Business Case IT Software
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Business Case for RFP Software
Executive summary
360 Technologies is a company that focuses on providing essential services to the community. The services given to the community by this organization include storing sensitive documents such as certificates, licenses, or even other delicate documents that need proper storage in order not to leak important information into the public. This organization has been of help to its community over time, but there have been some setbacks in how the information is being handled. Despite the many complaints, the management has continued to strive to ensure improvements in various sectors that require attention and the inclusion of modern IT technologies. Many surveys have been done in the 360 company setting, and the board members have noticed that there have been some problems in storing modern documents. In the 21st century, most people have ventured into softcopy materials leaving only a few of the population that still use hard copies. The organization still contains an outdated method of storing documents for its customers. This has raised concern since the number of customers receiving the services has reduced drastically over the past few months.
The organization, on the other hand, provides retail goods such as clothing to its community. Responses regarding the sales made are recorded and analyzed after every sale. However, the company has realized that there has been a problem in making records using their existing systems. The organization has realized that a lot of useful time has been spent by the sales parties when calculating invoices and other sales records. As a result of such lag in business functions, the company has proposed to install new technologies in the premise in order to do away with such miseries. The proposal says that the business is to venture into introducing RFP IT software that should aim at solving the existing difficulty in maintaining on-premise customer tools. It has been a challenge for a while, and they have decided on a solution. The board aims to keep the organization at its best capabilities. However, to attain their proposal for change, the management has to prepare a wholesome amount of cash that would help in purchasing the requirements and workforce during the project. Besides, the management is to ensure there is enough room to accommodate the new invention into the business premises. In any case, any requirement is not met, there would be a problem in putting up the new software into the organization (Koether, 2014).
Introduction
This essay will focus on a business case for Information Technology software called Request for Proposal (RFP). The business case will also outline the problems in 360 Technologies company and how the management will release all the resources to introduce a new system software that will help in the efficient running of the business. It will also focus on the existing requirements that will be needed for the application of the project. On the other hand, there will be an outline of the requirements that will not be needed for the proposal to be considered. The business case will also state the reasons for the project, why it is being introduced into the organization, and how the new project will customize change. We will also outline the challenges that may be encountered while in the process of implementing the project into the business. On the contrary, the solutions to these problems will be a part of the study case. However, the solution to our problems does not just exist, and in that case, the case study will tend to focus on the resources that will be explored in order to acquire the roots and stems of the solutions needed. Moreover, in every solution, there exists a drawback that slows the progress of the suggested project. And as such, this business case shall list certain strategies that will be used during the mitigation of the solutions decided ( Rosenau et al. 2011).
In this organization, maintaining on-premise customer support tools has been an issue for a while; this is why RFP has been proposed to solve this problem and make it a thing of the past. Our current time frame for offering customer services for a complete proposal is at around 10 hours. The current proposal requires conducting formatting efforts, manual searching inside the premises, and a lot of time taken in conducting communications to various customers. RFP software aims at reducing the time frame of conducting proposals in the premises of the organization by reducing the time taken during this proposal to about half of the initial time frame. The RFP will ensure that customers are attended to at the right time and, in turn, making service production in the business more efficient than the existing way of service production. Moreover, the RFP will be engaging software that will conduct automatic sales calculations, ensuring that calculation errors are reduced to almost zero percent unless there are few data entry mistakes. This would reduce the amount of time the sales managers took when making sales records and preparing records for the overall business transaction records. As a result, the company will be headed towards the road of success because of clear records that attract more customers and sales partners. In addition, a solution to the outdated method of keeping documents will be improved so that the company will have the capabilities to store the information provided in softcopies. Majorly, this project will aim at improving the internal and external securities of the company. This is to ensure no information leaks out or into the organization that would compromise the company’s reliable functioning. Among many other impacts, it is certain that this software would solve most problems, if not all, that may drag the functioning of the business sector. Therefore this project will be a perfect start for the company’s development (Nicholas et al., 2017).
Assumptions and Constraints
The process of introducing new software in the organization usually needs some steps and instructions to be followed. It is a process; therefore, it needs patience and time. It is not like waking up early in the morning and drive to school. And by that, it means that a good plan must be laid during the planning period to initiate the RFP process into the company. At the execution time, required protocols must be adhered to because we aim to install a software that shall take ages before it wears out. Every software that is used to solve business malfunction has numerous ways of installation. Take, for example, installing the Windows Operating system in a computer system, there are various ways of installing it, and you are at liberty to program it to work for your own benefit. This is similar to the organization situation; every organization has its own desire for the same software, but it is up to them to program the software to work in a way that meets the company’s expectations. However, in order to accomplish this, there are various requirements that should be put into consideration. The requirements that are to be considered by 360 Technologies are the capabilities of the available systems in the premise. The RFP software requires a 12 digit number-count of either numeric or alpha-numeric digits. To attain this requirement level, the company should ensure it acquires highly functioning computer systems and servers. In the absence of this, it is, therefore, by no chance that the software can be accommodated to work efficiently. 360 Technologies is a business company, and thus it deals with transactions involving the creation of accounts, and they aim to make accounting easier using RFP software. There in the accounting category, a requirement is that the systems should allow multiple sub-accounts to be linked to the master account of the company (Al-Fedaghi et al.,2018). This requirement is essential because it is the basis of the functionality of the organization. All these requirements make the foundation of the larger part of the project; therefore, not a single requirement should be left out during the planning and execution stages.
The company proposed an RFP software project because of its efficiency and reliability. This project is trusted to function accordingly because it has worked in various successful business companies. Therefore, the board believes that they will also be able to afford to implement this solution to improve the existing business functions. They assume that they have the capabilities of making their problems fade away and be able to compete in the potential market with other growing companies. Moreover, there is a belief that after installing the RFP software, there will be no more struggles and time-wasting in preparing accounts in the business. The customers who need to keep their softcopy documents will benefit a lot from the same project. And to wrap it all, there is a strong belief that the introduced solution will ensure the security of documents in the business, the clarity of business and sales transactions, and it will also be able to detect any unusual records regarding the organization’s services. The company’s board knows that it is time to solve their on-premise problems and make the organizations meet high standards. RFP software project is a very beneficial solution when it comes to solving business problems. On the other hand, it may contain some drawbacks; however, it may look. Any that has some merits, on the contrary, must be accompanied by some demerits, however unnoticeable they may be. In using RFP, there are several drawbacks; there is limited personnel available in the market when it comes to operating such software. A lot of time can be wasted in the field, purchasing the right personnel for the project. In situations involving suppliers, RFP may tend to give a late response regarding their proposals, and thus they are often discouraged because they fear that it would take too long to receive the responses about their investment claims. At the level of stating the requirements, it is always not an easy task because some requirements are hard to summarize since they include numerics. This may, in turn, provide inaccurate information to the company leading to purchases of wrong requirements, and as such, a lot of funds may go to waste.
Primary and Alternate Options
Most organizations have problems in their own sectors of operation. These problems may be similar, but there may be several ways of encountering such problems. It all depends on the financial and management status of the particular company. In 360 Technologies company, we aim to solve the problem we encounter in our premise regarding the customer service tools. We have decided to explore RFP software’s capabilities in the organization, and its purpose is to ensure efficiency, accuracy, and security in the on premise situation. However, RFP isn’t the only solution available to solve the problem in the company. There exist other softwares that may be used to perform similar functions and maybe much better than RPF. They may be termed as alternative software for our problem in instances where our project may fail to operate appropriately. This software includes; Customer Relationship Management software (CRM). CRM as software helps businesses and organizations in organizing and ensuring easy access to customer data. CRM software evolved from handwritten notes of records in the organization. It helps connect different departments in the company from the marketing department to sales to customer departments (Wysocki, 2010). . The second software that can be used to solve the problem in our company is the Project Management software. This type of software has a specific functionality of designing and executing projects in an organization. On another level, it plays a bigger role in managing the already executed project with the help of skilled personnel in the project department. Being software, it only works with the help of an external mind to perform certain functions. In cases where organizations use PM software, it helps the company perform certain tasks such as assigning duties, scheduling, and, moreover, managing costs, and budgeting that takes place in the organizations. Another alternative software apart from the RFP software is Productivity software. It is always known to be an essential software in modern companies because it helps manage and complete work-related tasks within the recommended duration. It always ensures that work allocated in the organizations are completed at the correct time sequence. On the other hand, it also performs other functions such as database management, accounting, and document creation. The problems encountered when dealing with customer-related services are almost solved by performing these tasks because the services provided are efficient and reliable, and updated. The above solutions can be used as alternative solution methods for the problem we encounter in 360 Technology company. Besides, these alternative sources of solutions to the problem in our organization may differ in some instances because they all have functions that make them unique on their own. We find that PM software dwells on ensuring the business projects run as planned; the cost of initiating this project is relatively low as compared to RFP software. PM software does not last for long in the business because it is only usable when the company is on its time of introducing a new project into the existing ones. In contrast, CRM software is one of the all-time useful software in an organization. It is used almost every second because organizations tend to interact with customers and clients all the time. It forms the basis of operations inside a business premise. It is also very costly since it needs a high initial cost during planning execution and maintenance as compared to other software whose initial costs are much lower and easily affordable. However, this software may be similar in that they all aim at enhancing the performances of the respective users (Calderón and Ruiz 2015).
Procurement and Risk Management
Every resource in an organization is not pre-existing; therefore, it means that for them to be available on the company’s premises, they were obtained from suppliers or from business partners by either exchanging resources or as a donation. In our case, we have decided to introduce RFP software into our company to help solve our problems; therefore, a proposal has to be sent to suppliers or other technology companies so that a potential supplier can be identified amongst the best suppliers of the software. In this case, a supplier with the most updated software is the most recommended one. We don’t want situations where we buy software that would need an update in the process of execution; a ready to run software is most appropriate. On the other hand, among all the potential suppliers, the organization is to choose the most affordable supplier; not all suppliers offer the same prices for the same product. For example, three suppliers may be selling the same commodity but at different prices. There may be reasons for the difference in prices, but it’s recommendable to go for a genuine and affordable supplier in this case. In the case of our company, we are considering the quality of prices; our aim is to obtain software that will meet the organization’s target set. And in order to acquire the solution software, the company has prepared a wholesome amount of money from the company’s savings to cater for all the expenses (Daneshgar et al., 2013).
The expenses include the purchase of experienced personnel that is familiar with the particular software and can run it efficiently without any setbacks. On the other hand, another resource needed is the machines; by machines, I mean computers that have appropriate specifics in accordance with the requirements of the software. All these can only be obtained when the company has enough funds that would make it easier for the purchase; otherwise, the company’s project may not be accomplished. Being software, RFP is often associated with some risk factors that may hinder the performance of business functions. Some of the risks include the risk of being outdated; most software needs to be updated frequently over time. RFP is faced with the same occurrence on the other hand. In situations where the software is not updated, it may fail to function correctly; therefore, the company is at risk of accounting problems and miscalculations. Also, this may lower the security performances, thus making the organization vulnerable to public risks. Moreover, there is a risk of wastage of billions being spent in the market looking for perfect personnel because there are a few personnel who can run such a version of the software. A lot of funds may also be spent in the time to time updating of the software. In this case, the business may end up using its savings to maintain its performances, and as such, chaos may arise in the premises causing more problems regarding the payment of employees and other personnel.
Conclusion and Final Recommendation
Recently a benchmark was conducted in one of our partner organizations, AI Telecommunications, regarding the RFP software. This company is one of the thriving companies that deal with the same software that we have recommended for our project. The company implemented the RFP software a decade, and it has been thriving in businesses around the world. This is why we selected it as our best target to perform our analysis on how they became to be the most thriving business sector when it comes to the use of RFP software. The benchmarking took a period of one month to scrutinize all the performances inside and outside the organization’s premises. We found that the company has super-computers that are programmed to update every system inside the business sector; therefore, they don’t spend a lot of finances looking for personnel to conduct updates of their systems. Our second finding was that this software had enhanced security in the company to another level. The company’s systems identified all the customers who came into the premises to purchase goods and other services. Moreover, the service providers did not waste a lot of time scooping details from the customers. It was just a matter of services and transaction processes. The third finding was that the employees in the business sector focused on other development ideas because almost all the work was done by the RFP software. In the department of accounting, work was much easier; the accountants’ work was only to confirm digits because all entries were being conducted by the software system available in the organization (Poston et al., 2012).
AI Telecommunications also had other software performing other functions in the organization. There was CRM software and Database software also performing active roles in the business sector. The CRM performed functions such as recording customers’ details while the Database software ensured all the information in the organization’s premises was organized in the required order. The RFP software was the chosen software among all the software that was studied. RFP software was the only software that would be accommodated on our business premises because its initial capital is lower than the other two software used in the organization. Besides, our need was only to solve the problem of difficulty in maintenance of customer support tools. According to the benchmarking, the RFP software has the capability of performing such duties efficiently. Another reason for choosing RFP software is that its availability does not need a lot of room space. Our organization is a growing sector that still doesn’t have enough room to accommodate other software such as CRM, which needs many servers in their respective rooms for efficient functionality. Moreover, RFP will help the organization improve security because the existing security is not safe when there is a need to keep customers’ details and documents safe. The organization agreed to implement RFP software because it is a good foundation to encourage employees in the business by offloading some tasks, and also it would attract more customers as well as business partners from all over the world. In this case, the organization’s future is determined by what is laid down at the planning phase.
References
Rosenau, M. D., & Githens, G. D. (2011). Successful project management: a step-by-step approach with practical examples. John Wiley & Sons.
Nicholas, J. M., & Steyn, H. (2017). Project management for engineering, business, and technology. Taylor & Francis.
Al-Fedaghi, S., & Al-Otaibi, M. (2018). Conceptual modeling of a procurement process: A case study of RFP for public key infrastructure. arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01792.
Poston, R. S., & Richardson, S. M. (2012). Designing an academic project management program: A collaboration between a university and a PMI chapter. Journal of Information Systems Education, 22(1), 55-72.
Wysocki, R. K. (2010). Effective software project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Calderón, A., & Ruiz, M. (2015). A systematic literature review on serious games evaluation: An application to software project management. Computers & Education, 87, 396-422.
Verhoef, P. C., Reinartz, W. J., & Krafft, M. (2010). Customer engagement as a new perspective in customer management. Journal of service research, 13(3), 247-252.
Daneshgar, F., Low, G. C., & Worasinchai, L. (2013). An investigation of ‘build vs. buy decision for software acquisition by small to medium enterprises. Information and software technology, 55(10), 1741-1750.
Koether, B. (2014). The contactless business case: How multi-purpose cards to ring in new opportunities for the payments industry. Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems, 7(4), 294-302.