Week eleven - Project management

1. The triple constraint refers to the scope, time and cost of a product. It is inevitable that a product will change over the course of its life - pass through the different stages of the product life cycle. It is because of this fact that there will be some drastic changes to the scope, time or cost of the project. Each variable of the triple constraint is dependant of the other. For example if a business increases the scope of a project, so too will the time and cost increase.

The triple constraint is important to project management as it is necessary to understand as any one project will be limited by one or more of these constraints. Therefore it is necessary for them to understand the relationship in order to make intelligent trade-offs between time, cost and scope.

2. The two primary diagrams most frequently used within project management include:

- PERT chart: (Program evaluation and review technique): A graphical network model that depicts a project's task and the relationship between those tasks (e.g. Dependancy, critical tasks). A PERT chart frequently display a project's critical path - the path from start to finish, passing all the phases necessary for the completion of the task in the shortest amount of time.


PERT chart

- Gantt chart: Is a bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar. Tasks may be listed vertically while time frames are listed horizontally.

3. The three primary areas a project manager must focus on to ensure success include:

- Managing people: One of the hardest and most critical things needed to be managed. It  involves resolving managing conflicts within the team whilst balancing the project needs as well as the needs of the employees (both professional and personal). 

- Communication: Clear communication is vital to ensure the success of a project. It helps the team work together towards a common goal.

- Managing change to ensure success: Change is inevitable. No matter how well a project is planned or managed. It is vital to ensure that change can be seen as a challenge and not as something to ruin the project. A manager needs to be able to see change and adapt.

4. Two reasons projects fail include:

- Failure to align the project with the organisation objectives

- Unrealistic expectations

Two reasons projects succeed include:

- Strong project management with good decision making structure

- Great communication between team members

Week ten - Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

1. CRM or Customer relationships management refers to the process of managing an organisations relationship with their customers. It involves increasing customer loyalty and retention thus increasing the overall profitability of the business.

CRM involves the implementation of technologies to help organise, automate and syncronise business processes in order to provide the best possible service to new, existing and future customers (e.g. Identifying types of customers, designing individual marketing campaigns, understanding customer buying behaviour).

CRM aims to:

- make call centres more efficient
- cross sell products more effectively
- help sales staff close deals faster
- simplify marketing and sales processes
- discover new customers
- increase customer revenues

2. Operational customer relationship management involves the systems which deal directly with customers. In other words, invloving the daily front of house systems which including the business processes of sales, marketing and service (e.g. Call made, problem logged). Operational CRM also keeps a record of their customer history in order to store and organise their daily dealings with customers. This system is considered short term.

Analytical customer relationship management deals with the back office operations and  strategic analysis (Looking for future patterns and trends). These are the systems which do not deal directly with customers and are considered long term.

3. Technologies used by marketing departments aim to manage the different marketing campaings and involves information such as costs, target audience and return on investment.

Technologies used by sales departments help to coordinate and streamline the process of sales by helping to organise employees jobs, calanders, contacts, appointments and reach a wider range of customers.

4. A sales department could use operational CRM technologies in a number of ways:

- List generators: List generators will help sales departments to compile information on their customers from a range of sources and help them to segment and create a more specific, targeted campaign.

- Campaign management: Will provide sales employees with a greater knowledge of the use and implentation of the different marketing campaigns.

- Cross-selling and up-selling: This will allow sales employees to gain greater knowledge on what items/services need to be pushed and how this can be done (via cross-selling) and where sales should be increased (up-selling).


5. Business Intelligence is considered a long term tool. It refers to the technologies that provides a business with access to and analysis of important data which enable strategic decision making and optimise business performance. Business Intelligence is valuable to a business because it allows managers to uncover patterns and trends within the ever changing business environment. Helping them to better cope with change and other situations which may arise.

6. A problem with Business Intelligence is 'Data rich, information poor' - there is so much information ready on hand to be analysed and used but no way for it to be accessed by anyone but the IT department. It is because of this that it is hard for a business to uncover their own strengths and weaknesses.


A solution to this business problem could be to shorten the latencies (the measure of time delays experienced within a system). This will allow for a faster, more efficient and effective time frame to analyse the necessary data to be used during the decision making process.


7. Data mining is the application of statistical techniques used to find patterns and relationships among data to classify and predict.


Two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining could be:
- A more efficient and effective use of information
- A greater increase in sales through the ability to better understand their customer and their customers ever changing needs, wants and demands. 


Follow this link for more information on data mining

Week nine - Operations Management and Supply Chain

1. The term operations management refers to the management of the different systems and processes in place within a business that convert or transform resources into goods and services.

2. Operations management's role within business is to forecast, oversee, design and redesign business operations in the development of goods or services. It is vital in order to ensure efficiency and effectiveness within the business.

3. In order for operations management to be the most effective, managers require specific information (or data) that is available within real time (constantly up to date) and accurate. Also having the opportunity to automate specific, repetitive and important business practices the business will be able to work more efficiently, reduce overhead, increase agility, and improve insight into business processes.

Information Technology provides necessary information and helps control and improves accuracy within business operations, thus helping contribute to a greater output of goods and services. Without a strong relationship between operations management and information technology systems – a business will be unable to produce quality, on time goods or services.

4. A Supply chain is a network of organizations and facilities that transforms raw materials into products delivered to customers. Supply chain management overlooks these information flows between and among stages in a supply chain. Its role is vital within a business in order to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and overall profitability.

5. The 5 components of a typical supply chain include:

   - Plan: The strategic part of SCM. It is a strategy implemented for managing all the resources that go towards meeting customer demand for their product or service.

- Source: Choosing suppliers for raw materials in order to create goods and services. Managers must develop a set of pricing, delivery and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships.

- Make: The manufacturing stage. It is here activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparation for delivery are implemented.

- Deliver: (This stage is also referred to as Logistics). It is here managers need to coordinate the following:

o   Of orders from customers

o   Develop a network of warehouses

o   Pick carriers to get products to customers

o   Set up an invoicing system to receive payments

- Return: A responsive and flexible network for receiving faulty and excess products back from customers and supporting customers who have problems with delivered products.

6. Information technology helps to ensure the effectiveness of supply chain practices in order to provide the best goods and services to the customer. Information technology can help this throughout the following stages:

- Information Flows: Gives accurate and real time information for all data related to demand, shipments, orders, returns and schedules as well as changes in any of these data. This helps with decision-making and control.

- Financial Flows: Helps to control all transfers of money, payments and credit-related data.

Effective Information technology systems within the supply chain helps to increase visibility, competition, speed and consumer behaviour (Consumer behaviour software generates demand forecasts using statistical tools and forecasting techniques).