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operations_and_tech_plan.docx6
Operations and Technology Plan
Operations and Technology Plan
Clayton Stanek
7/30/2017
BA 499 Business Planning
Donna Lane
Operations
Facilities
Storefront
The storefront of Stanek’s Sound will be located on 2101 Mission Street in San Francisco, California. The space has 2,500 square feet which is more than enough to set up demos, work spaces, registers, and hold stock in store. The property would cost thirty-six dollars per square foot per year to lease, which comes out to seventy-five hundred dollars a month. This is a very reasonable price for the size and location of this establishment.
Warehouse
The warehouse of the company will be located on 111 Toland Street in San Francisco, California. This space will be four times the size of the store front at ten thousand square feet at only double the price per month. The warehouse is where the products will be assembled and stored until stock is either needed in store or is sold online and taken from the inventory in the warehouse to be shipped.
Labor Requirements
The owner of Stanek’s Sound will have their office set up in the storefront property. Their responsibilities will include overseeing day to day operations, approving any long term marketing plans, and creating long term goals for the company to achieve. The director of marketing will also have their office in the storefront. This individual will have the responsibility of managing social media accounts, creating marketing plans for the company, and maintaining the Stanek’s Sound website. The Sales manager who will also be working out of the storefront will be managing three-part time employees and two full time employees which means the manager is responsible for monthly trainings, maintenance on the store demos, and post sales customer service.
In the warehouse, there will be four employees, A product manager and three full time employees who will be focused primarily on assembly of speaker units. The product manager will oversee testing, packaging, and stocking of every speaker system after it is built.
Quality Control
The product manager will be responsible for quality control. There will be a few tests that will be done to each and every speaker to make sure that it lives up to the Stanek’s Sound name. The features that will be tested include: sound quality, volume control, and wireless connectivity.
Inventory
The inventory for Stanek’s Sound will be held in two places, the storefront and the warehouse. The warehouse is going to have most of the inventory, but will shift over more to the storefront during the busier season which is in the spring (Berman, Pfleeger, 1997). In more recent studies conducted by the statistics were the same, there is a big jump in speaker sales right when spring starts (Hale, 2012). To compensate for this spike in traffic, Stanek’s Sound will increase the amount of stock that is carried in the store by seventy percent from March until July.
Order fulfillment
There are going to be two types of sales that Stanek’s Sound will be involved in, business to business and business to customer. Business to business clients will be involved with our two-person sales team who go out and sign those accounts. Once that team signs the client they then take the order form to the sales manager who logs it into the system that bills the customer and sends the order to the warehouse to be fulfilled and shipped to the customer. The product manager is then responsible for any customer service that may need to be provided to that customer.
Business to customer sales
In store
· Customer walks into Stanek’s Sound storefront
· Customer is greeted by Stanek’s Sound staff
· Staff asks qualifying questions to find best solution for customers’ needs
· Staff demos speaker solution for customer while explaining why it is the best fit for them
· Staff creates order, or gathers products
· Customer gets rung up at the point of sale system
· Customer is helped out to their vehicle with their new sound equipment
Online Order
· Once on our website customer sees product packages
· Customer reads the benefits of each package
· Based on what they have read they can purchase a speaker package or an individual speaker by clicking on the picture or name of the item
· Website puts the item(s) into a cart for the customer
· Once the customer clicks on the shopping cart icon there will be a check out button
· Upon check out Stanek’s Sound will ask if the item is being shipped or picked up in store.
· Once selected Stanek’s Sound will ask for: first and last name, phone number, email address, and physical address.
· After that is entered Stanek’s Sound will need charge card information
· After purchase is completed an email receipt will be sent to the customer with their purchase info and a thank you message from Stanek’s Sound.
Tech plan
Hardware
In the storefront/ office space Stanek’s Sound will require five computers, all of them will be twenty-one-and-a-half-inch Apple iMacs that have an i5 processor, eight gigabytes of RAM and a one terabyte hard drive. Two of these computers will be used as a point of sale system in the storefront location. The other three will be for the owner, sales manager, and the director of marketing to use. The company will need a couple more items to make the hardware work properly such as a modem and a router to get internet as well as WiFi. Stanek’s Sound is going to have many devices connected wirelessly to the internet so a beefy set up will be needed, the Netgear Nighthawk X4S should do the trick because not only can you connect many devices to it, but the router also provides one of the strongest signals around. The internet will also be used for the demos that will be set up in the store front, one demo will have a full 5.1 channel surround sound featuring the Stanek’s Sound system, while the other has a 3.0 channel system of Stanek’s Sound speakers. The only other two devices we will need for demos are going to be TVs. Two LG JS8500 series TVs, one 55” the other 65”, will provide the video that goes along with the audio in the demos. To help the store function it will also need landline phones, a one line phone system with two cordless phones should do the trick. These will be to answer any questions customers may have and to
For the two B2B salesman they will each need a work phone and laptop. To make sharing files seamless Stanek’s Sound will use two Macbook Pros as well as two iPhone 7s. This will allow for an easy connection between the people in the field and the sales manager in the store.
In the warehouse, there is going to be one iMac for the product manager to use to place orders and keep in contact with the owner. They are also going to need a phone system there to do some orders over the phone and to contact any business partners via phone.
Software
The POS system that would best suit my needs would be Epos Now for many reasons. First being that it would help my company grow, Epos Now notices trends in sales and seasonality and can help Stanek’s Sound expand. It can also be used as a marketing tool; the software offers marketing options that would make it easier to get the company’s name out to the world. The e-commerce part of the business can be managed through the POS system as well. Rewards programs can also be managed through the system helping Stanek’s Sound identify who their most loyal customers are. In general, the system is easy to use and can help the company do more than just take customers money.
References
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Hale, Danielle. "Seasonal Patterns in Home Sales Data." Economists Outlook. N.p., 29 Feb. 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2017. <http://economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org/2012/02/29/seasonal-patterns-in-home-sales-data/>.
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Marketsandmarkets.com. "Wireless Audio Market by Product (Soundbar, Speaker, Headphones, Headset), Technology (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Sonos, AirPlay), Application (Home Audio, Consumer, Automotive, Commercial) and Geography - Global Forecast to 2022." Wireless Audio Device Market by Technology - 2020 | MarketsandMarkets. N.p., Apr. 2016. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.
NETGEAR - Nighthawk X4S Wireless-AC Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router - Black. (2016, January 24). Retrieved May 22, 2017, from http://www.bestbuy.com/site/netgear-nighthawk-x4s-wireless-ac-dual-band-wi-fi-router-black/4760604.p?skuId=4760604
You can now try the world's #1 rated POS software for free. (n.d.). Retrieved May 22, 2017, from http://www.eposnow.com/us/software
