Table of Content
Introduction……………………………………………………………… page 2
Company Background……………………………………………………page 3-4
Information System Requirements………………………………………pages 5-8
Constraints………………………………………………………………… pages 9-11
Soft systems methodology…………………………………………………pages 12-15
Technical/Non-Technical Problems………………………………………pages 15-17
Leadership and Communication………………………………………….pages 18-19
Mentoring and Coaching…………………………………………………. pages 19-20
Conclusion and Recommendation…………………………………………pages 21-24
INTRODUCTION
The report implies to such issues as well as concerns related to information system requirements that has been presented in support data from within Aquarius Marketing and be able to integrate such tasks pointing to Aquarius Marketing. Thus, it is also important to incorporate new IT systems in motivating market specialists for Aquarius Marketing. Aside, this will provide useful and appropriate options in covering all changes needed for the company to stay in control of their business operations and services. Henceforth, there will be looking at the ideal mentoring and mentoring assumptions and be included for the task management application and realization. There needs to be ample time within the amount of time required to complete the project as it can be broken down for analytical purposes into the time required to complete the components of the project, which is then further broken down into the time required to complete each task contributing to the completion of each component.
COMPANY BACKGROUND
Aquarius Marketing operates from one site housing a number of offices. A Managing Director, five Marketing Directors, fifteen Marketing Specialists, three support staff and one receptionist work in these offices. Most of the work is carried out for local companies in producing marketing reports. Currently, all the staff has stand-alone PCs with standard packages. Moreover, the Marketing Specialists are very-well experienced in all aspects of marketing but have limited knowledge of the new information technology that has currently been employed by their competitors. Thus, Aquarius marketing customers have such are demands for faster service than that has been previously offered by Aquarius Marketing. There can be three main areas of concern based from recent customer survey that has identified three main areas of concern such as the following:
- Time taken for Marketing Specialists to produce their marketing report
- Lack of in-depth (marketing) analysis
- Fees charged by Aquarius Marketing were much higher than its competitors
Ideally, the Marketing Director is aware that using technology for greater degree and meeting customer needs is essential if the business is to keep its loyal customer base. Therefore, the Managing Director has decided to invest in an information system to manage administration functions, carry out marketing analysis, and produce marketing reports for the clients and management reports for the marketing specialists. The Managing Director has decided to hire the services of IT consulting firm to develop the system. An email has been sent to all staff that new information systems will result in review of organizational structures and processes. Then, some of the support staff has become anxious as to what changes the new system could possibly bring to their jobs and Aquarius marketing specialists have shown concerns, fearing that they may not be able to use the new system.
Information System Requirements
The following requirements for Aquarius marketing as to be taken desirable by such areas of application:
End user requirements
The system must support full Boolean logic and provide the ability for the user to optionally select which parts of the records in the database are searched. The system must allow end-users to select the format of the returned results from short list of available options, which will be determined and configured by the Aquarius specialists respectively. The system must offer the user the option of automatically expanding the search term with synonyms from one or more ISO-standard hierarchical thesauri, which the system will be required to store. Marketing specialists using the information system should be able to select whether the system expands their search expression as the system allow users the option to browse through WWW interface. The information system must allow Aquarius marketing to submit reviews of catalogued resources and to allow staff to read the reviews once they have been flagged as acceptable by members of Project Team. The review records must include the time, date and IP address of originator. The system must allow Aquarius marketing personnel to configure the display of search results to include the aggregated results from the quantitative parts of accepted reviews.
Platform and performance requirements
The system must run with acceptable performance on Digital Equipment Corporation AlphaServer as Aquarius server can be in the form of Digital Unix and thus, changes to Aquarius operating system is not being anticipated as of the present situation. However, if there can be such proposal on Windows NT will be considered, provided that the cost of any necessary software and data migration is included in the proposal. The system must be robust and system crashes which occur frequently will not be deemed acceptable.
Resource Description and Data Structure
Thus, such descriptive information about electronic resources is generally referred to as metadata, and a number of standard schemas exist or are currently under development. Aquarius will identify the need to describe resources and relationships between in levels of granularity such as record describing an entire web site may require related records to describe significant individual HTML pages within the site, which themselves may have links to other pages, images, sound files etc. Conversely, individual resources may exist outside logical resource groups, such as files on an FTP server. A further requirement is the ability to store copies of the individual resources themselves so that the system can:
- Function as content management and delivery system
- Perform relevance-ranked content-based retrieval service
- Store other binary finding aid
The system must be able to store a log of queries received, and provide the option to produce reports that filter out queries received from members of Aquarius team. The system must be able to store user account information, to allow Aquarius marketing services in having option to operate on subscription basis in the future.
Interoperability
In due practice, any system procured by Aquarius marketing must provide comprehensive support for such IT directory services protocol as well as the search and retrieval protocol.
Database administration
The system must provide range of privilege levels for different categories of users; Aquarius marketing employee who will be given lower access rights than salaried Project personnel. The system should be set up in such way that new records added to the database will not be included in search results supplied to the public over the WWW until they have been checked and authorised by member of marketing team. The system must provide the facility for members to configure which parts of the records in the database are searched by end-user queries. The system must allow Aquarius staff to configure various formats for the output of search results to end users, as system must provide fully-configurable authority file support. Then, for example, new records describing pages within a web site should inherit many of the properties of the record describing the site as a whole, reducing the amount of keyboard entries required, although it should also be possible to edit these inherited properties as and when necessary. It is highly desirable for the system to provide some web crawler functionality, which can be controlled from the clients; for given URL to be supplied by Aquarius marketing, the system should be able to examine the resource, create a candidate record for it and each subsidiary resource linked within that logical archive, retrieving copy of the resource itself for storage in the database.
Constraints
The IT initiative initial adoption driver cycle is triggered by the Aquarius policy on how to grow core IT competencies. A champion will emerge with varying degrees of enthusiasm and influence within the organisation. Key technological gatekeepers in the organisation introduce knowledge to potential IT users. An IT system requirement is then made and the actual adoption phase of the initiative proceeds. Aquarius marketing then, adopts and implements the initiative resulting in business outcomes from that IT innovation’s adoption ( 2004). Aquarius marketing should develop people’s knowledge of how to effectively apply IT to support their work practices because successful IT use and adoption appears to be key motivator. Without effective IT requirements adoption by the management, Aquarius marketing cannot gain full benefit from its IT investment. Sharing and building internal group knowledge can facilitate IT diffusion because it can ensure that IT will be effectively used ( 2000). Aquarius marketing should develop knowledge network with professional institutions and/or university academics to be able to maintain additional channels of advice and support ( 2001). This information network can be an essential part of the innovation diffusion process for the company because IT systems can be effectively transferred from the industry/professional level to the organisational level (2003). Integrating immature technology with potentially incompatible legacy systems can be resources-hungry and could introduce significant investment risks. Another gap is associated with marketing specialists’ lack of experience in IT systems adoption when introducing IT applications into the Aquarius organization. This can also lead to user resistance. Lack of confidence in IT implementation strategies and user resistance appears to be linked. For example, such IT implementer, observed that while previous adoption of an IT system had been unsuccessfully piloted, it had been complex and users felt uncomfortable with it. Uncertainty and complexity can also cause lack of confidence in the users’ perception of the value or effectiveness of an IT application and this perceived risk exposure could trigger user resistance.
The other gap is failing to gain expected business results. To obtain investment support from top management, the IT department often presents an ideal preferred outcome benefit of an IT investment ( 1999). This evaluation may be based on software vendor or consultant recommendation. Unexpected business result gaps may result from information about benefits or potential barriers not being based on organizational reality. This can happen because:
- of misunderstanding of Aquarius marketing’s true level of IT readiness
- of not understanding the business processes that Aquarius marketing employs or the relationship between these processes
- it may be result of misrepresenting potential benefits that are unlikely to be actually realized
Overemphasis on an IT application’s technical aspects may result in application users getting lost in their training session, leaving them with negative experience or poor perception of potential derived benefits. Furthermore, the adopted training approach may provide little time for reflection and making sense of the IT application. This can inhibit the IT user’s motivation to value the application. Management pressure for IT users to carry out their normal work and simultaneously absorb new ways of doing it can inhibit IT adoption. An individual’s lack of general computer skills can also present significant limitation to IT systems application use. Such lack of basic knowledge may lead to development of negative information systems use perception. Although Aquarius marketing staff could already have basic computer skills, this knowledge may become rapidly outdated because of rapid IT development. The management’s lack of time to learn how to resolve potential problems can exacerbate individual frustrations with learning new IT applications.
Soft systems methodology: An approach to IT
In order to deal with the people-focused activities of business marketing, such change methodology must accommodate various people’s perspectives and their diversities. The soft systems methodology or the SSM, in its simplest form, can be described as an iterative methodology that focuses and accommodate stakeholders’ perspective in the design of change. SSM learns about the environment and introduces its change program by improving the problem situation. Unlike systems engineering, it does not seek one problem definition and corresponding optimum solution, rather SSM considers different perspectives to try and make sense out of the various problem situations. Conventional usage of SSM and its varieties can be studied from the literature (1988; 1990; 1994; 1984).
The following sections describe the SSM steps to introduce IT for Aquarius Marketing. The first step is to understand the problem situation: change methodology necessarily begins with the consideration of understanding the underlying real world problems. Often problems begin with the recognition that there is some dissatisfaction or need for improvement. SSM does not take problem definition as given; rather it takes dissatisfactions as a starting-point to investigate the problem definition. Investigation techniques such as interviews and process observation lead to different perspectives of the definition of the problem situation. In viewing the scenarios in different perspectives and from various angles, the rich pictures then lead to different definitions. For example, the production staff that were dissatisfied often complained that they have difficulties finding sufficient time outside news production schedule. However, on closer examination during the interviews, they revealed that the news production process itself was the problem.
The second step requires the understanding of the root definitions before providing the conceptual models. Generating relevant root definitions is based on the rich information that was gathered during the interviews. The essence of generating the root definition is not to be the ultimate definition, but to be a meaningful definition with a single perspective so that discussions may surface. This requires that any messy situation can be explicitly explained in many meaningful definitions, each based on different perspective.
The third step is to provide the conceptual model based on the root definition that debate on the desirable characteristics of introducing IT have to be mooted. Instead of focusing on the technical characteristics of IT, it is important to gain an accommodated view about how the activities should be conducted and how IT can support the accommodated activities.
The fourth step is to derive the requirements for the improvements. The agreed models of the activities and how IT should support the production team are to be compared with the real world to derive desirable and feasible changes. For example, the agreed models may call for IT to support the news director and news team in producing news in real time as events develop. However, the strict integrity requirement of the broadcasting organization overruled that news from outside sources must be confirmed and validated to certain degree before becoming qualified materials.
The fifth step is to implement the changes, having considered the many constraints, designed a solution, and selected the implementation method. As the implementation step affects the current production activities, it requires a high degree of understanding those people who are involved. Prior efforts to make IT support all the people would help alleviate frictions. However, many conflicts can arise from the actual utilization. The usefulness of the SSM approach for IT systems utilization is supported by the fact that many of the new utilities from the new system could be precisely predicted and realized. If only non-SSM approaches were used for the international broadcasting organization, the IT introduction would have been based on only world views of the authority within the organization. The approach gave priority to exploring the variety of relevant world views, including the broadcast listeners, viewers, and international programme staff. That is because SSM emphasizes people’s perspectives in modelling meaningful actions, which are the ultimate governance of computer usage.
Technical/Non-Technical Problems
Moreover, information management environment then be subject to substantial change to forecast all the management changes that will occur harnessing new IT and managing information resources will become cornerstones of progressive management and leadership as Aquarius marketing specialists will seek proactive and strategic approach to resource management implying IT such as developing cost effective plans for implementing innovative systems necessary as possible, improving the need for desirable IT requirements in achieving good outcomes for the management as well as increasing the ability of Aquarius communication systems to change within new technologies for IT application ( 2006). Furthermore, majority of information systems are developed for and used by people in functional areas such as in manufacturing, human resources and marketing to develop information systems that address the needs of every aspect in its business markets, Aquarius task then must possess mix of business in determining technical as well as non-technical issues and should understand better marketing objectives, its operations and financial implications as information system mean discrete set of information resources organized for processing as well as maintenance, transmission of information systems in accordance with defined procedures, whether automated or manual that addresses how such management of information resources promotes the fulfillment of Aquarius vision and mission. (2006)
Ideally, having the capability to assign costs for IT services and to improve information resource budget and planning for sharing and safeguarding of information of the information resources required for decision making and solving problems and in order to achieve such objectives it is important to impart knowledge and skills on the techniques available to resource management information systems including modeling and decision support as well as the understanding of the need to appreciate human environments that will affect the design and use of the implemented resource management techniques as it addresses the need for better IT system. ( 2006) Furthermore, some useful paradigms that control the application of the techniques are still developed and as the development continues existing techniques will evolve as managers must continue learning and exploring as IT systems evolve to enhance resource techniques in integrated ways creating opportunities for managing growth in management process as the best information are available in the fullness of time in using such management techniques with emphasis to IT advantages and technology innovation. (2006)
The Aquarius process of introducing IT initiatives for adoption by expected users is defined as IT diffusion with an IT diffusion constraint being defined as resistance to change drivers occurring during IT adoption and implementation. Resistance may occur at the organizational, group and personal level. Understanding diffusion constraints could help construction firms manage improve their IT diffusion processes by focusing on possible IT implementation diffusion barriers and finding ways to mitigate them. Moreover, Stewart et al. (2004) offered coping strategies to mitigate identified barriers, just like for example, use of computer aided design and or estimating software used by engineers is often implemented as stand-alone non-system integrated initiative where only small group of expert users participate in the initiative. Aquarius Marketing may operate small-group IT innovation such as planning and scheduling applications whereas groupware IT innovation needs cooperation both within a group to share and exchange data and information as well as with external project team and supply chain members.
Leadership and Communication
Moreover, it is hard to keep focused on what is vital so leadership should be applied to achieve good objectives and focus on better successes. For Aquarius to succeed, goals will be precisely communicated to the marketing specialists, as such additional opportunity for increased marketing motivation and productivity is visible. The technical issues apprehended by IT systems can be found directly to its configuration processes and applications signifying how system requirements are being adopted by the Aquarius team. Thus, non-technical issues would involve people as it is essential to make those specialists committed to adapt to changes of the business and its structures (2001). The need for effective communication is core factor for Aquarius marketing to keep going and avoid serious problems in the future as the assumption for communication is exchanged between staff and the company with crucial indicator, listening value as the marketing specialists will require to be active participants in such effective communication transaction such as getting rid of interference upon communicating. Furthermore, communication affect relationships among Aquarius staff members. Although effective communication does not guarantee success of a farm business, its absence usually assures problems. More specifically, communication influences the effectiveness of the hiring and training of employees, motivation of employees, providing daily instructions, performance evaluations and the handling of discipline problems implying obvious roles of communication. ( 2005) Then, affecting ideal willingness of Aquarius team to provide channels of communication that will avoid barriers of such effectiveness as one barrier could possibly management conflicts and certain resistance to changes within the Aquarius. Truly, for Aquarius marketing, effective communication can possibly be genuine sender of understanding but ineffective communication means the communication undertaken was not effective for Aquarius to make a sound essence of executing such IT systems and make sure the business milieu is on the right way and manner.
Mentoring and Coaching
In terms of mentoring and coaching, amiably, for Aquarius to have better indications of such mentoring as the latter involves the justification of the coaching made through such IT applications and such systems in command of the situation, mentoring will give long lasting directions on how such process goes for Aquarius marketing. Meanwhile, coaching is just about providing guidance on a desired situation such as those can be done in trainings and workshops for such IT system implementation, it will just coach marketing specialists of Aquarius on the things they know about, a sort of substantial supporting mechanism. As mentoring is providing those specialists the needed information and knowledge for them to know the basics of information systems and its other related points and from there the coaching comes into the scenario. Then, there is a need for Aquarius team to assumingly apply such possible and useful coaching and mentoring skills in becoming business to be more desirable to its loyal customers and making them satisfied individuals through their products and services being offered. Thus, it can be that excellent mentors are good market leaders and that mentoring is an art being practice in achieving primary goals for IT systems applications and having the marketing specialists to be involved in having the job well done, as Aquarius team is truly responsible to their business plans and believing that the staff will call for better encouragement in taking steps towards success and stability. (2005)
Conclusion and Recommendation
Generally, Aquarius Marketing operates from one site housing number of offices and there composes of managing director, five Marketing Directors, fifteen Marketing Specialists, three support staff and one receptionist work in these offices. Most of the work is carried out for local companies in producing marketing reports. There is a need for Aquarius Marketing to add such employees in some areas as they have a number of offices operating the business. Manpower needs to be assessed and the need to add more receptionists, two receptionists in every Aquarius offices can be effective in giving customers fast and hassle free services so that the business cycle can function well as expected. Thus, the fact that, most of the company’s work is carried out for local companies in producing marketing reports so it is crucial for the company to adopt stability and effectiveness of manpower skills and human resource indications should be evident in the company. Currently, all the staff have stand-alone PCs with standard packages such as, Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Marketing Software.
Ideally, stand-alone PC’s for all the Aquarius staff can possibly not enough as their customers are starting to demand for much faster services then it is imperative for the Aquarius Marketing to add up and upgrade more current and modern technology driven materials and tools to prevent any upcoming demands as well as complaints by the customers and such major problems in operations in the future. The valuing and adopting of suitable Information Technology Systems is critical for the company to keep going and be active in the business market stance. The mere truth that Aquarius customers are demanding much faster service than that has been previously offered by the company and to possibly eliminate the three main areas of concern provided by the customers in such recent survey undertaken, the Aquarius Marketing can adopt the initial solution steps such as:
- Faster time and right timeframe for the Marketing Specialists to produce their marketing reports by utilizing tools that would help them save money, effort and time wastage
- Be experts in providing and handling out marketing analysis by means of collaborative engagement to skills and knowledge upgrading and evaluation
- Costs reduction needs to be considered and the leveling up of fee charges maybe more or less the same to the competitors
- Integration of technology power and dominance in right shift
The investment of using better information systems is a good decision as such information incurs certain strong factor and greater degree of meeting customer needs and is amicably essential if the business is to keep its loyal customer base. The assumption also of IT security should be taken into realization as it do protect the required rights of the company in making their investments to IT systems a true worth the wait and money spending. Aside, it is important for Aquarius to manage their administration functions, carry out marketing analysis as well as produce marketing reports for the clients and management reports for marketing specialists. IT consultants really helps to rescue current issues and challenges within the company in an IT consulting firm to develop the Aquarius desired IT system thus, emailing all staff that new information systems will be resulting to a must reviews of organizational structures and processes. Then, the risk arises and some indication of resistance for the new information systems is visible as some of the support staff have become anxious as to what changes the new system could possibly bring to their jobs. Marketing specialists have shown concerns, fearing that they may not be able to use the new system.
Accordingly, the Marketing Specialists of the company are very-well experienced in such aspects of marketing but have limited knowledge of the new information technology that has currently been employed by their competitors. The recognition and the importance of moving forward, changing Aquarius Marketing business structure and re-establishing their operational activities is a must for the management to keep going on the right pace of the business. The need to incur more workshops and or trainings directly signaling their marketing specialists to update and increase their knowledge to innovation in lieu to IT processes and its ways of providing business industries the best of business environment they can possibly have and dream of. Taking into close account and familiarization of such IT requirement
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment