Case Study Grand Wines

Question: Discuss about theCase Studyfor Grand Wines. Answer: Swot Analysis: Grand Wines Limited is a firm headquartered in Sydney which sells wine in all over the NSW. Company has grown to larger business selling through 400 stores. All these stores are approached by sales persons. These sales persons have a central coordination system in Sydney where all orders are entered in database and products are dispatched based on the order entry. Company is planning to launch new technique to minimize the order time and increase the efficiency of operations. Company analysis provides the following scenario: Strengths: Company is enjoying good position in the market and serving a larger customer base through its 400 stores. Company has its distribution network spread across the region which provides the more visibility to its products (Coghlan, 2011). Company has capable staff of 20 sales person to promote and sale the products to all the stores. Company is investing in technology which is good for future growth. Companys top management is concerned about customer satisfaction and company productivity. Weakness: Company is working till now without any technical assistance which makes its operations more complex and inefficient. All competitors have better technical assistance and are enjoying good customer feedback because of that. Customers are going to competitors for the products which is decreasing companys customer strength. There is no direct connection among all the stores which leads to back order and shortage of products (OBREGN RIVERA, 2001). Orders and productions are not aligned and leads to wastage of resources. Opportunity: Company can leverage its strong distribution network to acquire more customers. By implementing order tracking and internal communication system, on-time deliveries can be increased. Delivery time can be reduced with this system It will lead to more satisfied customers which will increase the sales and profits of the company. Company can enhance its marketing activities to promote the fast delivery and hence can increase its profit margins by a large extent. Threats: Success of the new communication is doubtful. It might need a lot of investment to deploy the system and to train the employees about its use. By the time company launches this product, competitors can launch new better technologies in the market to attract the customers (Paulson, 2011). Cost of the new system might exceed the profits it is going to earn because of the new system. Chances of technical errors are always high. Project Charter: Title of the project- Intra-company Communication system for order entry and status update. Name and email of the Project Manager- Mr. John Kerry (jhon@yahoo.co.in) Duration of the project- Duration of the product will be six months. Project will be completed in three stages. First stage of the product would cover the analysis of the present situation. It will do the in depth analysis of the company processes. It will also analyze the best class examples implemented by the competitors in the market. Based on these inputs, new communication system would be designed in second stage. First stage will last for two months which will include all preliminary research required for the new system. Second phase will also last for two to three months. Development of the system would take place in this. Testing would also be covered in the same phase. Third and last stage will take one or two months which will implement the system, monitor it for few days and provide assistance required for implementation and operating. After that maintenance will continue for next six months (Sanders, 2010). High level budget- This is new techniques which will be completely new for the company. All the systems and supporting hardware would be needed to install. Software cost and system development cost be around AUD 20,000. This will include all software developments and softwares required for the system. Hardware installation is going to be a costly affair for the firm. It would take around AUD 30,000. Another AUD 10,000 would be required for implementation, training and maintenance of the system. Project Objectives- New communication system will be designed by keeping the following objectives in the mind: Reduction in TAT (Turn around time) for order entry and delivery. Reduction in delay in product deliveries by live providing current stock updates to sales person and store owners. Reduction in order errors and mismatch in order demand and product availability in stocks. Providing better, fast and accurate services to the customers to increase customer satisfaction and their loyalty. Acceptance Criteria- Product will be reviewed based on various parameters and will be accepted based on that. Product should provide clear benefits to the organization. It should have fixed targets by which it is going to increase the sales on the company. Reduction in TAT should be clearly indicating the difference between the existing process and the proposed system. Deadlines will be decided for periodic review of the new system. System would be accepted only if there is significant improvement in TAT and order deliveries. Increase in profit margin can be taken into account for this. Assumptions and Constraints- It is assumed that all the stores have same system requirements. All are similarly connected to central system and they all follow the similar guidelines issued by the company for ordering an item. System will follow a standard approach at all stores (WATERFIELD, 2009). StakeholderList- New communication will significantly affect the companys sales and thus profit margins. It will directly affect the financials of the company, but other stakeholder which would get benefitted most are sales persons and the employees entering the order information in the system at central location. It will reduce the manual work. Employees would have lesser work-load and would be free to do any other work in the meantime. Customers will also be affected by this. They will receive their product in lesser time without any chances of cancellation or waiting for item. Lessons Learned- Project is based on IT development and supply chain issues. It clearly show the importance of an IT system to assist the supply chain to make it more efficient. Communication Plan Plan Purpose Communication plan is required to keep the information centralized and readily available for access to others. This will be helpful to share live updates of the order, inventory and customer demands. Employees will have a handheld device which they will use to communicate with each other. They can use their mobile also for this purpose by downloading and installing the app designed for this. Identification of Stakeholders Direct stakeholders in this plan will be sales persons and the executives working at central store in Sydney. Both will directly use the system to communicate the information to each other. Top management can also use this to track the sales or to predict the future demand of the products. Suppliers will be updated about the demand and the product will be ready for delivery immediately. Information to be Shared Sales persons take the order from other stores and send it to central supplier. Number of units ordered, location of deliveries, updated charges and prices of the product, availability of the stock in the inventory, delivery status to customers, other materials required to fulfill the order etc. can be communicated to concerned persons through this system. Top management can also use it more making better decisions or to plan their supply capacity according to market demand trends (Yun, 2006). Frequency of Information Exchange Information will be shared on daily basis. Daily a lot of messages will be shared among all the centers and employees. All the stores will be sent live updates about the inventory stock and demand trends. System will be live for whole working hours. In the offline mode messages can be send to a person which he will receive whenever he will go online. All the messages and order entries will be stored in a single database which can be used by accessing the database whenever required. Location of Information Exchange Information will be exchanged among the stores and sales persons. It will be stored centrally at one location. Purpose of Communication Communication system will simplify the ordering processes and will reduce the TAT and error rates. Mechanism for Communication All the communication would be through online channel. Persons can communicate via mails, live sharing, video conferencing or calls. All the stores will have a communication room where video conferencing devices will be installed. Change management Direct implementation of new system would not be possible as all the persons would not be technically expert to use the system, technical errors might occur or it might not be able to fulfill all the requirements in one go. Therefore, some stores will be linked at initial phase and then all the stores would be covered. References: Coghlan, A. (2011). Rat memory restored by installing replay. New Scientist, 210(2818), 14. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(11)61482-6 OBREGN, R., RIVERA, J. (2001). Participatory communication in a high school setting. Journal of International Communication, 7(2), 98114. doi:10.1080/13216597.2001.9751912 Paulson, E. (2011). Group communication and critical thinking competence development using a reality-based project. Business Communication Quarterly, 74(4), 399411. doi:10.1177/1080569911424484 Sanders, M. L. (2010). The interpersonal development project: Bridging theory and practice in interpersonal communication courses. Communication Teacher, 24(3), 165169. doi:10.1080/17404622.2010.489191 WATERFIELD, C. (2009). Selecting and installing a portfolio management system. Small Enterprise Development, 10(1), 1726. doi:10.3362/0957-1329.1999.003 Yun, J. M. (2006). Use of a project management system on new drug development. Therapeutic Innovation Regulatory Science, 10(3-4), 111114. doi:10.1177/009286157601000301