Business Case Study Assignment Paper: Mathews & Company

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 infor...