Company background (Karen)
Wal-Mart is the leading retailer that provides products at a moderate price to American families with an average income level. To improve performance and profitability, the company has hired a consultancy team to introduce changes to automotive and customer service departments.
Our primary goal consists in advancing Wal-Mart employees’ knowledge and skills to ensure the optimization of customer service area, as well as reorganize storage space. The solutions have been provided to increase the number of employees and strengthen the retention culture to manage customer’s time efficiently and reduce checkout lines. Automotive department is another important focus of the proposal.
Specifically, the consultants should work out strategies to develop advance operational activities and allow the producers to cease the manufacturing process in case of emergency and regulate the working hours efficiently.
The STEEPLE analysis of the company has defined future directions and changes that should be implemented. It has defined the importance of enhancing social and ethical perspectives to consider customers and employees as valuable assets of an organization. Additionally, technological base is another concern that should be taken into consideration because it will contribute to the company’s operational capacity.
The main scope of the project plan is to enter new markets by improving customer service and integrating new technological base. The project will also imply proper training, efficient teamwork, collaboration, and discipline. These aspects will create the basis for fulfilling the company’s objectives.
Implementation plan (Karen)
Objectives, Functional Tactics, Action Items, Milestones, Tasks, and Resource Allocation
The main objective of the implementation plan lies in changing the attitude to consumers and employees and developing a strong ideological framework. In particular, the company plan should premise on social corporate responsibility that considers human resources to be valuable assets (Wickham & Wickham, 2008).
Enhancing communication between employees and clients will be the key to company’s successful performance. Rational distribution of responsibilities should be the priority for company’s executive managers because it will contribute to the production process and will promote efficient information exchange among the departments.
Analyze Key Success Factors
The project will be successful in case the following circumstances and issues will be taken into deeper consideration. To begin with, the main role of consultants is to take control of the communication strategies that managers employ while monitoring the stages of project accomplishment.
Specific attention should be given to the way employees adopt new policies while communicating and negotiating with clients (Wickham & Wickham, 2008). There should be specific performance measurement system that will address their readiness to establish and sustain fruitful cooperation.
Determine Strategies to Monitor and Control the Project’s Implementation
The role of the consultants is confined to controlling the research and development processes to make sure that the company successfully integrates new technology for enhancing communication and advancing the automotive production process (Block & Nowlan, 2011). The level of interpersonal skills is important because it defines employees’ ability to sustain conversation, generate ideas, and engage into crucial thinking.
Reasonable discussions should be premised on reasonable argument between managers and their subordinates and, therefore, workers should not be afraid of expressing their ideas that can improve internal business operations (Block & Nowlan, 2011). Therefore, the project implementation should be controlled on the basis of performance measures and evaluation of the overall climate in the workplace.
Evaluation plan (Karen)
Method for Evaluating Project’s Success
To assess the project’s effectiveness, performance reviews, distribution of tools and techniques, trends analysis, and earned value evaluation will be among the most effective measurement instruments. Specifically, performance reviews are necessary for estimating project status. This evaluation tool can be adopted to trace the changes weekly (Rasila et al. 2010).
As soon as the reviews are performed, it is possible to detect any deviation from the initial instructions. Trend analysis focuses on examining the project outcomes through report evaluation.
Such a system can provide information about possible adverse trends that could be prevented (Rasila et al. 2010). Schedule and costs could be regulated by earned value analysis whereas project performance will be measured by the effectiveness of information distribution techniques.
Survey for Evaluating Project Effectiveness
To evaluate the effectiveness of the project, a cross-sectional survey will be conducted that involves interview and a single questionnaire. Interviews will be held for each member of the sample to understand the character of responses, as well as define the participant’s feedback.
The questionnaire will be premised on general, special, and multi-choice questions to understand the level of effectiveness and perceptions of the project by both managers and employees.
CWE
While estimating the common weaknesses and vulnerabilities of software programs, specific emphasis should be placed on CWE documentation in terms of its functionality. Thus, transparent reporting is essential for improving communication within an organization. Cooperation with clients is also supported by accurate information exchange.
CWE Test Results demonstrate how new computer-mediated environment can estimate the level of performance among the employees. At this point, the project should integrate these tools for assessing the way technological tools contribute to the project accomplishment.
References
Block, P., & Nowlan, J. (2011). Flawless consulting. A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Rasila, H., Alho, J., & Nenone, S. (2010). Using Balanced Scorecard in Operationalising FM Strategies. Journal of Corporate Real Estate. 12(4), 279-288.
Wickham, P., & Wickham, L. (2008). Management consulting: Delivering an effective project (3rd ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson.