Project 3

Group: SCM

BUS 270

Table of contents …………………………………………………….pg #

Introduction……………………………….……………………………3

Systems project

Part 1…………………………………………………………….3

Part 2…………………………………………………………….3

Part 3…………………………………………………………….3

Part 4…………………………………………………………….3

Part 5…………………………………………………………….4

Part 6…………………………………………………………….4

Part 7…………………………………………………………….5

Info Systems Project

Part 1…………………………………………………………….5

Part 2…………………………………………………………….5

Part 3…………………………………………………………….6

Part 4…………………………………………………………….6

Project Assessments……………………………………………………7

Introduction

For project three, our group chose to use a real-estate business for the first section. The second section of the assignment is modeled around a dock removal company. For this assignment our group created a business system and models that are associated with these systems. A system is a goal-driven set of elements and their purposely-oriented, structured relations ant produce measurable results outside the system, despite obstacles.

Systems Project

1. ACME, inc. is a real-estate business involved in house renovation and sales. The company buys older homes and remodels each home resulting in a more upscale product.

The input of the process is the initial purchase of the home. Scouting for a home is the first activity involved with this. The second activity is an assessment of the renovation cost. This is a key aspect of the business to keep the profit margins high.

The renovation of the home is the processing step of the business. The first activity involved with the renovation of the product is setting a schedule of deadlines for each step of the process. For example, foundation work needs to be completed by a certain date so that the framework crew can come to the jobsite. The second activity involved with the renovation is the logistics of delivering of the materials to each jobsite in timely fashion.

Two business processes that are involved with the output are the marketing and sales of the finished homes. The marketing involves listings in the newspapers, Internet, and other forms of media. The sales staff will handle the showing of the homes and drawing the paperwork for the sales.

2. A goal for ACME, inc. is to reach one million dollars in total revenue for the year. The reason for this goal is the homes that are sold by ACME, inc. sell for around $200,000. The company feels that selling five homes an achievable goal.

3. ACME, inc. will measure its progress towards that goal quarterly to see if they are on the path toward one million dollars.

4. ACME feels that product, marketing, and logistics were the items that best pertained to its operations. Product is important because a product is being sold, rather than a service being offered. Marketing is important because ACME, inc. must efficiently advertise their homes at the price they wish to sell them. Logistics is important because managing the time of several crews of workers is essential and to seamless production.

5. The product aspect is the most important view of ACME, inc. The major components contain the foundation work, framework, wallboard, and painting.

The foundation work, framework, wallboard, and painting are all essential in the renovation process. To create an upscale home these items must be upgraded efficiently. The foundation work must be completed before the framework starts. The framework must be completed before the wallboard starts. The wallboard must be completed before the painting of the walls starts. They are all important steps, and have to follow a particular order in finishing the renovation process.

6. Since interest rates can play a large part in how many people can afford loans, this can obviously impact the amount of sales if the interest rates increase. Weather can come into play in Northern states in the country. If it is too cold, the ground is frozen and cannot be altered and painting cannot be done outside. Materials shortage can impact the company by increasing the prices of the materials needed during certain seasons. For example, during a hurricane season the price of particleboard and dry-wall increases dramatically because of an increase in demand.

7. Number of Elements:

e = 4

Number of Relationships:

R=12/2=6

Number of States:

S=2^e=2⁴=16

While the thought of fixing a home does not sound too intimidating, these relationship calculations show how communication with all the co-workers can become complex.

Information Systems Project

1.) The Information system we have chosen is a marketing information system for the business entitled Western Dock Service. Western Dock Service is a retail and service company. They sell docks, boat lifts, water toys etc. They also have two primary divisions for service needs. First they have their college crew dock teams and second their collegiate power-wash division. The dock teams handle installation and removals.

The Marketing information system is the foundation for deciding the marketing mix and budget for the next season. The information system holds all the data and statistics for marketing/advertising for the previous years. This includes what kind of marketing mix we use and to what degree. (direct mail, door hangers, personal selling, promotion efforts, public relations, etc.) So this answers questions such as, how many direct mailers were sent out? How many boat show and or promotion shows did we do or attend? How many sales calls did we go on? And it shows the measured results of each marketing tactic. This information is of course expressed with sales figures. It uses this information combined with the predicted and expected goals for sales for the upcoming season.

2.) Some of the trends or answers you might find when using the marketing information system are as follows:

• What forms of marketing seem to be producing the most results?
• What are the percentages of presence of each element in the current marketing mix?
• Ans: How many direct mailers do we need to reach 200,000 in sales for water toy products?
• What marketing tactic is the most cost effective?
• The most common trend that you will see is the answer to this question: Are we spending too much or too little on our advertising efforts to reach our object sales?

Right now this is what is appearing in our marketing information system:

It is currently running the data it has for our last years advertising campaigns. It is showing us we sent our 4500 direct mailers to 15 lakes in a sixty mile radius last year (sales effort). It shows we walked around 7 lakes and handed out 6,000 door hangers (service efforts). We attended two boat shows with sales totaling 50,000. One of which the shows was for our public relations effort. We went on 17 sales calls with a 60% success rate for a total of 120,000 in sales. Lastly it shows we had 76 business associates who allowed promotion of our business through them. (Marinas, real-estate, gas station, hardware, diners, etc.)

Once it produces the measured results for last year it will then take what information has been entered concerning the predicted and estimated sales figures for the upcoming year and calculate and produce a new marketing plan. This plan will have answers to a long list of questions that were entered previously in the system and that are periodically updated. This system helps us decided on the marketing mix, advertising campaign, and the marketing budget for the next season.

3.

4.) Marketing information system attributes include:

Relevance - how the data relates to outcomes or decisions made

Timeliness – Information can be retrieved when needed quickly and conveniently

Accessibility – The ease at which information can be retrieved

Format – The way that the information is presented

Exclusiveness – Information is intended for one goal or purpose

Price – The cost incurred to gain the needed information

The Marketing information system that Western Dock Service uses presents data relevant and exclusive to questions that the company has. The company uses the system to predict the need and success of a marketing mix for an upcoming year therefore the data needs to be significant and restricted to the situation. Timeliness and accessibility are also key points of this marketing information system. The ease and speed at which information can be attained is important to its success. The text format and a low cost also add to the ease and convenience of Western Dock Services marketing information system making it an effective and essential part of the business.

Project 3 Assessments

Trevor - I found this project a little more useful than the last one. Creating a diagram for a hypothetical business allowed me to visualize what was taking place within a system.

Scott- I really enjoyed this project. It seems like it was the first time we got see and understand an information system with in a business. For part two of the project we decided to use a marketing information system for our business. This was nice because it was easy to see the measured results and capabilities an information system has when it comes to marketing and advertising decisions. This project does a great job in a marketing aspect of showing what computations must be made in order for a company to produce an advertising budget and a marketing mix for future years. Overall it was a cool project that explains what this class is about.

Alex- This project has taught me a lot about the way a business information system works in a real world application. In our particular business we studied the marketing information system. Most people think of marketing as advertising, but there are also computer systems that are used to do market research. The computers examine market behavior patterns for trends and, do a lot of number crunching so they can give predictions for a lot of different scenarios.

Allison - I liked this project because it really tied together real life situations and businesses with the things that we are learning in class. It’s hard to really see the points that you are learning in a class until they are put to use in a real life situation and I think this project did this very well. It was very easy to grasp the purpose and potential of business systems through this project.

Micheal- I did part one in project 3, and my conclusion is that it was overall a good project. We picked a real-estate company that also does renovations for ours. It was a learning experience seeing how the different dimensions and views coincide with each other. It was also good to see how what inputs produce certain outputs with processes linked in with them. It’s nice to material from class get associated with a real business atmosphere.