Order Description
Case Study: Craven Books
Craven Books (CB)is a comic magazine seller in Utah City, USA, with a 40-years life span competing with mega sellers such as Dreamland Comics, Forbidden Planet, and Metropolis Comics. The company extended their market along North America and Mexico and plans to build-up a digital presence to approach the European market through multi-interface e-commerce and social media groups in order to promote their products to the new markets.
This growth strategy has led to an accelerating volume of sales. Accordingly, the company had to process customer orders in patches and recruit a qualified store manager and an IT specialist to develop a digital strategy consistent with its business strategy.
Once appointed, the IT manager outsourced the digital strategy to an independent IT consultant who decided to set-up two technological tools for the internal and external processes. Internally, a weighting machine was brought to the store to determine the right order through weight checks. An electronic mapping machine was also attached to this weighting machine in the store area to link the customer orders from the digital interface with the store management and help locate the relevant items. Externally, the IT consultant has developed a CRM cloud-based interface to help both customers and employees conduct transactions and electronic payments online.
Within a year’s time of outsourcing the digital strategy, CB has failed and lost 90% of its customers in addition to making 60% of its staff redundant. Clearly, there was a misalignment between the business strategy and the IT strategy.
Peter Craven, the owner of this company, needs your help as a professional information management consultant. He wants to define the areas of misalignments and explore different possibilities of developing a more relevant IT portfolio. These possibilities might include CRM, ERP, and Open sources software to save the business and fix the fragmentation in his business processes. Therefore, you are required to submit a professional report that can be read and understood by Peter Craven and his fellow team.
Your Task
You are anOIM consultant who has been employed to advise Craven Books on the effective implementation of these strategic changes. You are required to produce the following:
Part A: Analysis – business process models and strategy analysis
In this section you should develop
1. A series of business process models, which capture the existing and proposed business processes. The models should follow the BPMN notation shown in the lecture slides. You can use Microsoft Visio to create the models although you may if you prefer use Word, PowerPoint or appropriate alternatives.
2. Strategic analysis for Craven Books: you should use a recognised analysis technique such as SWOT, PESTLE etc
Part B: Open source software comparison table
In this section you should conduct research into a suitable software solution for Craven Books. You should decide on the set of characteristics which you will use to evaluate the software and your research should consider 4-5 alternatives in detail. This section should be presented as a table.
Part C: Report
In this section you should write a report which provides an overview of the current situation together with a roadmap outlining how the proposed changes to the business can be achieved to the benefit of the business. This should draw on your analysis in Part A, include your recommendation for software, and provide recommendations for ensuring that the strategy is effectively implemented, including consideration of the challenges ahead.
This section should follow a standard report structure:
Title Page – Contents – Introduction – Main Section – Conclusions and Recommendations – References.
Part D: Reflection on your contribution to the online discussion and wiki
In this section you should submit a 250 word reflective summary, accompanied by your own self-assessment of your contribution to the online elements throughout the module, using the table labelled Reflection Self Assessment Proforma in Appendix A (copy and paste it into your assignment document). The reflective report should include your detailed reflection, supported with evidence from the online discussion and wiki.
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You should use appropriate theories, frameworks and models, that we have covered in the module, to inform and justify your recommendations.
Using the Discussion Boards and Wiki to Help with Your Assignment
The Blackboard module site has been set up with discussion boards and a wiki for you to explore the assignment. It is recommended that you use these to:
? Share papers and articles that you have found on relevant topics (remember to include links, reference and pdfs if you do this)
? Discuss changes to the ways of working for Craven Books – i.e. discuss what processes will change, and explore how these might work in practice. You might also consider the changing information needs of the business
? Discuss and share examples of open source software that could be of use for Craven Books
Please don’t be shy of using the discussion board and wiki – the purpose is to give you experience of using collaborative technologies. Please see the off-block schedules for details of drop in sessions etc.
