Service Operations Management Team Project - Coursework Example

Service Operations Management Team Project Computer sciences and Information Technology Part Present the project team 1. Role of each Project Team member In this project to implement a strategic plan and decisions, there will be four team members, each with specific duties. The first team member will be responsible for the logistics, ensuring the procurement of all the resources required to complete the project. The same project team ember will be responsible for the proper management of the resources. The second member will be co-coordinating the activities and events, including the decisions on when an event ought to begin or end. The member will monitor the timings and the project processes according to the work flow designed in the strategic plan. The third member will be given the task of both internal and external communication and the identifying of new service opportunities for the organization. The member will be engaged on mobile communications and the linkages to the social sites including Facebook and Twitter. The fourth member, will be responsible for marketing, and will have to work together with the third member to leverage on the communication capabilities. The project will majorly pursue Mobile marketing because it has been realized that majority of the target customers are on mobile communication platforms. 1.2. Clarification of the Contribution of Each Team Member to the Project Every organization and project team requires a decision on the appropriate timings in order to realize the strategic plan. Since this project involves consultancy, it is easier for the project management process to run by dividing the tasks into four subtasks, logistics, co-ordination, communication and marketing. For example, the coordinator will only be concentrating on the decision on the timings of event. When a client needs to be attended to by the organization, the coordinator will decide on the timing of when the client will be attended to depending on the available work force and other resources. The member in charge of logistics will therefore be of great significance when the resources are required, for example, transporting the staff members to the site to offer the consultancy services. In order to get information from or pass information to the clients, suppliers and other service providers, the member in charge of communications does the communication on the various channels to present the consultancy services to them and offer necessary information. During the service delivery, the person will maintain the contact with the client until the service is completely delivered. There will be need for the person to collect the opinions of the clients from the communication channels concerning the quality of services they receive from the project. The analysis of the data will assist in the improvement of the services offered. The member doing the marketing uses the same communication platforms apart from the physical contact, to present the products and services, specifically to the clients. The project acknowledges that its clients are dynamically transforming, hence; there is need to have a systematic approach to the market through strategies of marketing in preparation to the dynamics. All the project team members will have to work as a team to dedicate their time and plan for the decision on the services and process. The coordinator will have more work to undertake because time controls the project plan. He or she will have to produce a document representing the decisions made during the planned meetings. The coordinator also has to occasionally organize meetings in which the planning will take place, which again is communicated by the communications contact person. Part 2: Definition of the Targeted Market 2.1. Service or Business To Be Created The service and business to be carried out in this project is majorly consultancy on communication services, solutions and technology. The target group for this project is the business entrepreneurs both in the rural and urban settings. The project focuses on facilitating the communication among the members of the community to ensure that all members are able to communicate on the mobile channels. Even though many rural clients do not have mobile phones, the project must undertake the difficult steps to facilitate the acquisition of mobile phones and the use of social websites. , This assists in the planning to support the group members as well as other stakeholders of the project. The recommended process in the strategic decisions for this project includes the following activities: Choosing the Participant of the Project Identification of the core ideology or the value of the Project Formulation of the Vision and Mission Statements Setting Up smart Goals and Objectives Conducting the Audit to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and the Threats of the project The project is intended for the transformation of the businesses and promotes entrepreneurship initiatives by applying Communication Technologies as a consultancy service. 2.2. Introducing the Service Business Our intention is to open a consultant firm to offer communication services such as document and information management, audio-video coverage and editing, and public relations. In simple terms, the organization will run the business of providing document, communication and information management for the target group. With the entrepreneur spirit, there will be need to use a business guide during the start of the business as in the entire business process. The plan of business in this project is to prepare for a strategic plan to establish the business. This business plan will cover the steps involved in the start of a new business. The plan includes the detailed description of the company, the product and services offered by the business, the suppliers, evaluation of the target market and the expected plan for managing the project team. The strategic plan for this business also involves the financial analysis using a spreadsheet to describe the financial position such as the cash flows, the income, liquidity, debts, profit and liabilities. 2.3. Justification of the Choice The decision to establish a startup business plan is derived from the information that the a start-up business mainly needs a comprehensive information that describes the type of the business it operates, the structure of administration, the sources of financing, the physical location, the business specialization details and the type of ownership. With the experience after operating as a manager in Corporate Affairs Management in Information management at E-enc Communications Limited, there is sufficient experience and skills on constancy in information and document management. This will assist in the rolling out of stable marketing strategy and plan for popularizing the organization among the target customers. Specifically, the organization prefers to make use of the strategy of mobile marketing, which will include the strategy would include the creation of websites as well as social websites pages which people will follow and provide comments and opinions. 2.4. Definition and Discussion of the Targeted Market Segment Targeted The focus group in this project is a small group gathered from a larger population then sampled, in an open discussion, to collect the opinion of the members about the idea of communication services. The emotional response of the target group indicates the acceptance or rejection of the idea. One of the ways of identifying the target market is by the focus on internal stakeholder in the organization. Nevertheless, it becomes extremely difficult for the workers in the organization to present honest information for fear of victimization and being ostracized. However, the desire of the organization is to have a random selection in the target group rather than a small segment of volunteer workers. The best target group in this study is the external stakeholder group, which is independent from the organization and has no fear of reprisal and whether they are ostracized or not. The target groups among the external stakeholders include members of the public community, board members, suppliers and potential clients. They are free to share their honest sentiments on their sufferings and challenges. The facilitators of the focus group take care to gather all the feedback of the responses of the external stakeholders. 2.5. Definition of the Main Characteristics of the Chosen Product Being fully aware that there are many competitors in the market of information and communication management, the organization intends to provide advanced products and services to beat the competitors. These include faster internet connectivity, more attractive web pages, quicker and instant response to customer queries and constant innovative ideas for the production of new solutions and products. The core value in the organization is the provision of the highest quality products and services to the customers to realize the competitive advantage against the competitors. The communication and information technology will be characterized by faster internet connectivity, higher system availability, reliability and access to multiple clients. As much as other organizations offer similar services and products, this organization is determined to be the provider of the preference of the customers at any cost. 2.6. Competitive Advantage against Competitors There are three essential areas to focus on in the strategic choice of the competitive advantage while delivering the services and products in the organization formed. These areas include the quality of services and products, the pricing scales and the customer focus. 2.6.1. Quality This organization will be able to beat the competitors by offering superior brand and high qualities according to the need assessment of the target client groups. 2.6.2. Pricing Scales The organization will do a strategic analysis of the prices in the market for communication and document management services and then set up reasonable prices. It is essential to realize that there is a wide variation of income levels in the target market. Not every member of the society will be able to afford the communication services if the organization does not rationalize them. 2.6.3. Customer Focus Services The main objective of the project is to empower the community in business development by offering the consultancy services on communication and document management services. The indicator of customer satisfaction index will be measured by the positive feedback from the customers, and the number of customers that return after receiving the consultancy services the first time. 2.6.4. Other Factors of Competitive Advantage With the development of high quality products, it will be easy to retain the customers later when the prices begin to increase. The strategic plan on customer retention is to focus on the highest quality at lower rates than the competitors, but then to increase the premium price once the number of loyal customer has increased. 2.6.4.1. Special Services The alternative methods of maintaining the competitive advantage and retaining the clients is to offer special premium, services such as free parking spaces in the city, offering free refreshment to customers. It is possible that the clients may not remember the greatness of the products and services, but the memory of the special services are indelible. As the organization exercises the competitive advantage strategy, there is need to protect the ideas from getting to the competitors so that they do not practice the same strategies. 2.6.4.2. Offering Personalized Communications Additionally, there is need for flexibility in the organization in appreciating the customers. This can be done by offering personal services such as congratulating customers during their special occasions including marriage anniversary, birthdays and graduations. When the customers feel appreciated, it is easier to identify themselves with the organization for multiple services. 2.6.4.3. Special Offers Occasionally, the organization can offer low cost or free services to the clients. In order to increase the loyalty of the clients, the customers against the competitors, the organization can provide free transports such and communication during the special Occasion. 2.6.4.4. Acquisition of New Business Opportunities The marketing strategy can also play a vital role in communication and constant follow ups with the potential clients. The organization will communicate with the customers informing them of newer products and services. PART 3: Development of Service Strategy and System Design 3.1. Describe the Service Supply Chain The services will be offered as integration the instant and enterprise communication services. One of the services on which the consultancy will be offered is the instant chatting service, internet protocol voice services (IP telephony services). The second product is the mobility features. There will be a consultancy in the audio data management, web and video conference services. Other services will include: Fixed-mobile convergence Desktop sharing services, Interactive whiteboards Call control services Speech recognition Unified messaging (integration of voicemail, short messaging services and e-mail The chain of services will provide products to generate the consistent unification of the user-interface to the user-experience on many communication devices and types of media-types. In a wider sense, the chain will encompass many methods and media of communications to be exchanged through the network. It will be able to operate other technologies such as IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) and the digital signature communication. This is because they are integrated in the network communications and directed to one on one contact communication or broadcasted to one- to-many communications communication. There will be a wide choice of communication medium in the communication. For example, a client will be able to get a voicemail message and then decide to get it through the e-mail account or on a cell phone. Supposing the sender is still accessible online to accept his or her calls, the feedback can be sent instantly via the text chat or on a video call. If the sender is offline, the message will be sent in form of a non-instant message to be accessed through many other media 3.2. Where to Locate the Services The services will be accessed on many platforms including web based applications, cloud communication, voice calls, presence management and real time messaging. Other forms of the service will be available on the video and web conferencing features as well as many other integrated communication channels an instance to quicken the sharing of information sharing as well as strategic decision making. One of the services to be offered to the clients is the Audio conferencing through the Arcstar Application available on the NTT Coms website. This will be used as an on demand audio conferencing service for supporting simple and fast business communication. It is essential for the communication involving remote locations. It will also offer video conferencing and web conferencing services. It will be located from any point so long as there is internet connectivity. Apart from mobile communication, clients will be able to meet online with their business customers, team members and partners 3.1. Why to Locate the Services The main reason why it is important to locate the services is the massive transformation in the communications industry. There is a convergence between Information technology and business operations driven by networks. Networking enables clients from distant locations to have an instant one on one communication that drives the accomplishment of the business objectives. The service providers will offer prioritized investments for the service driving activities by locating them on the internet, mobile networks and the cloud. This manner of transformation will cause the emergence of new business models that in turn will expose the new security threats as well as compliance and policy issues. Locating the services will produce more income and profits for the entrepreneurs with mobile phones and access to cloud services. Another reason is that the data centers for Cloud service provider have increased in size in the modern years recent years due to massive acquisitions. The dynamics in the acquisition of IT services introduces a special layer of infrastructure in the business environment. By locating the services on the online platforms support the virtualization, consolidation and standardization business solutions. Additionally, the IT sources from the global cloud. This location of the solutions assists in the improvement of innovation and saves time for the users in the market as they comply with the international and the rules and regulations. 3.2. Layout of the Service Facility Specifying The work flow of the activities in the organization is demonstrated in workflow in figure 1 below. The senior management of the organization oversees all the sections and departments. There are three main channels on which the consultancy services are presented to the customers. These include the Internet Service Providers, Cloud service providers and the Mobile Service Provider. Figure 1: Work Flow of Activities in the Organization 3.3. Defining the Capacity of the Service This study considers communication as a service in the outsourcing enterprise channel for providing communications solution. The channel size or the capacity is the number of clients which the communication channel can support comfortably without possibility of congestion. The communication channel can be leased from one vendor. The communications include VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol otherwise known as the Internet telephony, the real time messaging (Instant), online collaboration, audio and video conferencing applications. They use both mobile and fixed communication devices. The communication as a service model has transformed dynamically in line with the Software as a Service model. The Communication as a service is larger in terms of the capacity of vendor it is able to interact with. Additionally, it is responsible for the management of hardware and software to guarantee a required Quality of Service. The communication as a service model enables the client business organizations to select the desired communication devices to deploy. This method eliminates the need for large capitals to invest and a continuous operating cost for the system with capacity exceeding or falling below the prevailing user (client) demand. Communication as a service provides elasticity and the ability of small businesses to expand. Small and medium-sized enterprises are therefore able to accommodate additional devices on demand. The capacity of the network and the set of feature are changeable changed from time to time to make the functionality match the demand and resources to minimize wastage. There are very slim chances of the system failure and requiring frequent major upgrading and replacement. 3.2. Workforce Configuration The strategy of the organization on the development of the workforce is to enforce a systematic training so that the staff members are equipped with product knowledge and customer service standards required. One of method sin the strategic plan is to provide internal training on the e- learning system. The second method is by sponsoring staff members on external professional courses to develop their management, leadership and operational capacity. Each of the learners has to be allocated duties that fit their capabilities and potential. There has to be a match between the skills and the responsibilities assigned to a worker as illustrated by the fittings in figure 2 below. Figure 2: Configuration of the Workforce 3.3. Service Delivery Process in Process Flow Diagram The service delivery process considers the procedures of executing the activities in the organization in order to achieve a certain objective. The objective of this project is to deliver high quality services and products to the target clients. The initial step is to develop a service delivery environment to promote the performance of individual worker. Secondly, the organization has to promote team work among the workers to provide synergy in capacity of the products and services produced. The third step is to promote personal development of the workers from undergraduate to graduates and professional levels. The fourth step is the conversion of the organization into a community, so that they all work towards a common goal and objective. The final step is the adoption of the Principles of best Practice in customer service and ethics. The service delivery process is illustrated in the workflow shown in figure 3 below: Figure 3: Process Workflow of Service Delivery Part 4: Managing your service 1.1. Selected Strategies for Managing Capacity and Demand 1.2. Controlling the Quality of Services 1.3. Tools Used to Develop and Improve the Process Read More