Kaplan Conversion Program - Assignment Example

Kaplan Conversion Program Kaplan Conversion Program Question The company, iTech, began operations in 2000 with a single branch. Currently the company has over five branches that are well spread within the central business district. Being a BPO and a freelancing company, it outsources jobs from different companies for young people, especially from college and university, the opportunity to work and better their lives. In addition to that, in offers an open space to subscribed members who are mostly programmers, designers and community leaders, who come together, collaborate and produce services for both iTech community and other people. Membership level is categorised in three levels: red membership, green membership and white membership. This open space has free internet access, a coffee shop, among other things that make one comfortable while working. The mission statement of the company is to spread the impact. The impact here refers to betterment of life that comes by provision of good working environment. By ensuring quality services to customers and good payment to workers, the company spreads the impact. BPO’s has become and emerging trend and many organisations are adopting this kind of business stracture. As a result, it is important to understand the external environment and how it affects the business. This section will use Porter’s Five Force Model to evaluate opportunities and threats to iTech. It will look into threat of entry, threat of substitute, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers and the extent of rivalry between iTech and other competitors. This is a new venture that most organisations are competing for. Initial cost of starting a BPO is high, however it has good returns. This makes this venture worth undertaking and many businesses with attempt to enter the market and offer competition. However, iTech has taken roots. It has been operation for the last 15 years. In addition to that, it is well experienced in the field. Therefore, if other firms find their way into the market, they will still have to work for a couple of years to gain enough experience for their influence to be felt. iTech has succeeded in dominating the market share. It has captured almost all suppliers and customers. This means that for new firms to succeed, it will take time to earn trust and confidence from loyal customers of iTech. Finally, as it has been stated above, iTech offers both BPO and open space services. With this differentiation of services, it gives community with types of services which a new entrant may not be in the position of offering. Threat of substitute is greatly minimised. While other businesses there out offers internet services at high costs, iTech offers the same services to member, from the open space, at no reduced cost. These members simply pay a monthly subscription fee to use the space and everything in the space. In has been noted above that the company also offers jobs mainly to young people who are from college and universities, other companies out there offers jobs to people who have qualification. This makes it harder for young people with limited or no qualification to get work elsewhere. Another important thing to consider is the buyer’s power. Since the company does not deal with selling goods but rather offering services, it is good to focus on member’s power. As it has been noted above, the company has an open space that is specifically designed for member. Membership is of different levels. The members pay different amount of money to use the space depending on which level the member is. It is also important to understand the different levels have different benefits. Income generated from member’s subscription is used to scale down overhead cost and enable easy running of the company. In addition to that, members are able and willing to buy coffee offered in the open space; this also generates income for the company. It has been state above that the company is a BPO. Most of suppliers are call centres, web design companies and an organisation called Samasource. iTech has therefore a strong access to a wide range of customer that enables it to operate well amidst other BPO’s. With the availability of few BPO’s operating in the market and an increasing demand for BPO’s service, iTech gets a lot of jobs from organisation. As a result, workers have to work on different shifts of night and day so as to keep work going while meeting clients’ deadline. As a result, the company is able to make enough profit to pay workers and fund their day to day operations. Finally, through this model, rivalry between other competitors and iTech will be analysed. There are other companies like Banc Tec, Allus Global BPO Centre offering the same services. Market share owned by these companies is quite large and that is why iTech has adopted product differentiation (Shimizu, & Carvalho, 2006). While the companies’ primary focus is provision of BPO services, iTech offers open space as an additional service. Question 2 Management information of the company is awesome. It has one Human Resource Manager and an assistant. Their work is to ensure that workers necessities like good working environment, provision of tea during tea break and timely payment of salaries. Within the working environment, there is a Service Delivery Manager (SDM) whose work is to bid for jobs from clients and ensure that these jobs are well distributed to workers. He does so by ensuring that all team leaders, of various work groups, coordinate well with workers. In addition to that, there is a pool of Quality Assurance (QA’s) analysts whose work is to review work done by employees before the work is submitted back to the clients. This is meant to ensure submission of high quality work to the client. Despite all these, the system has some flaws, the chain of command is too long and sometimes information relayed from top management takes time to reach workers. In cases where worker file request for leave days, approval of their request takes long and has made workers give up in some cases leading to their demotivation. Question 3 Management Information System enables an organisation control and keeps information strictly within the organisation and ensures that this information flows from top management to worker. On the other hand Decision Support System is a system that enables management makes the right decision for the organisation. Through MIS, periodic reports are relayed to workers. This is not the case with DSS which generates special reports just once. MIS is solely used to produce reports that are focused on performance (Shimizu, & Carvalho, 2006). On the other hand DSS reports are usually produced when a problem arise and requires attention. Another vital difference between MIS and DSS is information flow. Information in MIS flow from the top to bottom and from bottom to top while information from DSS flows from bottom to top only. Through Transaction Processing Systems (TPS), Zylite group can forecast on their financial flows are relate it with the current inflationary environment and the potential market from tourist. This will enable them manage their funds well hence cutting down cost. Zylite anticipate increase of market, through MIS, they can plan on how to increase their inventory, controlling quality and of their products thus making them more attractive to customers. In addition to that, MIS will enable them plan on their human resource thus increasing their efficiency and trust. Zylite has four departments; this means that it needs to handle information from the various departments with ease. By using DSS system, they can handle large volumes of information emanating from the four departments. Question 4 Before adopting an e-commerce approach, Zylite should consider the capabilities of personnel. They should ensure that they have adequate and competent who can drive e-commerce oriented activities in the firm. The company should also consider cultural and social implications that the technology may bring to worker. This may happen especially if the new technology is adopted from another country (Shimizu, & Carvalho, 2006). Zylite should consider security and privacy of the systems. They should adopt the e-commerce system if it protects transactional details of customers and keeps internal privacy of the organisation. Finally, before adopting the technology, Zylite should consider if they are financially stable and can support the e-commerce operations in the long-run. References Shimizu,T., & Carvalho, M. (2006). Strategic alignment process and decision support system: Theory and case studies. Hershey, PA: IRM Press. Read More