...Delivering business value with IT at Hefty Hardware How effective is the partnership between IT and business at Hefty? The partnership between the two is not very effective at all in fact it seems to be toxic. The chief information officer at Hefty gets replaced about every 2 or 3 years because of this. Below are the identified short comings for both IT and the business. Issues in the case Through the case I was able to identify several issue between business and information technology. First being poor communication between the two. This problem was immediately made clear. On page 78 there was a good example of this when Paul Gutierez talks to Jenny about how the new technology meeting went. The IT team had the business team so confused during the meeting that they eventually just tuned out and IT never actually got to talking about how the new technology could be used for marketing and why it was a good idea. The next issue is the lack of integration between IT and business. Not only do they have problems communicating the points they are trying to get across in language that can be easily understood, but the business end feels as though IT does not know how to meet their goals. A good example of this is on page 76 where it is discussed that “IT people don’t even know some of our basic business functions” and “We don’t feel IT is contributing to creating new business value for Hefty.” Lastly it seems as though there is bad time management and planning on the IT end. I cannot...
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...invasion of Honda and other Japanese manufacturers in the 1960s. Harley-Davidson did not consider Honda’s lightweight motorcycles as a threat since they believed that people buy mostly heavyweight motorcycles not for transportation, but rather as sport vehicles for leisure time use. Unfortunately for Harley-Davidson, Honda was able to penetrate the American market successfully by offering lower prices and reliable motorcycles. The latter attracted a new segment of customers with different needs and demands. Consequently, Harley-Davidson witnessed a fall in the market share from 70% in the 60s to 5% in the 80s. Another reason for this drastic decline of market share was the bad quality of the newly produced motorcycles, as well as the brand image that was linked to the pot smoking, tattoo covered, and beer drinking motorcycle gangs. This paper will discuss the marketing strategy Harley-Davidson company has implemented to regain its market share and what the company is doing today to deliver high levels of customer value. Furthermore, the paper will shed some light on how value is managed through the marketing mix, as well as how the company has positioned itself in the market relative to competitors. Company Overview There is one U.S. based motorcycle manufacturer that stands out as a world leader in the motorcycle industry. Harley-Davidson Motor Company specializes in manufacturing and selling large, heavyweight motorcycles as well as a line of motorcycle parts, accessories,...
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...Practice (2013): n. pag. WARC. Web. 7 Apr. 2013. <www.warc.com>. Cue, Oscar, Gabriela De La Riva, Carlos De León, Alice Garretti, Claudia Martínez, Monica Moctezuma, Rocío Ordoñana, and Mariana Ramirez-Degollado. Proc. of Neurosemiotics - the Key to Successful Marketing, Mexico City. Amsterdam: ESOMAR, 2008. WARC. Web. 7 Apr. 2013. <www.warc.com>. "Warc Industry Trends Snapshot: Vending Innovation - New Opportunities for Packed Goods in an Established Retail Channel." WARC. Warc, 2012. Web. 8 Apr. 2013. <www.warc.com>. Marketers must be able to identify the needs of the customer and the problems that arise without such needs and sell not a simple product, but the solution to their dilemmas. In a globalised and highly competitive world successful marketing revolves around a quality customer experience. A relationship must occur between the customer and product where they are able to understand the solutions the product possesses. Marketers are able to produce this relationship by understanding the needs of the customer and being able to deliver them successfully in order to earn the trust of the customer. However a service encounter or any interaction between a...
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...ventures and feel the need to develop some new products that will be profitable and will help the company to continue expanding in its market shares (University of Phoenix). UWB has been impacted by the vast changes in the economy and in technology. UWB will continue to expand their market shares by creating a well-develop strategic plan for new products. The plan must identify important variables related to the project, and specify how they are to be measured. UMB must ensure that the products respond to the needs of all of their customers. UWB leadership must be strong and knowledgeable to analyze available statistical data. UWB must identify the present issues, opportunities; assess the risk, and alternatives. Describe the Situation Issue and Opportunity Identification In order for UWB to secure a large portion of the market share, the company must continuously compete in the industry by developing new products and marketing them. Brian Allen has had some winning products on the market, but not recently (University Of Phoenix, 2006). UWB should analysis data by using descriptive statistics. A new credit card with rewards could move people to switch from their current banks to UWB. Small business owners like to have the opportunity to purchase capital items at their request. UWB could face losing at lease 40% of their customers. This problem statement gives opportunities to UWB to do a research and collect data on how other banks operate. Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical...
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...MGT202 – Project Management Case Study Charlotte Reed Table of Contents Introduction 3 Case Study One: 3 Risks associated with this project 3 Top 10 steps to deliver this project 5 1. Define the scope 5 2. Determine available resources 5 3. Determine the cost of project 6 4. Assemble your project team 6 5. List the steps 7 6. Develop a plan 7 7. Request project adjustments 8 8. Monitor teams progress 8 9. Keep everyone informed 10 10. Risk management 10 Case Study Two: 12 Stakeholders in this project 12 Project Owner 12 Project Manager 13 The Private Companies 13 The Second Government Department 13 Interviewer 14 Liaison 14 Statistician 14 Managing the stakeholder interaction during design, inception, scope agreement, delivery, review and completion 15 Conclusion 17 References ...
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...Delivering Customer Service 1. What factors accounted for the extraordinary success of Starbucks in the early 1990’s? a. What was so compelling about the Starbucks value proposition? b. What brand image did Starbucks develop during this period? Many factors accounted for the success of Starbucks. Some of these factors include the many locations around a given urban area, the variety of products, and how Schultz set out to create Starbucks as the “third place” for Americans. Due to the high volume of stores in a given area, people are able to stop by for their daily fix of Joe wherever they may be. If a businessman is walking through an airport, he could stop by the CVG location. A soccer mom could be driving down Reed Hartman Highway and get a coffee at the intersection of Cornell and Reed Hartman. Students at either XU or UC could stop by various locations around their respective campuses as well. Besides selling the regular black coffee, Starbucks capitalized on innovating new items each holiday season. Every fall and winter season, Starbucks launched new hot products for customers. This diversification allowed more people to shop at Starbucks if they had a different preference for their coffee. Finally, Schultz’s platform of making Starbucks the “third place” for Americans is what lead to Starbucks’ compelling value proposition. A. Starbucks was keen on keeping alive the coffee bar culture alive. The company captured this through its “live coffee” mantra. This...
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... Name Institution Date Monitor and Control Work For a Project Manager Project managers find it difficult to have an access to each member if they fail to keep a good monitor and control of the work. But with them realizing the deliverables and what the root cause of the deliverables are with time management for all the projects then they find it easier. By holding effective meetings, the managers are able to reach to all the members and give all the necessary information that they need. The effective meetings are integral to achieving team goals and completing their tasks successfully. Team meetings are important tools in managing of tasks and ensuring productivity, and does not matter how they are conducted either in person, asynchronously or real-time, or via remote conference. In these effective meetings, they are open to conversations, which draw upon each member’s skills, knowledge and perspectives to solving of problems and supporting each other in achieving the collective goals of the team. The project managers organize status meeting by prior notice to all members and give them the agenda of the meeting to avoid any inconveniences that may arise, and prevent wasting their time. Regular and frequent holding of meetings and check-ins keeps everyone informed and on the same page toward best practices: general, tactical or practical (Wysocki, Beck, & Crane...
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...WEEK 1 - DQ 1: SKILLS Researches and studies conducted have shown that despite millions of dollars spent on IT projects yearly, many failed because of lack of proper and effective project management practice. Like all other projects, the emphasis and goal is to successfully deliver information technology projects within budget and time schedule. The information technology project manager therefore has the primary responsibility to bring together and manage the human and material resources required to accomplish this objective and bring the project to a successful closure. Giving the complexity of most IT projects and the fact that many end users (customers) do not possess the technical knowhow to effectively communicate their needs for the software programmer to transform such requirements into a working program further complicate the job of an IT project manager. Hence, beside the hard skills (technical skills) that an IT project manager must possess, he/she must also possess the soft skills such as, good interpersonal skills, charisma, eloquence of speech, persuasiveness, team spirit, proactive, good listener, effective communicator, etc. required to manage all this complexities and as well as the change requirements of end users. Brewer J. L. (2005) considered relationship management has an important skill set that a project manager should possess while managing projects. A project team usually will comprise of people drawn from different academic and socio-cultural background...
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...balanced scorecard for each section, followed by and explanation on how these objectives will be met. By the end of the paper you (the reader) will have a better understanding of Cyber Café’s strategic objectives for the four quadrants of its balanced scorecard. The purpose of a balanced scorecard for Cyber Cafe is to be able to align the company’s business activities to the strategy’s and vision of the company. In this section Cyber Café will implement the use of a balanced scorecard to help understand and visualize the strategic objectives of the company. This will also help the company be able to analyze the performance of the employees and the business. The four quadrants of a balanced scorecard are: 1) Customer values 2) Financial prospective and shareholder value 3) Process of internal operations 4) Learning and growth prospective The following tables are the balanced scorecard of Cyber Café. This will show Cyber café’s various strategic objectives and tactics in different areas of the business. Financial: | Objective | Measures | Target | Initiatives | | First year | Meet budget growth targets. | Revenue growth versus budget targets. | Budget targets for growth. | Achieve financial sustainability. | | Second year | Research new programs and services that is needed by the community | Total debt to total assets | Maintain breakeven budget and ensure adequate revenues | Deliver new or expanded services and programs | | Third year | Reduce overtime...
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...Leadership Analysis The Bridge on The River Kwai August 5, 2012 Shekhar Gahlot (ICS Hitotsubashi, Tokyo, Japan) Leadership Analysis: The Bridge on the River Kwai The year: 1943. The place: Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma. In the setting of World War II, a defeated unit British Soldiers is marched into a Japanese prison camp in western Thailand, with the purpose of constructing a bridge over the River Kwai to carry a new railway line to invade Burma. The camp is run by a dutiful commandant Colonel Saito and his men. The British troop is led by a stiff-lipped Colonel Nicholson. Nicholson is highly revered by his men, he is their friend and confidant; he can do them no wrong. So begins the classic World War II movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. In the August of 2009 during a humid Sunday afternoon I happened to stumble upon this English classic. I presumed it to be just another vintage war movie. However, on careful inspection, it became an excellent treatise for understanding various forms of "leadership" paradigms, which are not only useful in the Army but can be easily observed in contemporary corporate world. It is one of those few war movies which focus more on building its characters rather than the war itself. It portrays two very different leadership styles, which are intensely portrayed by its characters Colonel Nicholson and Colonel Saito. The movie starts with difference of opinion and clashes of ego between the two leads. Saito is persistent...
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...QUESTION 6 Do you think McDonald's successfully followed the marketing process to establish its brand? Provide practical examples to motive your answer. What is a market process? 1. Locating and defining issues or problems. * Nature and boundaries of the situation. * Questions relating to the market strategy or implementation. * Defining issues or problems by taking account the purpose of study. * Relevant background information. * What information is needed? * How the information will be used in decision making. Issues and problems at McDonalds 5 May 2015 in CNBC News McDonalds can’t shake its image, McDonald has a problem of fast food (all that’s good is bad) Alan Siegel CEO of brands says the fast food behemoth has been reactive instead of proactive Mc Donald admits that tackling issues it faces is not moving faster turnaround time. McDonald changed Big Mac to McLean. 2. Statement of research objections * Creating a research plan in solving issues and problems identified * Framework or blueprint for conducting market research project * Details and procedures necessary for obtaining the required information * Purpose to design a study that will test the hypotheses of interest * Answer to possible questions to the research * Provide needed information for decision making As mentioned above McDonald is tackling the issues. 3. Designing...
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...Managers13_26_ch02.fm Page 13 Friday, September 8, 2000 2:43 PM Chapter 2 Basic Skills for Project Managers Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great; some achieve greatness—others have greatness thrust upon them. William Shakespeare Twelfth Night Introduction Before now, we had discussed project management in the broad sense, that is, from the perspective that any type of project—industrial assembly line, new construction, or technology implementation— operated by the same sets of rules and processes. For the remainder of this book, we focus on the last type of project and its leader—the IT project manager. Project managers are a very special breed of people. They are in much demand and will be increasingly so as the need for effective technologists continues to soar. Good technology project managers are trained, not born. They develop skills through experience and education. They become better project managers each time they successfully deliver a project. They learn new techniques and apply them on their projects. They learn lessons—sometimes the hard way—to be better managers in the future. 13 13_26_ch02.fm Page 14 Friday, September 8, 2000 2:43 PM What Does a Project Manager Do? Briefly, technology project managers fulfill the following broad requirements: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Define and review the business case and requirements by regular reviews and controls to ensure that the client receives the system that...
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...services are provided through an integrated health care delivery approach which gives the System the ability to deliver a full range of health care products and services to the communities it serves. This network identified that traditional payment processing system had limitations that hindered the effective collecting of revenue. These limitations were associated with limited access to accurate information by the account representatives, ineffective performance measures and fragmented centers of service provision. The Sutter health program developed a system that comprised of solutions geared towards overcoming these limitations. This paper will discuss Sutter Health key problems and issues, solutions, results, accounting practices, alternative approach, informed opinion, and the conclusion. The California Sutter Health Approach Sutter Health is a non- for-profit community based healthcare and hospital system based in Sacramento, CA. Sutter Health faced several problems, but the key problem was, Souza and McCarty wrote an article, "From Bottom to Top: How One Provider Retooled its Collections," that provided data from research indicating how this healthcare system reputed to be on the list of the largest health care providers in Northern California maneuvered into implementing a whole new strategy on how to increase collections. When collecting payments from new patients, services provided, comes from the need to...
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...ethics and how individually each article ties into both ethical theories. In the article Singer Solution to World Poverty, Peter Singer offers a solution to world poverty. Singers solution is clear-cut and precise. Singer claims that to successfully end world poverty, whatever money not spent on necessities and devoted to luxuries, should be given away to those less fortunate. To pull at the reader's emotions, throughout the text Singer uses hypothetical pathos scenarios to deliver an overall theme of sacrifice. Singer opens up the text...
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...To achieve this goal, CEMEX should implement several strategies. First, the company should focus on a differentiation strategy by expanding the scope of its business beyond producing and selling cement and concrete. By providing distribution and logistics services CEMEX could be involved in the whole spectrum of the construction industry. Second, as a company that has become successful through implementation of merger and acquisition strategies it should take into consideration an organic growth strategy as a primary solution to distribution of construction materials around the world. As a company that has successfully served its customers in countries with different culture and political and economic systems, CEMEX has acquired deep understanding and knowledge of the local and corporate culture of its clients which it has parlay into a tremendous advantage when opening new construction supply stores in those countries (Garcia, 2011). Third, while focusing on international expansion, CEMEX has to ensure a competitive advantage in domestic operation. To achieve both global efficiency and local responsiveness the company should build a network of its customers, partners, suppliers, and stockholders through implementation of a transnational strategy. SITUATION ANALYSIS General Environmental Analysis The key trends that influence CEMEX’s capabilities and effectiveness in operating its business are demographic, economic, political, and technological. Demographic trends affect...
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