Project
1. Title
Technology Management Plan
2. Introduction
You have been selected to be the acting CIO for a subsidiary of Largo Corporation called Rustic Americana. Its primary products include arts and crafts that reflect the history, geography, folklore and cultural heritage of the United States. It specializes in direct marketing and sales through its call center. Sales are through a web store, a brick and mortar store, and a direct mail catalogue. All services are housed under one roof that include warehousing, order fulfillment, shipping, corporate management and operations, and the call center. The success of the company hinges on its eye-catching direct mail catalogue and the unique product line.
Unfortunately, annual sales have declined over the years due largely due to internal issues. The previous CIO was terminated some say due to incompetence primarily related to the underperforming call center. In addition, speculation swirled around the activities of the CIO. He was often absent from the building. He secluded himself behind the closed door of his office. Associated rumors mounted, and it was believed that he was running a consulting business on company time. When the Rustic Americana CEO asked him about this during a formal review, the CIO answered that it was a weekend hobby that kept him abreast of emerging technologies. The CEO asked him if one of their competitors was a client and he vehemently denied the accusation. She was certain that the CIO was not being entirely truthful with her.
Call Center Operations
Managing a call center demands a wide range of skills including managerial, troubleshooting, patience and being cool under pressure. Knowledge of computer and communications skills is helpful but most call centers have a technical support division. The call center manager is Prisha Khan she has been in the job for about 2 months.
The customer service representative (CSR) in the call center responds to a call for product. On the customer management system (CMS), the CSR collects and directly enters customer information; on a separate inventory management system (IMS), the CSR looks up the product, and verifies if the warehouse has it in stock. If it does, the order is entered on the CMS, and the CSR decreases the inventory on the IMS. On the CMS, the CSR creates an order fulfillment ticket that is automatically shuttled to the warehouse processing clerk who prints it and then generates the shipping label. The shipping label is prepared through a web-based system through either UPS or USPS, which also produces a tracking number used by both the company and the customer. The processing clerk enters the shipping costs and tracking number into the CMS. The customer is billed when the order ships.
The warehouse crew uses bar code scanners to track merchandise; once the order is selected, it moves along a conveyor to a shipping clerk who packages the order, affixes the shipping label, scans the bar code, and places the package into a bin for delivery pick-up. The final scan automatically enters the dollar amounts into the system for billing.
An old UNIX system is used to manage inventory. Data input clerks entered information on new merchandise into it, CSRs referred to it for product data, and if the product was on hand, it produced an order processing form which was sent to the warehouse for processing. The CSR could reduce the inventory through the terminal on their desk. The problem they experienced was a refresh rate on volatile inventory. It was a common occurrence that a customer would be told the product would ship when it was in fact depleted by other CSRs.
There were conflicting views on the party responsible for upgrading the systems. The former CIO believed the call center manager needed to take the lead on upgrading operations, while the call center manager complained that this was an IT problem and she could not tolerate downtime. To add to the fray, the Chief Financial Officer balked at the cost associated with this investment. The CEO did not feel the urgency and leaned to the CFO for advice.
Staffing the call center is the responsibility of the call center manager. Ms. Khan uses past volume experience to make sure there were sufficient CSRs on hand. She kept a list of on-call CSRs for unanticipated business. Her staffing limit was the number of stations with computer access to the servers. The call center uses a Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system. The phone system runs on two standalone servers — one for call routing and the other for voicemail. There is a dedicated toll free number into the center, and the system is programmed with an auto-attendant to direct calls. The volume of calls is a problem, and the number of lines is less than the number of agents available to take calls during high volume periods. This is because there is a per-trunk monthly service charge and the call center cannot adjust the number of trunks based on periodic demand. When the caller is placed in queue, the standard practice is to limit the length of the average call to six rings. The phone system requires a local coaxial cable Internet service to supply broadband. Phones are connected to the network architecture using standard Cat5 copper cabling which routes phone traffic to the call center.
Under this approach, there have been issues with quality of service. The former CIO was fond of saying problems with the cable company when things went wrong. There was no effort to track downtime. During these downtimes the entire call center becomes idle and revenue is lost. Because the Internet is tied to the same cable service, web services were also down. The Rustic Americana CEO felt that the lack of access discouraged new customers, but no data was collected to indicate a correlation between downtimes and sales decline.
Inside the building there is an application server, a server for Microsoft Outlook email, the web server, and the typical complement of routers and switches. The former CIO used a variety of hardware from different vendors. When broadband cable services are up, bandwidth is not a problem, except when the former CIO allowed employees to stream movies during their breaks to boost morale. Employees routinely used their workstations to check personal email, and to manage their social networking accounts. There was a problem with one employee posting unflattering comments about the company that resulted in a severe reprimand.
The data systems for the call center are setup as follows. The center has two data servers. One data server has a UNIX operating system, and it runs Oracle database technology. The second server is a Microsoft operating system, and it runs SQL database technology. The two data servers are accessed via 40 workstations in the call center. It is staffed 24/7 but is closed on major holidays. The call center also contains 10 additional older workstations, which are used by data input clerks to update inventory when ordered and upon arrival this inventory was verified and bar code tagged with local stock inventory labels.
CSRs use a “homegrown” customer support application developed in house which uses a generic Oracle Forms interface. The former CIO did not believe in “bells and whistles” of modern Customer Resource Management (CRM) systems — besides, the Director of Marketing did not understand the value of CRM, the CFO was not persuaded to make the software and hardware investments, and the Rustic Americana CEO held stereotypical, non-strategic views of customers. The inability to do their required work was a constant complaint of agents. Moreover, there is no technology infrastructure in place to support mobile computing such as staff use of tablets or (more critical) a wireless interface on bar code scanners used in the warehouse.
Your Role as Acting CIO
You should frame your work around understanding the mechanics of enterprise technology management beyond the need to specifically recommend the replacement of antiquated yet functional systems. You should strive for an alignment of technology with the business needs.
You have been asked by the Corporate CEO to fix the problems created by the former CIOs perceived mismanagement of the IT operations and resources. In particular, you need to address the numerous complaints about the call center regarding its poor service such as delayed shipping and failure to notify when a product is out of stock.
The CEO asked that a plan be prepared and presented for effectively managing the companys IT operations specifically its call center. Within Rustic Americana, there is a Chief Financial Officer, a Director of Marketing, a Direct Sales Director and the usual departments. You are the acting CIO, and as such, you have your own staff of ten which includes an assistant who handles staff management and equipment orders, a network engineer for each of the three critical systems, a systems analyst, a web server programmer, and four desktop support technicians.
This learning activity focuses what it takes to manage technical operations. You will learn about creating reliable feedback mechanisms for difficulties at all levels of enterprise Information Technology interface. This includes timely discovery of technology related issues, resolution of these issues, creating a culture of trust and dependence, informing staff of your activities, and developing strategic plans for reducing bottlenecks in the future.
Understanding technology management is important to an IT professional because in this environment, as would be true of most corporate environments, computer-based information systems are at the core of an efficient and competitive service delivery. Effective leadership requires the identification of problems, the resolution of those problems, an eye on the future of the corporation and its profit, and transparency through communication with peers and subordinates.
3. Steps to Completion
1) Analyze the Situation
First review and analyze the business and IT operations of the call center. Break down the entire process into smaller parts and analyze these parts. If necessary draw a sketch.
In general, here are some typical questions one should consider as part of the analysis:
What is the business model for the corporation?
Where is technology strong? Where is it weak?
How do we manage capacity both in terms of our computer systems capacity (and response time and fault tolerance) and our staffing capacity (does the work performed full occupy the expertise for which it is paid?).
What is our sustainability policy?
What is our technology innovation strategy?
What is our level of contract support? How are contracts evaluated for their full value to the efficiency of the corporation?
How are problems solved within the corporation?
Next identify key issues and challenges. Beyond technical concerns, there are also managerial issues that need to be addressed.
Deliverable: Capture this information in an issue matrix which is a table that lists, categorizes and prioritizes these problems (High, Medium, and Low), that assigns responsibility for the problem to internal staff, to contract support, or to others (specify these individuals) and contain other information you feel relevant. This will be shown to management so they will readily identify and understand the key concerns. Use your creativity.
2) Identify Best Practices
Research current best practices relating to technology management practices including operational improvement approaches. You can start with these U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) information:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GAOREPORTS-T-AIMD-97-38/pdf/GAOREPORTS-T-AIMD-97-38.pdf
http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/leading_practices_information_technology_management/issue_summary
http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/663051.pdf
Also, key management best practices are listed in Chapter 2 of this reference: https://books.google.com/books?id=49OC_fPnOhcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=management+best+practices&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Nz5FVZWOGsengwShlIDQBA&ved=0CF8Q6AEwCTge#v=onepage&q=management%20best%20practices&f=false
Also identify people management skills needed to have an effective operation. You can begin with this link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2014/06/09/6-tips-for-managing-people-who-are-hard-to-manage/
Understand ethical requirements for individuals in an organization. You can review what is in our textbook. Here is an article about the subject:
https://www.aitp..htm
Deliverable: Prepare a that addresses the key findings from this step. This will be shown to corporate management. Minimum length: 400 words.
3) Select Applicable Operational Improvements
You are to identify what is needed for managing the call center. You use all of your staff as a team to identify solutions (Note: you may request for new positions on your staff but you cannot exceed your current number of slots).
You have a sense of the problems; now document the best practices which, if implemented, generate a computing environment more stable, reliable and innovative and help in resolving the challenges you have set as top priorities facing your corporation.
Specifically, identify needed operational improvements applicable to Rustic Americanas call center with a set of recommendations. Among other approaches, explore the use of ITIL to provide customer-centric IT services. Here is a good starting resource: http://www..com/gempdf/itsmf_an_introductory_overview_of_itil_v3.pdf
Here is an introduction to call centers: https://books.google.com/books?id=0ZdG1qF2XvYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=call+center+management&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TUFFVY_jHomoNvemgAg&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=call%20center%20management&f=false
Also, be sure to address ethical behavior based on concerns raised in this learning demonstration. This has been a major concern in Largo Corporation because of recent unethical corporate practices that has been in the news recently.
Also address needs for the support, renewal, and sustainability of a call center technology. Be sure to specify effective day-to-day practices needed to manage operations.
Deliverable: Develop an operational improvement report that summaries the above. Minimum length: 600 words.
4) Document Findings and Recommendations
Document key findings and recommendations in a presentation to your executive team (e.g., CEO, CFO, and Director of Marketing). This presentation should document the issues and solutions identified earlier.
Deliverable: Final presentation
The presentation should consist of 10-15 slides. It should include audio narration (directions are found at: https://support.office.com/en-au/article/Add-narration-to-a-presentation-0b9502c6-5f6c-40ae-b1e7-e47d8741161c). The narration should also be captured in the slide notes.
As an alternate method of delivery, you can create a video using YouTube Capture (https://www.youtube.com/capture) or a similar tool.
4. MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE ALL Deliverables BELOW IN YOUR PROJECT
1)Issue matrix
2)Best practices report
3)Operational improvement report
4)Final presentation
Create a folder to hold all of your deliverables.
Please zip (compress) the folder containing all of your files and submit the zipped file in the Assignments area.
In lieu of submitting the presentation, you may provide a link to your presentation file.
5. Rubrics
Criteria
Weight
(%)
Score
Identify and analyze issues prevalent in a technical environment
20
Create a strategy for the management oversight of enterprise technology resources including the IT infrastructure reflecting best practices
30
Identify operational solutions to issues in a technical environment
30
Apply ethical principles when determining actions
10
Exhibit communication skills
10
Total
100
Are you busy and do not have time to handle your assignment? Are you scared that your paper will not make the grade? Do you have responsibilities that may hinder you from turning in your assignment on time? Are you tired and can barely handle your assignment? Are your grades inconsistent?
Whichever your reason is, it is valid! You can get professional academic help from our service at affordable rates. We have a team of professional academic writers who can handle all your assignments.
Students barely have time to read. We got you! Have your literature essay or book review written without having the hassle of reading the book. You can get your literature paper custom-written for you by our literature specialists.
Do you struggle with finance? No need to torture yourself if finance is not your cup of tea. You can order your finance paper from our academic writing service and get 100% original work from competent finance experts.
Computer science is a tough subject. Fortunately, our computer science experts are up to the match. No need to stress and have sleepless nights. Our academic writers will tackle all your computer science assignments and deliver them on time. Let us handle all your python, java, ruby, JavaScript, php , C+ assignments!
While psychology may be an interesting subject, you may lack sufficient time to handle your assignments. Don’t despair; by using our academic writing service, you can be assured of perfect grades. Moreover, your grades will be consistent.
Engineering is quite a demanding subject. Students face a lot of pressure and barely have enough time to do what they love to do. Our academic writing service got you covered! Our engineering specialists follow the paper instructions and ensure timely delivery of the paper.
In the nursing course, you may have difficulties with literature reviews, annotated bibliographies, critical essays, and other assignments. Our nursing assignment writers will offer you professional nursing paper help at low prices.
Truth be told, sociology papers can be quite exhausting. Our academic writing service relieves you of fatigue, pressure, and stress. You can relax and have peace of mind as our academic writers handle your sociology assignment.
We take pride in having some of the best business writers in the industry. Our business writers have a lot of experience in the field. They are reliable, and you can be assured of a high-grade paper. They are able to handle business papers of any subject, length, deadline, and difficulty!
We boast of having some of the most experienced statistics experts in the industry. Our statistics experts have diverse skills, expertise, and knowledge to handle any kind of assignment. They have access to all kinds of software to get your assignment done.
Writing a law essay may prove to be an insurmountable obstacle, especially when you need to know the peculiarities of the legislative framework. Take advantage of our top-notch law specialists and get superb grades and 100% satisfaction.
We have highlighted some of the most popular subjects we handle above. Those are just a tip of the iceberg. We deal in all academic disciplines since our writers are as diverse. They have been drawn from across all disciplines, and orders are assigned to those writers believed to be the best in the field. In a nutshell, there is no task we cannot handle; all you need to do is place your order with us. As long as your instructions are clear, just trust we shall deliver irrespective of the discipline.
Our essay writers are graduates with bachelor's, masters, Ph.D., and doctorate degrees in various subjects. The minimum requirement to be an essay writer with our essay writing service is to have a college degree. All our academic writers have a minimum of two years of academic writing. We have a stringent recruitment process to ensure that we get only the most competent essay writers in the industry. We also ensure that the writers are handsomely compensated for their value. The majority of our writers are native English speakers. As such, the fluency of language and grammar is impeccable.
There is a very low likelihood that you won’t like the paper.
Not at all. All papers are written from scratch. There is no way your tutor or instructor will realize that you did not write the paper yourself. In fact, we recommend using our assignment help services for consistent results.
We check all papers for plagiarism before we submit them. We use powerful plagiarism checking software such as SafeAssign, LopesWrite, and Turnitin. We also upload the plagiarism report so that you can review it. We understand that plagiarism is academic suicide. We would not take the risk of submitting plagiarized work and jeopardize your academic journey. Furthermore, we do not sell or use prewritten papers, and each paper is written from scratch.
You determine when you get the paper by setting the deadline when placing the order. All papers are delivered within the deadline. We are well aware that we operate in a time-sensitive industry. As such, we have laid out strategies to ensure that the client receives the paper on time and they never miss the deadline. We understand that papers that are submitted late have some points deducted. We do not want you to miss any points due to late submission. We work on beating deadlines by huge margins in order to ensure that you have ample time to review the paper before you submit it.
We have a privacy and confidentiality policy that guides our work. We NEVER share any customer information with third parties. Noone will ever know that you used our assignment help services. It’s only between you and us. We are bound by our policies to protect the customer’s identity and information. All your information, such as your names, phone number, email, order information, and so on, are protected. We have robust security systems that ensure that your data is protected. Hacking our systems is close to impossible, and it has never happened.
You fill all the paper instructions in the order form. Make sure you include all the helpful materials so that our academic writers can deliver the perfect paper. It will also help to eliminate unnecessary revisions.
Proceed to pay for the paper so that it can be assigned to one of our expert academic writers. The paper subject is matched with the writer’s area of specialization.
You communicate with the writer and know about the progress of the paper. The client can ask the writer for drafts of the paper. The client can upload extra material and include additional instructions from the lecturer. Receive a paper.
The paper is sent to your email and uploaded to your personal account. You also get a plagiarism report attached to your paper.
GET A PERFECT SCORE!!! 
Delivering a high-quality product at a reasonable price is not enough anymore.
That’s why we have developed 5 beneficial guarantees that will make your experience with our service enjoyable, easy, and safe.
You have to be 100% sure of the quality of your product to give a money-back guarantee. This describes us perfectly. Make sure that this guarantee is totally transparent.
Read moreEach paper is composed from scratch, according to your instructions. It is then checked by our plagiarism-detection software. There is no gap where plagiarism could squeeze in.
Read moreThanks to our free revisions, there is no way for you to be unsatisfied. We will work on your paper until you are completely happy with the result.
Read moreYour email is safe, as we store it according to international data protection rules. Your bank details are secure, as we use only reliable payment systems.
Read moreBy sending us your money, you buy the service we provide. Check out our terms and conditions if you prefer business talks to be laid out in official language.
Read more