Week 1/Lesson 3 Field Study: Alignment

Students Name:

Section Number: MGSC 6204

Companys Name:
Description of Your Companys Industry/Market Place:
Construction industry, serving the Metro West area.
Description of Your Companys Overall Business Strategy:
The company aim is to understand the client expectation and aspiration for
their project and to ensure total client satisfaction always remembering that
most of our work is through recommendation. Our Overall Business Strategy
is stated in our Mission Statement:
The Tool for Data Collection:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In the construction industry,
customer-acquisition is costly and requires a set of Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) tools to track customers and maintain our customer
base stable. Keeping our old customers satisfied is important because they
end up recommending our service. We take our customers positive word-ofmouth as an effective delivering message tool regarding customers
satisfaction.

Part A: Complete the Field Assessment Tool that follows. Feel free to add
additional rows as need be but do not go beyond six core processes.
Chances are if you find more than 6 core processes within your enterprise,
you are identifying subsets of a core process. Do not feel obliged to fill
each box but be sure to think through each element to ensure the
completeness of your response.

Core
Process
financial (all
orgs. have
one, what is
yours?):

Core Process
Activities
accounting
asset
management
cash management
compliance and
reporting

MGSC 6204, last updated 081312

Business
Enabling IT
Unit
System(s)
Stakeholder
[name of systems
Controller
employed?]
CFO
Controller
Chief
Auditor
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Week 1/Lesson 3 Field Study: Alignment

Accounting
Management

Financial analyses,
Reporting & capital
management

People
Management

Human Resource:
Employee
development &
satisfaction.
Customer
relationship
Implementation,
repair and
troubleshoot
hardware and
software
applications. Install
new software, set up
computers and
scanners
Customer
acquisition, strategy
& relationship.
Connect people
through online
communication.
Facebook page
maintenance.
Proposal Designing &
Quality Service
Delivery

Technology
Management

Sales and
Marketing
Management

Service
Management

CFO and
other
accounting
related
employees
All Employers
and
Customers

QuickBooks Premier
Contractors

CIO

Microsoft Office:
Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and
Outlook.
Operating System:
Microsoft Windows

Customer
Relationship
Management (CRM)

Community
Internet Search
members,
Engine, Skype and
Landlords,
Facebook
Contractors &
Developers,
and Local
Board
Members.
Employers
Microsoft Office: Word
and Excel

Part B: Note: Carry over your list of enabling IT systems from the prior
table and add additional information here.
Enabling IT
System

System
Owner/Steward

[name of
system]

[business unit
and IT unit
people
responsible for
this system]
Chief Accounting

QuickBooks

MGSC 6204, last updated 081312

Purchased,
Developed or
Outsourced
P, D, O

Why P, D or O

[explain why]

Purchased

Difficult to imitate such

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Week 1/Lesson 3 Field Study: Alignment

Officer

CRM

Human Resource
Manager

Purchased

Microsoft
Office: Word,
Excel,
PowerPoint
and Outlook.
Operating
System:
Microsoft
Windows

Administrative
Assistant. I work
in this
department
creating
proposals,
preparing
invoices, sending
and answering emails
Secretary

Purchased

Internet,
Skype and
Facebook

Purchased

accounting software structure

based on our lack of IT system
knowledge.
Difficult to imitate such
customer relationship
software for the same reason
mentioned above.
Difficult to imitate based on
our lack of IT system
knowledge

Difficult to imitate based on

our lack of TI system
knowledge

Part C: Assess the overall appropriateness of your organizations IT

systems investment and how these investments align with and enable:
1. Corporate operational requirements, i.e. ITs operational value?
a. CRM aligns with customer management control and enables our
company to keep our customer base stable.
b. Microsoft Office Pack aligns with proposals designing, invoices
preparation, PowerPoint internal presentations, Outlook emailing
enabling time saving and cost reduction.
c. QuickBooks aligns with our payroll, inventory management, import
data from spread sheet and track and pay bills enabling business
processes automation to reduce cost and the speed of information
processing
d. Microsoft Windows, Skype, Google Search Engine and Facebook aligns
with our sales and marketing department enabling our company to
reach out customers through Facebook and Skype online
communication enabling a faster feedback.

2. Corporate control and management requirements, i.e. ITs tactical

value?
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Week 1/Lesson 3 Field Study: Alignment

a. e.g. provides financial reports to measure business unit performance
on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis against targets set by
executive management.
b. Oversees operating processes ensuring they are functional and
adequate on daily basis.
c. Manage expenses easily through purchase order creation allowing for
comparison with previous similar project.
d. Collect data based on the volume and flow of services throughout the
year to evaluate the business ups and downs.
e. Make some sort of forecasting tools (Excel), based on historical data
from previous years and the seasonality of the business to plan in
advance for future projects

3. Corporate innovation and transformation, i.e. ITs strategic value?

a. Use available data (finance, customer base, demand for our service
and etc.) to decide about a possible acquisition or diversification.
b. Decide about a long or short term investment on a new Information
Technology as a strategic value based on our company data analysis.
c. Use information acquired through external forces, for instance the
demand/supply for our services in our area and align this data with our
internal information to may correct our market position.
Part D: Assess the overall alignment within your organization between its
core business process and information needs and its choices of enabling
information systems.
1. Technology Management. We dont have a website other than a professional
Facebook page. As remodeling/construction falls into a seasonal category of
business, at this time we dont have much going on and therefore we cannot
make this investment. However, this is in the top list of our IT priority.
2. As I mentioned in some of my DB posts, we are not as IT Savvy as many of
our counterparts and this gives our competitors more competitive advantage.
We are planning on acquiring Specific/ Functional Software such as Help Desk
and among others.
3. Acquire the necessary IT tools to be able to compete with other construction
companies in our area increasing information systems to better operate
business processes.

MGSC 6204, last updated 081312

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MGSC 6204, last updated 081312

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