Business Intelligence Proof Reading Services

Executive Summary:

Business intelligence (BI) is referred to as combination of processes, technologies and architectures that transform raw data into useful information that commutes beneficial business strategy action. The purpose of this report is to describe the business case regarding implementation of BI in a manufacturing organization for its web-platform (WP) project. In the beginning, the report addresses the issue that can be resolved by implementing the BI. Then it mention about the anticipated outcomes that is associated with the issue along with proper recommendation and justification. After that, it outlines the team for business case analysis by mentioning the responsibilities of the team member. Next, it defines the problem followed by the problem statement. Further, the report discusses about the impact of BI implementation on the organization, followed by the feasibility summary. Finally, the report provides a project overview and project description that includes project objectives, project performance, project assumptions, project constraints, major milestones, cost benefit analysis.

Issue

XYZ manufacturer has shifted its business model to a de-centralized one due to its growing customer base for the past 3 years. It is difficult to administering workforce due to provision of continuous support to growing clients in more locations. With the expansion of the workforce the existing legacy mainframe systems maintain internal requirements such as resource management, payroll activities and reporting has become incompetent to efficiently manage these activities (Rodriguez et al., 2013). For the past 10 months this incompetency has resulted in higher costs and increased employee turnover. The company has decided to shift to web-based application which has been outlined in the business case for the WP project, to efficiently manage the company’s administration. In this way, the company will be able to manage its administration from one common and central platform.

1) Anticipated outcome:

By moving its administrative platform to a centralized web-based one, XYZ manufacturer will be able to manage its administrative activities and functions along with employee payroll systems in a consolidated and consistent way. This technological migration will decrease the overhead costs that is associated with the huge workforce in order to manage these tasks. The de-centralized employees will have the freedom to manage their training, payroll, reporting and other administrative tasks. In addition, the company will have benefit from systematic and timely reporting from the regional manager’s provision of continuous update of theirfinancial accounting. As a result, errors will be reduced and cycle time gets improved (Ghazawneh & Henfridsson, 2013).

2) Recommendation and Justification:

Different alternatives and options were examined to identify the best possible way to leverage the technology for business process improvement and minimizing the overhead cost in XYZ manufacturers. The suggested WP project will allow the data and functions of the company’s existing mainframe system to periodically migrate to the new web-based platform so as to maintain data integrity and also provides sufficient time for training managers and employees on their roles and responsibilities to respective administrative functions. Besides providing compatibility with other recent information technology (IT) systems, the web-based platform will also improve the reporting efficiency throughout the company. This technology will achieve its desired result in the following manner

• Instead of telephoning their regional manager for entry into the mainframe system, employee  will have the provision of entering and editing their timesheet data from anywhere and at anytime. In addition, employees will also have the option to register themselves for training which reduces the managers’ task.
• Staff requirements for the purpose of compiling and analysing data will be greatly reduced due to immediate accessibility of timesheet and payroll details for the purpose of quality control and reporting.

Justification

The shifting of payroll along with other administrative functions from the legacy mainframe system to the web-based platform will enable the company to manage its resources and business processes. Though current situation and other alternatives were analysed, still the WP project was chosen for this business case proposal as it provides best circumstances to quickly apprehend the benefits while improving efficiency and cost reduction. The other alternatives and options were too tough to define as well as presumed more risk and less benefit. Hence those alternatives cannot properly meet the company’s current objectives.

Business Case Analysis Team:

A business case is actually a business need that defines a problem of the organization, measures the project’s effect that solves the problem and clarifies the proposed plan’s benefits and costs (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). The business case analysis team consists of the following individuals and they are responsible for the development and analysis of the WP project business case.

Problem Definition

1) Problem statement:

Manager’s burden of addressing employee relation concerns including reporting with balancing the requirements of daily billable task (Alias et al., 2014).

2) Organizational impact:

The implementation of WP project will have an impact on the XYZ manufacturer, its tools, processes as well as roles and responsibilities (Whitney & Daniels, 2013).

• The existing platform of legacy administration will be completely phased out.
• The WP project will make the payroll and the administrative efficient and streamlined.
• Besides providing more flexibility and freedom for employees and reducing manager’s burden, the required manpower for HR and payroll staff will be reduced.
• Besides software licensing for project XYZ manufacturers will be required to purchase additional servers to accommodate the platform and its expected growth for coming years.

3) Feasibility summary:

Initial estimates for the WP Project are:

• Reduction of overhead costs by 16% in the first 12 months;
• Decrease in employee turnover by 12% in the first 12 months;
• Immediate decrease in time by 48% in weekly and monthly and weekly financial reports;
• Immediate decrease by 22% in time taken to resolve payroll issues.

Project Overview:

The WP project overview gives detail about how the project will address the XYZ manufacturer (Heagney, 2016). The overview consists of the following components.

1) Project description:

The WP project will perform analysis and reviewal of various potential projects to replace the XYZ manufacturer’s legacy payroll and administration mainframe system with a web-based platform. This will be performed by product identification and selection that will satisfactorily replace the company’s existing system. After selection, the new system will be implemented and once it is operational the old system will be archived (Marchewka, 2014).

2) Goals and objectives:

The established corporate objectives along with goals of XYZ manufacturer is supported by the WP project. The goals and objectives are listed in the table below (Turner, 2016).

3) Project Performance:

The process, service or key resources and their expected business results to measure the project performance are listed the table below. These performance measures will be further defined as well as evaluated in project plan (Mir & Pinnington, 2014).

4) Project Assumptions:

The assumptions below are applicable for WP project. With beginning of the project plan, more assumptions are identified and they will be added accordingly (Leach, 2014).

• As per the new web-based system every employees and staff will get trained in their respective tasks of timesheet, data entry and reporting.
• Funds are available for training as well as for purchasing the web-based system’s software and hardware.
• Necessary support will be provided by heads of every department for the successful completion of the project.
• Project has Executive-level backing and support will be provided to the project.

5) Project Constraints:

The constraints below are applicable for WP project. With beginning of the project plan, more constraints are identified and they will be added accordingly (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016).

• Availability of limited IT resources as well as other ongoing initiatives to support the WP.
• Availability of limited number of commercial off the shelf (COTS) products to support both administrative and payroll activities.
• Availability of limited support from the hardware/software providers since implementation will be conducted internally, instead of vendors or product developers.

6) Major Project Milestones:

The identified major project milestones are as follows. With the progress of the project planning the schedule is developed, the milestones and their target completion dates will be adjusted, modified and finalized for establishing the baseline schedule (Larson et al., 2014)

After the project gets approved and progress further, each of the above components of the project overview will be extended to more detail level for the working of the project plan.

Cost Benefit Analysis

The actions of cost and savings associated with the WP project, description of those actions, and the costs or savings associated with them are depicted in the table below. The bottom of the table shows the net savings for the project’s first year (David, Dube & Ngulube, 2013).

As per the cost benefit analysis it is found that in the first year XYZ manufacturers will save $187,488 which indicates a remarkable improvement of company’s operating cost and this represent the company’s benefit from this project.

Approvals

The people’s signatures below implies that the purpose of the business case is clear to them. By sigining below in the document, the authorised signatory has approved the proposed project management. proceed further (Hwang & Ng, 2013).

References:

1. Alias, Z., Zawawi, E. M. A., Yusof, K., & Aris, N. M. (2014). Determining critical success factors of project management practice: A conceptual framework. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 61-69.
2. David, R., Dube, A., & Ngulube, P. (2013). A cost-benefit analysis of document management strategies used at a financial institution in Zimbabwe: A case study. South African Journal of Information Management, 15(2), 1-10.
3. Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2016, December). Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.
4. Ghazawneh, A., & Henfridsson, O. (2013). Balancing platform control and external contribution in third?party development: the boundary resources model. Information Systems Journal, 23(2), 173-192.
5. Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.
6. Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
7. Hwang, B. G., & Ng, W. J. (2013). Project management knowledge and skills for green construction: Overcoming challenges. International Journal of Project Management, 31(2), 272-284.
8. Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to event planning , scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
9. Larson, E. W., Gray, C. F., Danlin, U., Honig, B., & Bacarini, D. (2014). Project management: The managerial process (Vol. 6). Grandview Heights, OH: McGraw-Hill Education.
10. Leach, L. P. (2014). Critical chain project management. Artech House.
11. archewka, J. T. (2014). Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.