Executive Summary
Sally Beauty Inc. needs to streamline its international product and service management. It is a retailer of beauty products with regional operations. The company needs to manage diverse operations, product demands, reporting, and regulations. In addition, it also needs to attract customers, grow sales, and increase customer base. In order to overcome these challenges, the paper has applied project management principles, operations management, and information system management.
Project management approach would ensure that the company deploys Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 successfully. Operations management focuses on internal processes of daily operations of the company in order to enhance efficiency. Information system management shows how the company would leverage the available data in order to improve decision-making processes and optimize database for business growth.
Introduction
Sally Beauty Inc. is a retailer that deals in beauty supply products. The company is based in Denton, Texas. Sally aims to stay on top of the local beauty trends. However, Sally has experienced a significant challenge in dealing with international product and service management. For instance, beauty product demands vary from country to country. There are different regulations, and the company needs to capitalize on multicurrency of various countries.
Sally wants to continue to deliver high quality services, and increase its customer base and purchase frequencies of customers. Moreover, the company has a challenge in reconciling its different processes and software. Different Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group units also use various reporting system in different locations. For instance, others use period while other units use months.
The company decided to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 in order to overcome these challenges.
Project Management Plan
Project Overview
Project Goal
The goal of this project is to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to streamline international product and service management and continue to deliver high-quality services and grow customer base and purchase frequencies by 60 percent in 2014.
Stakeholder Analysis
Sally Beauty Inc., is the project initiator and financier
Microsoft Corp. is the project-implementing firm
Customers include Sally’s local and international customers who order from its retail stores. The new system must meet needs of Sally and customers in different geographies.
Project Manager
The Project Manager would be responsible for the success of the project, and he has control over the resources of the project and must ensure the project success.
Project Team
Project manager is responsible for the entire project scope
Chief Information Officer (CIO) is responsible for the entire computer systems and information technology that supports Sally Beauty Inc. The CIO will provide strategic direction on efficient use of IT resources and assets during the project implementation. The CIO will also align all business units IT needs with the new Microsoft Dynamics solution. Finally, the CIO would support all processes of the project during the project term.
Technology Officer (TO) is responsible for technology issues at Sally
Support team
All these groups will work together to implement the preferred solution.
Team Contract
This has guidelines that will guide team members during the project term. It emphasizes sharing of information, teamwork, focuses on the best interest of the team, and encourages diversity of opinions, equal participation, open to new ideas and use of tools that facilitate the implementation of the project deliverables.
Project Deliverables
This depends on challenges that Sally Beauty Inc., faces.
- Identification of challenges at Sally Beauty Inc.,
- Defining appropriate solutions
- Determining resources required (computers and software – Microsoft Dynamics)
- Customization of solutions to meet Sally’s specific needs
- Implementing the project (Microsoft Dynamics)
- Testing before the project closure
- Closing the project
Reference Materials
The project team shall use project management tools and other available texts in order to inculcate the best practices in this project (Lock, 2007; Williams, 2008).
Project Organization
Organizational Structure
Sally has both local and international operations. The parent company is Denton, Texas where senior executives make all decisions. It also has suppliers and business units in other regions outside the US.
Sally is a functional organization. Hence, there are different departments with various roles. For instance, the organization has sales, warehouse, stores, IT, and other departments. All these departments report to the functional manager. The functional manager will work together with the project manager in order to find the best solution for the company. This method would facilitate communication and reduce anxieties associated with changes in organizations. Moreover, all team members will work on their respective duties.
Figure 1: Functional Organizational Structure
Organizational Boundaries and Interfaces
Sally’s organizational boundaries and interfaces consist of the parent company in Denton, Texas.
It also has local and international customers, which it must serve efficiently. The new system would enhance efficiency at Sally. Sally must also strive to grow its customer base in the international markets.
There are also contracted shippers who deliver goods from warehouses to stores for global distribution.
In addition, there are also other organizational units, which could interact with the project.
Work Breakdown Structure and Schedule
Work Breakdown Structure
Systems Deployment
- Identification of challenges at Sally Beauty Inc.,
- Defining appropriate solutions
- Determining resources required (computers and software –Microsoft Dynamics)
- Customization of solutions to meet Sally’s specific needs
- Implementing Microsoft Dynamics: importing metadata, importing data, and compiling the application
- Testing before the project closure
- Closing the project
Dependencies
The project would rely on logical planning dependencies. For instance, the project team would identify challenges at Sally before determining their solutions.
In addition, available resources would also influence task completion during the project term.
The project would use ‘Finish to Start’ (FS) in which the project team will have to complete the first task before moving to the next one.
Resource Requirements
Hardware for project includes computers. The company shall use the available computers in different departments.
For the Software, the company shall use the available Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.
Budget Requirements
The budget requirement includes the product solution costs and training costs.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 $ 2,000
Deployment and service charges $1000
Training costs $ 300 per person ($3000 for ten people)
Miscellaneous costs $500
Total project cost is $6500
The project accountant shall use the project budget to track all costs and minimize costs where possible.
Schedule
Gantt Chart reflects the protect milestone, deliverables, and their key dates of start and dates of end, including the number of days completed and days left.
The project timeline is 272 days. The project team has only completed 37 days since the project initiation.
Project Responsibilities
The project has responsibilities of delivering a solution to Sally’s international product and service management challenges.
Managerial Process
Assumptions
The project team assumes that it will complete the project on time within the specified budget.
Dependencies
All project dependencies shall lead to successful completion of all project processes.
Constraints
Resources: inadequate staff with skills in software deployment, computers, and compatible software (Goldratt and Cox, 1992)
Time: the project will run a tight schedule, including the date of deployment and testing processes with user feedback.
Organizational issues: the system deployment will not involve all members of the company. Employees at operation levels will require training on the system, and the system will need new software.
Access to vendors: no module of the system is developed in-house. Hence, the vendor must be available during deployment and testing process in order to resolve any issues.
Risk Management
The possible failure of the project during testing and deployment could affect the business operation negatively. This is a business-critical application in which a failure could lead to serious financial losses for Sally or cancelled orders.
Monitoring and Controlling Mechanisms
The project team would strive to identify all possible risks during deployment and testing in order to suggest methods of mitigating them. In addition, the company shall assess possible financial losses if the system fails at any point during implementation.
Operations Management Plan
Operations Strategy
The company shall efficiently manage rolling up operations, sales, reporting to headquarters, and ordering process through IT (Chase, Aquilano and Jacobs, 2001).
Process Improvement Plan
Sally would improve all processes in merchants’ orders, warehouse orders, and shipping to the stores.
Executives shall engage in all critical processes of the system deployment in order to determine requirements (Baltzan and Phillips, 2013).
The company uses a common system to run all operations. This enhances decision-making and improves the quality of information delivered to others.
Operational Efficiency/Operational Effectiveness Improvement
The system will lead to operational efficiency through a single channel of all operations management, decision-making processes, and improved quality of data.
It would have remote monitoring abilities. This shall allow the company to identify operational challenges before they negatively affect the business.
Technical Process/Information Management Plan
Information System Objectives
Objectives of IS would be to gather, filter, analyze, create, and distribute data in manageable and useable formats (Schwalbe, 2004a; Peterson and Kim, 2000).
Hardware/Software Requirements
The company shall require computers with at least Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 in order to run Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is compatible with other Microsoft products.
Database Technical Support
The company would require dedicated in-house technical supports for optimization its database for business growth. It would manage all in data in Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server effectively.
Information Management Reports
This would allow the company to account for the cost of information management, use of intranets, document e-mail, software, and records management (Schwalbe, 2004b).
Information Security
Sally will ensure the integrity of all data in its database by preventing unauthorized access, disclosure, use, distribution, and destruction. This shall ensure that the company protects its sensitive information and customers’ data in its database.
Conclusion
This research paper has explored Information System Management (ISM) by integrating project management, operations management, and information system management in order solve challenges of international product and service management that Sally Beauty Inc has been experiencing. The process would result into improved business operations, sales growth, and customer acquisition because of improved decision-making and flow of information.
References
Baltzan, P., and Phillips, A. (2013). Business Driven Information Systems (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Chase, R., Aquilano, N., and Jacobs, R. (2001). Operations management for competitive advantage (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Goldratt, E., and Cox, J. (1992). The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (2nd ed.). Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.
Lock, D. (2007). Project Management (9th ed.). Hampshire: Gower Publishing Limited.
Peterson, D., and Kim, C. (2000). Information systems objectives: Effects of experience, position level, and education on developers. Journal of Information Technology Management, 11(3-4), 29-42.
Schwalbe, K. (2004a). Information technology project management (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Thompson Course Technology.
Schwalbe, K. (2004b). Management information systems (6th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.
Williams, M. (2008). The Principles of Project Management. Collingwood, Australia: SitePoint Pty Ltd.