QUESTION

Course: Business Information & Analytics

The requirements:

• Font: New times Roman
• Size: 12
• Each Phase: 2‐3 pages, single‐spaced
• All questions have to be answered in order to get its assigned points
• Use subheadings, for example in Phase ONE, subheadings should be as following:
Competitive advantage
Business Process
E‐ Business
Build Your Own Business PHASE I
You have recently inherited your grandfather’s business, which is conveniently located
in your city’s downtown. The business offers many different kinds of specialized
products and service and was first opened in 1952 and was a local hot spot for many
years. Unfortunately, business has been steadily declining over the past few years. The
business runs without any computers and all ordering takes place manually. Your
grandfather had a terrific memory and knew all of his customers and suppliers by name,
but unfortunately, none of this information is located anywhere in the store. The
operational information required to run the business, such as sales trends, vendor
information, promotional information, and so on, is all located in your grandfather’s
memory. Inventory is tracked in a note pad, along with employee payroll, and marketing
coupons. The business does not have a website, uses very little marketing except word
of mouth, and essentially still operates the same as it did in 1952.
Throughout this course you will own and operate your grandfather’s business, and by
taking advantage of business practices discussed in this text, you will attempt to
increase profits decrease expenses, and bring the business into the 21st century.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

1. Identify the business you are going to build throughout this course and choose a
name for your business The business is a coffee shop and it is called “Green life
Café” This business focuses on the concept of being greener and how to be
environmentally friendly, and healthier choices for customers, this should be reflected
in one of Porter’s strategies that will be adopted (10 points).

2. Write an analysis of buyer power and supplier power for your business using Porter’s
Five Forces Model. Be sure to discuss how you could combat the competition with
strategies such as switching costs and loyalty programs (10 points).

3. Write an analysis of rivalry, entry barriers, and the threat of substitute products for
your business using Porter’s Five Forces Model. Be sure to discuss how you could
combat the competition with strategies such as product differentiation (10 points).

4. Describe which of Porter’s generic strategies you would use for your business
(Differentiation Strategy OR Focused Strategy). Be sure to describe the details of how
you will implement this strategy and how it will help you create a competitive
advantage in your industry (10 points).

BUSINESS PROCESS

1. You realize that you need a digital dashboard to help you operate your business.
Create a list of all of the components you would want to track in your digital
dashboard that would help you run your business. Be sure to justify how each
component would help you gain insight into the operations of your business and flag
potential issues that could ruin your business. (Be sure to identify your business and
the name of your company as you defined it earlier) (10 points)

2. Explain three customer‐facing processes and three business‐facing process
associated with your business. Be sure to detail why the process is customer facing
or business facing (10 points).

E‐BUSINESS

1. To build a sense of community, you have provided a mechanism on your business
website where customers can communicate and post feedback. You review the
communication daily to help understand customer issues and concerns. You log in
and find the following anonymous posting: “I do not recommend visiting this
business on Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. because the Children’s Story Hour is taking place.
I hate children, especially in a business. I’m not sure why this business encourages
people to bring their children. In fact, I recommend that children should be banned
from this business altogether.” How would you respond to the above post? Is the
customer’s viewpoint ethical? How do you encourage an open line of
communication with your customers and still maintain an open forum on your
website? (10 points)

2. Your business needs to take advantage of ebusiness and Business 2.0 strategies if it
wants to remain competitive. Detail how your business could use Web 1.0 and Web
2.0 to increase sales and decrease costs. Be sure to focus on the different areas of
business such as marketing, finance, accounting, sales, customer service, and human
resources. You would like to build a collaboration tool for all of your customers and
events. Answer the questions below as they pertain to your business. (10 points)

• What type of collaboration tool would you build?

• How could you use the tool to facilitate planning, product development, product
testing, feedback, and so on.
• What additional benefits could a customer collaboration tool provide that could
help you run your business?
3. The Yankee Group reports that 66 percent of companies determine website success
solely by measuring the amount of traffic. Unfortunately, large amounts of website
traffic do not necessarily indicate large sales. Many websites with lots of traffic have
minimal sales. The best way to measure a website’s success is to measure such
things as the revenue generated by Web traffic, the number of new customers
acquired by Web traffic, any reductions in customer service calls resulting from Web
traffic. As you deploy your Business 2.0 strategy, you want to build a website that
creates stickiness and a sense of community for your customers. Explain why
measuring Web traffic is not a good indicator of Web sales or website success. How
would you implement Business 2.0 characteristics to create a sense of community
for your customers? How could a wiki help grow your business? Could you use blogs
to create a marketing buzz? What else can you do to ensure your website finds
financial success? (10 points)

Build Your Own Business – PHASE II

ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY

1. Providing employees with computer access is one of the perks offered by your
business. Employees enjoy checking their personal email and surfing the Internet on
their breaks. So far, computer access has been a cherished employee benefit. When
you came into work this morning you found the following anonymous letter from
one of your employees on your desk. “I received a highly inappropriate joke from a
fellow employee that I found extremely offensive. The employee who sent the joke
was Debbie Fernandez and I believe she should be reprimanded for her
inappropriate actions. Signed—a disturbed employee.”    What would you do? What
could you have done to ensure situations such as these would be easily handled if
they did arise? What could you do to ensure such situations do not happen in the
future and if they do all employees are aware of the ramifications of inappropriate
emails? (Be sure to identify your business and the name of your company.) (10
points)

2. The local community has always been a big part of your grandfather’s business and
he knew almost everyone in the community. Your grandfather attended all types of
community events and would spend hours talking with friends and neighbors
soliciting feedback and ideas on his business. As you know, data are important to
any business. In fact, data are an essential business asset. You have decided to start
tracking detailed customer information for all business events from fund‐raising to
promotions. Since you took over the business you have been collecting more and
more event data to help you run marketing campaigns across events and optimize
the event schedules. One day, a sophisticated businessman walks into your business
and asks to speak to the owner. He introduces himself as Lance Smith and says that
he would like to talk to you in private. Smith is retiring and is closing his business
that was located just down the street, and he wants to sell you his detailed customer
information. Smith would like a large sum of money to sell you his confidential
customer contact information and sales reports for the past 20 years. He says he has
more than 10,000 customers in his unique database. What do you do? (10 points)

3. Yesterday you had an interesting conversation with one of your loyal customers, Dan
Martello. He asked you the following question: “If I find a digital camera on the
street is it OK to look at the contents, or am I invading the owner’s privacy?” You
have a lengthy debate and decided that in some scenarios it is an invasion of privacy
to be looking at someone else’s photos and is similar to looking in their windows. In
other scenarios, it is not an invasion of privacy if you do not know the person and it
is the primary way to identify the owner to return the camera, similar to looking in a
wallet. As you are cleaning your business, you find a 30 gigabyte thumb drive and
you know that it probably belongs to one of your valuable customers and contains
their sensitive information. What do you do? What security concerns are associated
with the thumb drive? How could information security policies or an information
security plan help your business with this type of situation? (10 points)

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

1. On your way to work this morning, you stopped for gas. When you were inside
paying, someone broke into your car and stole your computer bag. You did not
notice until you arrived at your business and began looking for your bag. As you
begin to realize all of the data you just lost—customer lists, profit and loss analysis,
tax returns, email, sales information, payroll files, and so on—you begin to wonder
when you last backed up your hard drive. Now that you have been stung by a painful
data loss experience, you realize the importance of having a backup strategy. Create
a detailed backup strategy and disaster recovery plan for your business. Be sure to
include details such as the types of backup you will perform, frequency of backups,
and location of backups. (Be sure to identify your business and the name of your
company.) (10 points)

2. Rank the characteristics of an agile MIS infrastructure in order of importance to your
business and be sure to provide detailed information on each characteristic and your
justification for its ranking. (10 points)

3. Cloud computing is a business driven MIS infrastructure that supports growth,
operations, and profits. It helps today’s businesses innovate by using resources and
applications hosted remotely as a shared service on the Internet. You have decided
to research the different types of cloud computing services. Create a report listing
the types of services your business should implement and the advantages and
disadvantages of each. (10 points)

DATABASE AND BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

1. Provide an example of your business data that fits each of the five common
characteristics of high‐quality information. Explain why each characteristic is
important to your business data and what might happen if your business data were
of low quality. (Be sure to identify your business and the name of your company.)
(10 points)

2. Identify the different entities and their associated attributes that would be found in
your potential relational database model for your sales database. (10 points)

3. Identify the benefits of having a data warehouse for your business. What types of
data marts would you want to extract from you data warehouse to help you run
your business and make strategic decisions. (10 points)

Build Your Own Business – PHASE III

NETWORKS AND TELECOM

1. In an effort to better connect with younger consumers, McDonald’s restaurants in
southern California are enticing customers through their mobile phones, offering
mobile coupons for a free McFlurry. Under the promotion, customer’s text the
message “McFlurry” to a five‐digit short code promotional phone line. An electronic
coupon for the free dessert is then downloaded to their mobile phones; when
consumers bring those phones to participating restaurants, they can redeem the
coupon electronically. Mobile coupons (mcoupons) that are stored and carried in a
mobile phone have higher redemption rates than paper or ecoupons because they
are not forgotten, or left at home. Mcoupons can drastically reduce delivery and
redemption cost, trigger impulse buys, and send offers to customers in real time
that are location based. Your customers are mobile, and you want your business to
take advantage of mobile technology, so you have decided to create an innovative
system for mcoupons, allowing customers to capitalize on instant redemption
coupons. As customers walk past your business (or within a 25‐foot radius) a coupon
will be pushed to their mobile device. As you prepare to deploy this new mobile
marketing campaign, you need to create a detailed analysis of mcoupons, including
all of the potential risks and benefits. In your analysis, be sure to discuss the types of
coupons you would offer to your mobile customers along with all of the potential
risks and benefits (10 points)

2. Radio‐frequency identification technologies use active or passive tags in the form of
chips or smart labels that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to
readers. RFID tags represent the next big step forward from bar codes, and retailers
are using RFID to control theft, increase efficiency, and improve demand planning.
Businesses are using RFID for everything, including preventing toilets from
overflowing, refilling customer’s drinks, identifying human remains, and combating
counterfeit drugs. Develop two new products using RFID that can help you reduce
expenses, increase profits, and create a competitive advantage for your business (10
points)

ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS

1. Netflix reinvented the video rental business using supply chain technology. Netflix is
the largest online DVD rental service, offering flat‐rate rental by mail and over the
Internet to customers. Customers can create their own personal list of movie
favorites and the DVDs are delivered by the US Post office from one of Netflix’s
warehouses. Customers can keep the DVDs for as long as they want and simply
return it by mail to receive their next selection. Netflix’s business is video rental, but
it used technology to revamp its supply chain to completely disrupt the entire video
rental industry. Define a way that you can revamp or reinvent your business using
supply chain technologies (10 points)

2. Business is booming, and you have achieved your goal of driving operating costs
down, which helps to drive revenues up. One of your best new products is from
China, and it is accounting for a 20 percent increase in your profits. Yesterday, a
dockworkers union strike began and shut down all of the West Coast shipping docks
from San Francisco to Canada. Work will resume when the union agrees to new
labor contracts, which could take months. You need to quickly assess the impact of
the shutdown on your business. How will you keep business running if you cannot
receive your shipments? What strategies do you recommend to help the business
continue working while the supply chain is disrupted by the strike? (10 points)

3. The Web contains numerous examples of customer power. Examples include www
.ihatedell.net and www.donotbuydodge.ca. Customers are using YouTube, MySpace,
blogs, and a number of other Web tools to slam or praise companies. Do you believe
that the most influential person in your business is the customer? How could
customers hurt or help your business? Will your employees agree that customers
are the most important part of the business? (10 points)

SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

1. Your business is undertaking many new and exciting initiatives to boost growth,
including employee blogs, customer wikis, and implementation of a new time and
attendance system. Time and attendance software is critical to the business because
it can ensure you have the right employees, at the right place, at the right time,
which can increase sales. You never want to find yourself understaffed during busy
times and overstaffed during slow times. Also, accurately accounting for employees’
time is crucial to effectively analyzing labor expenses, which are the largest
operating expense your business incurs. Conveniently, time and attendance solution
providers, time clock manufacturers, and software development companies are
developing high‐quality affordable products. You have decided to replace the
manual employee tracking system your grandfather implemented in the 1950s. You
have a highly technical employee, Nick Zele, who has offered to build the system for
you and ensures you it is a simple build. You could also purchase one of the many
off‐the‐shelf applications and have an outsourcing firm customize the application for
your business. What are the pros and cons of using an employee to build you a
custom system? What are the pros and cons of purchasing an off‐the‐shelf time and
attendance application and outsourcing custom development? How will your older
employees feel about the new system and what can you do to ensure a smooth
transition? (10 points)

2. You have decided to implement a new payroll system for your business. Review the
following business requirements and highlight any potential issues (10 points)

• All employees must have a unique employee ID.
• The system must track employee hours worked based on employee’s last name.
• Employees must be scheduled to work a minimum of eight hours per day.
• Employee payroll is calculated by multiplying the employee’s hours worked by
$7.25.
• Managers must be scheduled to work morning shifts.
• Employees cannot be scheduled to work more than eight hours per day.
• Servers cannot be scheduled to work morning, afternoon, or evening shifts.
• The system must allow managers to change and delete employees from the
system.

3. You are in the middle of a implementing a new system at your business. Your project
team is failing for the following three reasons: (1) The project is using the traditional
waterfall methodology; (2) the SDLC was not followed and the developers decided
to skip the testing phase; (3) a project plan was developed during the analysis phase,
but the old project manager never updated or followed the plan and never updated
the business requirements. Detail your strategy for getting your project back on
track (10 points)

SOLUTION

Phase ONE

Competitive Advantage

The business is a Coffee Shop, Green Life Café, as the name suggests, stresses on healthy food diets and has a menu complete with calorie intake details. In today’s health conscious generation, this becomes a key differentiating factor. Future goals would be to improve the menu further to include more healthier options and offer a wide range of products, breakfasts and coffee,  adding Green Tea & herbal tea to the menu which is considered to be a healthy drink. Another area of focus would be around the waste generation, being eco-friendly by recycling products and efficient utilization of resources like water, electricity and raw materials. Lai, Cheng and Tang (2010) have highlighted how Starbucks benefitted from Green Retailing and the same can be implemented for waste reduction. This would not only reduce the overhead margin, but would make us a responsible organization with a Go Green Community Charter which can be showcased to all visiting customers as a CSR initiative.

Porter’s five forces model helps us to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the current ways of operating. Buyer power gives us key insights regarding how the buyers impact on the overall working of a small firm. Currently we are operating from a single outlet in Brooklyn, NY only where there is a relative lower concentration of coffee shop as compared to Manhattan or Queens, where a higher footfall can be expected. This definitely calls for an expansion plan in key areas. Also it needs to be taken into account the concentration ratio of coffee shops around these areas along with the location where the new coffee shops are to be put up. There would be fierce competition as far as the pricing and product variety is concerned due to established names and higher ratio of coffee shops in the new areas. Starbucks currently has a loyalty program in place which can be also be gifted to colleagues and friends to enjoy coffee from Starbucks all the year round. Pricing of products as compared to that of competitors’, generating loyalty programs and refer a friend policy, focussing on greener and healthier menu would be the key differentiators in influencing the buyers to switch to our outlet.

From the supplier perspective, we are in sound footing primarily because of the way my grandfather used to conduct the business. He has been able to instil confidence and loyalty in the hearts of the employees and suppliers alike who have stood to serve him always in the hour of need for the last 60 years. The key ingredients, which are sourced from the seven suppliers at the moment, are available abundantly and sourced cheap except for the recipes like green tea and herbal tea, which needs to be ordered two weeks in advance. All suppliers can handle the extra demand for the limited expansion planned. They most importantly provide these materials on credit, with a grace period of month. Employees are well motivated and are looking forward to the new expansion. Few are adverse to change, especially the older employees who are a bit apprehensive when talks of introducing new technology are discussed. This is a small issue, which can be taken care of with proper training leading to smooth introduction and adoption if IT as highlighted by Reynolds (2010).

Entry Barriers for the restaurant business is somewhat moderate considering the property lease in the Manhattan and Queens are at a higher side. But the other associated factors like sourcing of raw materials and logistics, overheads etc are not as high as compared to manufacturing or technical industries. Substitute products which are main threats as foreseen are the heath drinks and shakes in the form of retail outlets. Juice Zone is one such example. Main point for consideration would be the concentration ratio of rival and established firms in the proposed locations and how to lure the existing loyal customers from them. Pricing and product segmentation and loyalty program would definitely play a key role here following the Porter’s generic strategies in entering the new markets.

The ideal option would be to follow the differentiation focus strategy for our organization which would be based on go green charter and health conscious menu and drinks served with coffee. These are the key differentiators of our product as compared to the competitors’ and we would be specifically catering to the target segment that are health conscious and at the same time would like to enjoy coffee without worrying about calorie intake too much. Calorie intake would be mentioned against every item in our menu to make an informed choice. Other healthy options like sugar free, green salads and, etc would be added options for customers. This would help us to target a specifically the health conscious segment who want to enjoy coffee since this segment is not yet targeted overtly by our competitors.

Business Process

Dashboard today is an important component for any manager to run his business efficiently as it provides real-time data and trend analysis of processes and helps to manage the day to day activities better.

Dashboard for my business should have the following components:

1. Count of orders being received and flag pending orders on a real-time basis so that orders can be prioritized accordingly.
2. Inventory list should provide details about the consumption pattern of key ingredients and flag the ingredients before the stock gets over.
3. Customer Footfalls: This would help track the visitor footfalls and help in demand forecasting.
4. Peak Hour Forecasting should identify the rush hour when the maximum footfalls happen so that staff shifts can be adjusted accordingly.
5. Accounts Payables and Receivables should highlight the cash inflow and outflow on a daily basis and monitor if credit or debit is more than the required limits.

Customer Facing Processes help in establishing contacts with the consumers and are important determinant for end user satisfaction. The important process for Green Life Café are:

1. Menu & Catalogue: This is the most basic process which highlights all available items in the menu, price and calorie intake against each product which actually helps the customer to make up mind as to which product to order since we are following a focussed differentiation strategy based on the items to we serve. This process has the most stakes in place, in terms of making an initial impact.
2. Ordering & Fulfilment Process takes care of the customers right from Menu selection, placing order, payment till the menu ordered is served. This is most critical in terms of time taken to serve the menu so that the turnover rate per table is high (being in customer service industry especially a restaurateur).
3. Customer Satisfaction & Grievance redressal: A simple customer satisfaction survey can be conducted online and offline so that feedback can be provided to improve the services better. Also a comprehensive grievance redressal mechanism should be in place so that an irate customer can be pacified and issues taken care of. This will help in building consumer confidence should anything go wrong.

Business Facing Processes are those which are integral for bringing a product to the market and form the basis for a successful business. For the Green Life Café following the major process highlighted below:

1. Supply Order Process: This is important for inventory control and placing the order in a timely manner especially for ingredients like Green tea and herbal tea which needs to be ordered 2 weeks in advance. Integrating this process with suppliers can also provide real time data about the availability of ingredients with suppliers as well.
2. Accounts & Payroll Process: This process keeps a tab on account payables and receivables from suppliers, helps in calculating and automating the salary for employees on multiple parameters like overtime, unapproved leaves, productivity etc.
3. HR Process helps in recruiting new professionals and takes care of all employee related issues. Details about overtime, key issues, employee growth and incentives etc are key for employee satisfaction and retention. All data are stored in a chronological order in HRIS which might be required for any future references.

E-Business:

Handling Feedback

Responding to user comments, suggestions and complaints both online and offline needs to be implemented as a dedicated process since customer is the king. Customers are completely entitled to post any comments, but direct negative comments from users need to be handled carefully. A comment like banning children on Thursdays during Children’s Story hour is a direct attack against business charter. Post should be acknowledged positively and can be responded as below

“We acknowledge your candid feedback. We understand that there is some level of discomfort which you feel around children in our coffee shop on Thursdays. We conduct the weekly Thursday Story Hour as a community learning initiative which helps children learn in an interactive manner as a part of our Corporate Social Responsibility Programme. We are sure that we can bank on your support and encouragement to make our CSR a success”.

Such a response will not only help garner support from other fellow consumers, but also make our standpoint clear from the CSR perspective, which boosts our brand image. Deleting of such comments is not suggested. Study by Moran & Gossieaux (2010) and Yan (2011) shows that acknowledging comments posted is important since it makes the users feel that their issues have been heard to, which in turn generates the feel good factor.

Utilizing Web

Advent of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 has heralded a new era as to how business are conducted. E-Commerce and e-tailing are the new buzzwords in the industry. The company website should have the complete details about the store locations, product menu, price, availability, loyalty programs, feedback and blog section along with shopping cart to place an order online for takeaways. Online order placements reduce the wait time of the users at stores, manage queues efficiently, improve CSAT, increase the turnaround time for each table. Other online promotion channels like google adwords, groupon coupons etc, can be utilized to increase footfalls. Handling customer feedback has been already discussed in the previous section; this can be further integrated with social media platforms like facebook and twitter highlighting the key events which will take place.

Collaboration Tool would be an important medium for dialogues with customers. Following would be the key features:

• It should have an open discussion forum where feedback can be provided which should be moderated and responded online. Wiki portals can act as an added repository of relevant information and FAQs; which should help in addressing user issues before the user raises one. A key factor for decreasing negative feedback.
• Should be able to integrate with social media by incorporating facebook likes, google plus etc which act as word of mouth promotion by users.
• Polls can be conducted to gather user opinion. New products and features can be uploaded to check user response and feedback based on which the menu items can be modified.
• Users can create their own profile and select preferences. Users can place order online or book a table, thus reducing long queues at the stores.
• Contests can be held and free promotional activities can be conducted.
• Loyalty programmes and refer a friend policy can be conducted online along with purchasing gift coupons and cards online.

All these should help in increasing user satisfaction and provide an easy channel to users and us to conduct business in hassle free manner. Processes like ordering online, booking a table and purchasing gift coupons can be totally automated online, reducing congestion at the stores. This in turn directs the users to utilize web more often, thereby increasing the stickiness and increase web-sales.

Phase TWO

Ethics and Information Security

Green Life Café should have a set of best practices and guidelines in place for all employees to follow related to online surfing and email etiquettes. This can also be linked to HR process so that any breach of the same can be investigated and actions taken accordingly. The employees should be made familiar with the same so that they are aware of the repercussions.

For the particular case raised against Debbie, as per the defined process, the issue need to be investigated to check that the email indeed originate from Debbie and there was no security breach or Debbie’s account was hacked and utilized by someone else. If Debbie is found to be guilty, actions need to be taken as defined in HR Policy which includes harassment of colleagues. If there is an IT Security Breach, IT policy and guidelines need to be revisited and all employees need to be made aware of the importance of InfoSec and password protection. Periodical refresher trainings can be also helpful in higher retention of important information.

As a part of ethic charter defined, all customer information is confidential and will not be shared except in specific circumstances like government intervention where it is mandatory to share information by businesses. This should dictate terms both ways; even when Lance Smith wants to sell his customer information for the past 20 years which is confidential and a definite breach of trust from his end. No doubt, this information will help in analysing the demographics for my customer base, but for promotional activities, if we start approaching new users based on Lance Smith’s data, questions would be asked related to origination of contact details which had been provided by the users to Lance Smith in good faith without expecting it to be sold. This throws us in a poor light as far as customer confidence is concerned. There are other avenues of gathering data more ethically which should be explored. Lance Smith should be politely declined since it is confidential data is he is about to sell which constitutes against the breach of trust for his users.

Information Security Policy (based on ISO 27001, COBIT) should be descriptive enough to take into account multiple scenarios where InfoSec can be breached. If a pen-drive is found in the café premises, for example, the policy should define the steps to be taken. It is a breach of trust if the contents of the thumb-drive are checked as it may contain personal information not meant to be seen by others. At the same time, there might be infected files, which can be transfer virus to the café IT network if connected resulting in network breakdown. The guidelines should be prescriptive enough and lay down the steps like – the thumb-drive to be kept in lost and found section, logged in the lost register and can be kept for a period of 90 days. If no one claims it during that period, it can be destroyed which at the same time should not put us in a legal tangle if the user returns to claim it after the designated period. Relevant legal clause needs to be included.

Enterprise Architecture:

The lifeline for Green Life Café is the key business and customer facing processes which have been detailed earlier. There is always a chance of data theft and loss, including loss of local and crash systems. Technology advances have made it possible to explore areas in cloud computing where the data are centrally stored and backed up by the service provider. In addition, data security is provided by the service provider along with data uptime guarantee. This has not become the most viable business solutions for small businesses like Green Life Café which cannot afford high IT costs at the time of expansion since it follows a Hybrid cloud model where the IT costs are dramatically low as compared to private model.

The cloud model most suited for our Business would be a Hybird Model. The key benefits would be:

• To keep the company specific information in the private cloud and make it inaccessible to others.
• Processes like supply chain, etc, need to be put in community cloud so that the vendors can access it through their respective networks.
• This would also help the users access the public information and collaboration tool through internet.

It needs to be also defined here about the data back-up process and frequency. Key points would be:

• All data stored in the cloud should be backed up by the service provider along with details about DR/BCP and uptime.
• Local system data important for business to be backed up in the common drive in the cloud by employees every week.

Incremental backup would be most useful for backing up the data both the employee and cloud level. Since the ownership of the IT back-up is mainly on the service provider for cloud, they would provide alternate sites in case of DR.

The following are the most important characteristics of agile MIS infrastructure for Green Life Café in the order of importance:

1. Accessibility which allows the user and employees to access different levels of information. Key processes like online order, purchasing gift coupons and booking a table, etc are based on user able to access our systems through the collaboration tool.
2. Availability ensures that our systems are available to the users and employees 24X7 so that any of the activities offered online can take place.
3. Scalability is next most important factor considering the fact that there is a plan for expansion of Green Life Café.
4. Usability, especially for the employees since many are old timers with limited exposure to IT.
5. Portability so that users can access it from multiple access points like phone, tablets etc.
6. Reliability ensures that all information are accurate and correct and is important since many online processes are customer facing and needs to operate error-free.
7. Maintainability allows organizational systems to adapt to changes quickly. Latest usage of cloud computing technologies is a step in that direction which are flexible and cost effective.

Database and Business Intelligence

An example of business data that fits into the five common characteristics of high quality information are mentioned below:

1. Accuracy: Data is verified by confirming the details over phone once registered along with sending the registration link to the registered email address for verification.
2. Completeness is achieved by making all the fields mandatory.
3. Consistency to ensure that right data is entered. Fields for phone number should not allow entry of alphabets. This can be verified during the confirmation over phone.
4. Uniqueness: Customer ID generated is unique so that people with same names are confused by the system.
5. Timeliness: This is updated as and when the user logs in and can be requested to verify details once every 6 months when the users log in.

If any of the above five characteristics are breached, it will lead to:

1. Sending information wrong email addresses hampering promotional campaigns.
2. Targeting the wrong set of customers, since we are following differentiation focussed strategy where the target group is extremely crucial.

Different entities and attributes key to sales process would be:

1. Age – highlighting the age group
2. Food Preference – mentioning categories like sugar-free, cheese free, low caffeine and other associated choices.
3. Profession – users having sedentary life style can be targeted on leading health conscious lifestyle based on the differentiation focussed strategy.
4. Allergies and medical conditions – examples like peanut but allergy, high cholesterol would help us to modify menu as per user requirements.

Benefits of DataWarehouse:

1. It helps business to make informed choices – for example, items which are not high revenue generators can be discontinued or high selling items can be made more varied.
2. It helps us to gather data from multiple systems like supply order, accounts and payroll, etc and roll into one single interface.
3. Helps to provide information consistently, be it the customer information or internal business information.
4. Helps in customer relationship management and generates leads for sales.

The following data marts would be helpful for Green Life Café:

1. Demand data of ingredients for the suppliers.
2. Footfall data to help schedule employee shift for peaks.
3. Loans and Credit balance history to ensure that the trend is not on rise.
4. CSAT data over a period of time to check the user satisfaction.
5. Website sales conversion to check the success of website sticiness.

Phase THREE

Networks and Telecom

Pushing mcoupons to user mobiles is an innovative technology which has the following advantages:

• Since the store is located at busy junction, it can create a lot of awareness about the products.
• This will lead to increased footfalls and sales.
• This format is one of the most cost effective ways of targeting users as compared to other traditional mediums.

Risks associated are:

• Users might feel the mcoupons are a part of spams.
• It might breach user privacy since the user acceptance is not in place for the accepting mcoupons on mobile. This needs to be taken care of by asking if the users would like to download mcoupons provided free of cost which might again be misunderstood as virus attack.

The mcoupons still is an attractive marketing option which can redeemed within 24hours of receiving it. Also the mcoupons can be forwarded to other users by initial recipients and can be uploaded online through various mobile applications utilizing Web 2.0.

For our business, following can incorporate RFID technology:

1. Being a Green Retailer, RFID motion sensors can be placed across the stores which would automatically adjust the light based on customer movement within the premises. At certain sections, where there are no customers, the lights would automatically turn dim, saving electricity and overhead expenses.
2. All items which are shipped by the sellers can be RFID tagged, so that the systems are auto-updated from the vendor end when the items are loaded. The same gets auto-updated in our system when we receive the goods. This saves a lot of time in manually entering the data and updating multiple fields on a daily basis and increases employee productivity.

Enterprise Applications

Supply Chain plays a critical role for restaurant business. Following will be put in place for effective SCM:

1. RFID tag utilization as already discussed.
2. Except for expensive and rare products like herbal tea, JIT (Just in Time) can be put in place, so that vendors send ingredients when they are about to finish which reduces warehousing cost for us.
3. Auto-flagging of items in inventory to the vendors to take care of point 2.
4. Allowing users to book table online and place orders and pay online for the same, reducing wait time at stores.

Raw materials and ingredients are the key inputs for Green Life Café. Non availability of items like green tea and herbal tea, generally sourced from China due to strikes need to be take care of as a part of SWOT analysis under Porter’s Five Forces Model. Alternate options need to be identified from where it can be sourced like India or Brazil instead on behalf of our suppliers. If product is not at all available menu items need to be modified to provide alternates which can act as temporary substitutes, but not for long as these products are flagship items under the differentiation focussed strategy.

Market Mavens is a term associated with social networking, who are highly knowledgeable about specific products. It is important for marketers to identify them. In the digital age, they aid by sharing content in other forums like twitter, blogs and customer review websites. In the research article by Laughlin & MacDonald (2010), they have shown the importance of market mavens who

1. Create positive vibes for products.
2. Spread of product good will in-case there is a product recall.
3. Help in generating strong product opinions for products which generates low level of customer involvement.
4. Extremely cost effective as compared to other forms of marketing which involve heavy spending (Ahuja 2007).

Employees understand that we are present to serve our customers, who generate business and are the basis of our livelihood.

Systems Development and Project Management

For a small organization, customization required is less. It is better to adopt off the shelf application which is tried and tested and does not require much tweaks. If a proprietary system is developed, it would require in-house skills in maintaining the same, increasing the IT costs, maintaining knowledge base of the same and focussing on IT which is not the key competency for us. In-case Nick leaves the organization without proper documentation; it would be difficult to maintain the system and would create chaos.

The major cons for off shelf application would be limited customization, but considering the current organization size of 35 proposed to increase to 100, it should fit the purpose.

Older employees who are not well suited to technology, needs to be introduced to the new systems gradually and provided relevant training so that it is well accepted. Strategies defined in the book written by Reynolds (2010) will help in smooth implementation of IT.

Payroll System:

The payroll system proposed is a bit stringent and does not offer much flexibility.

• Unique Employee ID – should be accepted without issues.
• Tracking employee hours worked should be based on unique ID and not on last name to avoid duplicate names.
• Minimum schedule working of 8 hours should not be implemented if the employee decides to work half day and compensate later on.
• Hours should be calculated based on the time worked and calculate overtime if any which has differential work rates. Simply multiplying hours by $7.25 will not fetch accurate salary.
• Managers should be present throughout the day and not only in morning shifts during peaks.
• Should allow scheduling employees to work more than 8hrs a day for overtime or in-case of sudden peak.
• The addition of deletion of employees should remain with the store manager only so that there is least chance of mishaps.

Most of the points raised are not employee friendly and hence need to be relooked. These need to be modified accordingly as suggested.

Project Planning:

The project implementation has missed key phases which include testing and updating business requirements. Following steps should be taken:

1. Project needs to be put on hold till the business requirements are updated.
2. Once updated, it needs to be checked if the system design needs any changes considering new business requirements and modified accordingly as per SDLC.
3. The system needs to be rigorously tested before implementing in production environment.
4. Evaluation needs to be done post implementation to check if the system is performing as expected and has met business goals or not.
5. At every stage the project plan should be updated with the latest details.
6. Also it needs to be checked if traditional waterfall model would better as compared to Scrum since waterfall model is considered somewhat unrealistic, gathering details upfront with little validation requirement later on.

References

Ahuja, R.D., T.A. Michels, M.M. Walker & M. Weissbuch (2007). Teen perceptions of disclosure in buzz marketing. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 24 (3):151–59.

Lai, K. , Cheng T.C.E and Tang A.K.Y, 2010, Green Retailing: factors for success, California Management Review, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp 6-31.

Laughlin, J. D & MacDonald, J. B (2010), Identifying market mavens online by their social behaviors in community generated media. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, Volume 14, Number 1. pp.55-70.

Moran, E. & Gossieaux, F (2010), Marketing in a Hyper-Social World: The Tribalization of Business Study and Characteristics of Successful Online Communities. Journal of Advertising Research. September 2010. p. 235.

Reynolds, G.W. (2010). Managers: Key to information technology results. In Information Technology for Managers (1st Ed., pp. 12-16). Independence, KY: Cengage Learning.

Yan, J. (2011), Social media in branding: Fulfilling a need. Journal of Brand Management 18, 688 – 696.

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