them.
|
System |
Threat |
Magnitude of disruption |
Likelihood |
Mitigation Process |
|
Accurate Financials |
External Attack |
High |
Rare |
Performing system analysis and Change of the security passwords. |
|
Reporting System |
System failure, breakdown |
Moderate |
Rare |
Backing up the system information remotely to avoid loss of information. |
|
Vendor Managed Inventory |
Intrusion Internet connection failure |
High |
Highly likely to happen. |
Regular servicing of the servers and installing backup servers. |
|
Fleet Management System |
Intrusion
|
High |
Rare |
Change of the security password and review administrator rights. |
|
Routing and Freight Tracking System |
System failure and Intrusion |
High |
Rare |
Change of the security password and review administrator rights. |
|
Mobile Marketing App |
Connection failure and breakdown |
Moderate |
Occasionally |
Cloud back up to avoid loss of data. |
RR Most Critical Systems
The most important systems at RR currently would be first, the routing systems. The system helps to schedule deliveries and pick-ups of customer freight making the process manageable. Carol must ensure that the system remains operation through regular system maintenance. Second, the fleet management systems which helps in the management of fleet and schedules maintenance accordingly. To ensure that this system remains operational, carol should consult with the user department.
Running head: STRATEGIC PLAN 1
STRATEGIC PLAN 9
Finally, the accurate financial system that helps in automation of the accounting and finance operations. The system is designed to provide regular reports to the management. To ensure this system remains in operation, Carol should enquire regularly whether the management is contented with the information generated by the system.
References
Bonham, S. (2011). IT project portfolio management. Boston: Artech House.
Frank Withey,Geoff Lancaster (2007) CIM Coursebook: marketing fundamentals, London
Mallin, C. (2011). Corporate governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rausch, P., Sheta, A., & Ayesh, A. (2013). Business intelligence and performance management. London: Springer.
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
Taylor, J. (2010). Managing information technology projects. New York: American Management Association.
