Create One page single space - Networked CRM and Gantt Chart

Good news! As CIO, your report and presentation a few weeks ago was a big hit in the Corporate Offices of Bear Beverages (BB, the national manufacturer of non-­‐alcoholic beverage products Koala Kola, Polar Bear bottled water, Bear Essentials sports drink, and Kodiak energy drink). As a result, they’ve asked you to lead a new initiative related to Bear’s strategy to expand their brands to the global marketplace. As you know, BB’s current HQ and operations are limited to the U.S. They do have sales forces in various parts of the world that are staffed with local employees, but they currently report back to the centralized U.S. sales organization, and use an antiquated sales tracking system. What the CEO would like to do now as part of the globalization strategy is to develop sales units around the world that would market and sell Bear’s flagship brands as well as new products designed for local tastes in each market. Your job as CIO is to develop a strategy that takes BB’s sales and marketing organization from its current centralized organizational structure to a coordinated structure utilizing the multinational strategy. As part of the strategy, you’ve already decided that BB should implement a new global customer relationship management (CRM) environment using a networked systems configuration. You’ve also decided that all systems development will be done (with either in-­‐house IT developers or contracted IT developers) using the traditional systems development life cycle approach (SDLC). There are two deliverables that you need to provide to the CEO: a memo and a project plan. The Memo. Specifically, you need to draft a one-­‐page (single-­‐spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman) memo to the CEO briefly discussing the following: 1) your justification for recommending a networked systems configuration; 2) three principle management challenges you expect to face when developing this global collection of CRM systems (as well as the measures you’ll take to address these challenges); and 3) how you plan to transition (i.e., “cut over”) from the old sales tracking system to the new the CRM platforms around the world. You can’t get into a lot of detail here, since you only have one page (and since the CEO has a short attention span!). The Project Plan. On a separate page, you will also include a high-­‐level project plan (use accompanying Excel project template to create the project plan). The project plan needs to use the basic Gantt Chart format to outline the SDLC methodology your IT organization will employ to develop the CRM systems (again, use the accompanying Excel project template which illustrates the basic Gantt chart format, and a simplified 4 week per month calendar for 2011). You should include three task activities for each of the SDLC phases (i.e., PADIS), as well as the tasks specifically related to your measures that address the ‘management challenges’ you outlined in your memo (item #2 above). Furthermore, your plan should reflect your chosen “cut over” strategy that you outlined in your memo. Be sure you assign only one person as the responsible person for each task. You can choose from the project manager (Peter), the lead systems analyst (Alicia), the lead developer/programmer (Devin), or the lead end user representative (Edna). Select the most appropriate person based on the nature of the task in question (of course they may assign other staff, either locally or globally for their tasks, but they will be the ‘Responsible’ party listed on the project plan). You decide how long each activity will take, but the sales force automation system must be implemented and in production before the end of 2011.