Business for the new IT system at SUH - Case Study Example

Business case for the new IT system at SUH Cesar Cobena of Maryland College Europe Andrew Pickering December 11, Executive Summary SUH presently has the challenge of obtaining real time information on the activities of its sales staff and customer purchases. The availability of such information is essential in facilitating useful operational decisions for the lager enterprise profitability. This proposal recommends the adoption of Information Technology system that will centralize product sales as well as create a customer relationship management network at SUH.

The back bone of any enterprise, SUH included, is the customers, and their constant satisfaction is reason enough for the adoption of a system that will provide real time information on their activities that include among other things, daily purchases. This proposal will however go beyond customer satisfaction to look at the impact of this system on efficiency, the opportunities, cost of its implementation and general system security to come up with a comprehensive recommendation on why it suits the operations of SUH.

Proposal Scope The proposed system will provide centralized accessibility to all the participants in the operation of SUH, with specific domains for each participant. The IT manager, sales departmental heads, accountants and auditors will each have their domains customized to suit their respective responsibilities. It will equally avail real time data on sales figures, payments, products issued on credit and specific item performance in the market. This is a very important decision making data that helps the management in a big way, to help make crucial policy and operational decisions.

With the security features of the proposed system, manipulation of data will only be possible by very few senior staff making accountability prompt. The system cannot have its data altered at junior levels and even the senior staff must go through numerous authorization checks to alter data with each check leaving a digital foot print that can always reveal who made the alteration and when they were made (Khosrowpour, 2002). Opportunities presented by the new system. The main objective of this enterprise is to achieve and sustain optimum customer satisfaction.

With its implementation, the system will ensure competitiveness in terms of the provision of real time customer related data. SUH will be able to know the volumes purchased by each customer in real time and can obtain statistical data on who among their pool of customers is the most valuable in terms of volume purchased. The performance of the sales team can equally be monitored in real time and decisions on bonuses or dismissal made with ease and fast. Given the reliability of information provided by the system, it will be much easier for the management of SUH to manage their operational costs better because staff costs and sales related costs; will be available at the click of a button.

This will in the end translate to higher profitability for the enterprise. Proposal description The information system proposed will be web based with all the authorized staff being able to access its data from anywhere within the enterprise. It will produce analyzed data on sales volumes, customer purchase activities and profit margins from these sales in real time. With the use of laptops, tablets and internet enabled cell phones, sales staff will remit data from the field that will then undergo a cleansing process to generate data and reports that will be very useful in the managerial decision making process.

The system, based on its web based features, will facilitate offsite support to both the sales staff and management. System implementation schedules. Among the possible solutions are the offline manual systems that will require input of data at a central location, possibly the head office or an online system that has data centrally input and accessed. These two systems have the weakness of limited information access with the authorized personnel relying on a single access point to input raw data and obtain subsequent reports.

This calls for a web based, all access granted system, and that is what this proposal advocates for. For its implementation, there will be need to develop the required platform which should last for a period of not more than six months. Testing of the prototype should be within one month, the success of which a training exercise that runs for two months will be started to familiarize the staff with the new technology. The complete product should be live on the 9th month with a transition period from the current to the new platform, going for one month.

According to Khosrowpour (2002), during this period, the new and old system will work side by side as the old system is slowly abandoned for the new technology. Cost benefit analysis This analysis generally looks at the costs associated with the new system against benefits that will result from its implementation to help draw a conclusion on the viability of the proposal. Direct costs The direct costs will include software development costs, the costs of acquiring the relevant hardware like a new server and new computers.

These costs are relatively low and given that they are once off expenditures, they should not be a hindrance to the adoption of the new system. Implementation costs These are the costs of training, running two parallel systems during the transition period and the expenditure made in preparation for the new system like acquisition of new premises to suit the new technology. Benefits The immediate benefit of this system will be the availability of useful managerial data in real time. This information will bring with it ease in decision making that will translate into prompt cost management practices and ultimate profitability.

With the new system, revenue is bound to increase since individual customer activities will be monitored and appropriate rewards given to ensure loyalty. The same will be the case for staff costs because with the provision of precise staff expenditure data, performance can be easily checked and all staff activities will as a result be measures against output. Customer feedback is another benefit that the system brings with it. It will be possible to know, with the new system, how exactly the customers feel about SUH since all feedbacks will be done by them individually online ensuring ease of access and avoidance of distortion either maliciously or otherwise, of customer feedback by the staff.

Efficiency in service delivery and customer support system will be another benefit. With its implementation, this system will facilitate after sale services since information on customer concerns will be available in real-time. Recommendation SUH should adopt the proposed system to stay competitive. Real time availability of information relevant to managerial decision making is presently the cornerstone of management and any enterprise seeking to move to the next level, must embrace technology that provides this kind of information.

This is what the system will seek to address. Reference Khosrowpour, M. (2002). Collaborative information technologies. Hershey, PA: IRM Press.