Analysis Of A Business Case Study Of Mathews & Company (Case Study Sample)

Business case study: Mathews & Company
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Business case study: Mathews & Company
Background
Mathews and company which is a nationwide chain of mall-based menswear stores needs to develop a software management system under the guidance of Barry Gilding, the chief technology officer of the company. Barry spent most of his time trying to convince the members to invest more in the project. Barry had the idea, but he had not exposed it to anyone else. He decided to share the idea with the CEO of the company, Howard Kimpleman.
Howard tells him that there is no enough capital to implement the idea, so he asks the members to contribute towards the project. It has been three months since the members had their last meeting. Barry Gilding calls a meeting of the CRM task force to convince the members to increase their contribution towards the project. Among those in attendance are Ted Antonell, Sarah Wronski, Brad Winston who is the vice president of marketing, senior vice president Wendy Black, members from the catalog and online divisions. The merchandise store manager is also in attendance.
Alternatives
Barry considers consulting Ted Antonelli the vice president and director of store operations as he has ideas although he is not a technology expert. The ideas of Ted are very useful in the attainment of the organization objective. Ted can give his idea and leave the technology experts to take control of implementation and details of the idea.
Long terms of the motive
1 It would work off store sales data and use marketing incentives to get customers to provide more information about themselves.
2 Mathews & Company would learn the number of people who preferred blue shirts to the green ones, those who wore suits and also the ones who don’t.
3 Sizes and fabrics of the clothes would be readily determined.
4 Store design would improve, and it will reflect shopping habits, inventories and it could be leaner and become tailored towards the local customer base.
5 Marketing would be very fast.
6 Customer loyalty would also soar in and increase returns
Shortcomings of the motive
1 The investment will take a longer time before the investors get back their proceeds from the investment. Some of the investors like Ted complain that they cannot wait for that long to receive their proceeds.
2 Lack of inclusion of the investors. The investors before investing have to be assured of their investment. In this case, they have written the investors wish lists which contain some of the ideas they want to be included in the development of the software. Some of the investors are unwilling to invest if their ideas are not included in the development of the software. Without taking into consideration, the wishes of the investors, some of them, like Wendy fear that they may lose their investment.
3 Budget, timelines, and legacy systems were ignored during their meeting three months ago. This indicates the unprofessionalism in the conduct of the business. Some investors could not like to invest with people who are unprofessional in their business practice.
4 Rogers, however, raises concerns over the purity of the data that will be collected. The information that is collected at the store level can be unreliable. However, Barry replies by telling him that they have a POS system. It will help in avoiding the collection of inaccurate data.
Response to the investor’s issues.
Barry tells members that during the time of coming up with the project they only laid out the specifications and not the final possibilities. Therefore they did not apply any restrictive measures as they wanted the members to have a wide range of ideas. He tells them that there were legacy system quirks that have been preventing them from carrying out the recommendations they agreed on.
Rogers agrees that the software will increase the customer interactions. This is based on the need to maintain the customers so that they can make more profit. This is very crucial in the current world of business where completion is very stiff. Strategies for the development of the software can help the business maintain customer loyalty through maintaining constructive interactions with the customers.
Roger Zinn tries to convince the members that they have to invest over a long period if they want the system to bring good returns to the whole company. Sarah Wronski acknowledges the hard work of Barry and his team and tells members that CRM has tremendous benefits to them. But it will take a long period to realize the benefits. However, the members are not willing to contribute more towards the project as they are not satisfied with the current situation that the project is in.
Analysis of the case.
In analyzing this case, one notable factor is the speculations that were not included during the project. Before implementation of the project, the investors had some expectations of how the software should serve the company. However, when carrying out the needs assessment Barry and his team found out that they could not include some of the requested information by the investors.
Another notable problem, in this case, is the fact that the investors have no understanding of what the software should be like. In business, the customer is the one who dictates what should be produced and how it should be produced. Without producing software that will help meet the requirements of the customers, it could be as good as useless. Barry, in starting the project they failed to explain to the investors that they were to carry out a needs assessment which shall include the collection of data from the customers. However, he assures them that they will try to take into consideration as many wishes as they can.
Another issue is that the investors are becoming impatient with the project and losing trust in Barry’s ways of administration. This can be indicated from the way Roger raises questions about the validity of the data coll...