Approach To Gender Development And Social Economy – Business Case Development For GAP Inc. Company

Proposed Project/ Initiative Title

Discuss about the Approach To Gender Development And Social Economy.

The business case can be eventually defined as the verbal as well as written proposition, which is eventually intended for the purpose of educating or notifying the decision makers or executives of any specific business and thus properly convincing them in taking out some of the major and significant types of actions or activities (Charles Jr, Schmidheiny & Watts, 2017). When this is written as a document, the document is termed or referred to as the business case. For most of the complicated or complex issues and problems, a typical business case is presented as a careful as well as constructed document, which provides the decision maker or the executive of the business with relevant information regarding the rewards or risks that are solely involved while taking an action and simultaneously, while not taking an action (Schaltegger & Wagner, 2017). The well defined business case thus explores each and every feasible approach to the given problem for helping out the respective parties in selecting an option that would be the best option for the organization.

The following business case report will be outlining the business case development on one of the most popular accessories and clothing retailer in the world, namely, GAP Inc. Company. This particular report is supposed to highlight all the significant factors of the business case for GAP Company. All these factors mainly include proposed project title, description of the proposed project title, various business opportunities, potential impacts of the business results, all the alternatives that are being chosen for the purpose of analysis, proper analysis of those alternatives, assumptions for the business of GAP Company, proper recommendation from the alternatives, risks and their mitigation plans and the implementation plan with all the phases and details.

The title of the proposed project is Business Case Development for GAP Company.

The project of Business Case Development for the GAP Inc. Company determines the written as well as verbal value proposition, which is solely intended for educating any particular decision maker of the organization for properly convincing them in taking some of the important and significant actions or activities. GAP Inc. is one of the most important organizations that mainly deal with the accessories and clothing retail business worldwide (Hahn et al., 2014). This project will be outlining on the most important sectors of business including opportunities, potential impacts, various alternatives, assumptions, analysis of the alternatives with their pros and cons. Several risks and their respective mitigation plans will also be discussed here. Finally, the project will be focusing on the implementation plan.

Description of Proposed Project/ Initiative

The business opportunity is the packaged investment for business, which subsequently allows any buyer in beginning of a business. GAP Inc. Company has various business opportunities within their business. There are no strict specifications or programs for the business opportunities of GAP Inc. Company (Tukker & Tischner, 2017). From the case study provided, there are various business opportunities for GAP Inc. Company. The business opportunity mainly includes their exclusive sale of products to the customers. This would help them in enhancing their business more explicitly and exclusively with respect to all the important and significant factors. The second criterion is that the seller of this business will be securing their business for providing the products to all the customers. The most significant business opportunity of GAP Inc. Company majorly involves distributorships. This would be done with the help of being entering in a specific agreement for the purpose of offering as well as selling all the products without even getting entitled for using the trade name of the manufacturer (Cascio, 2018). As per this agreement, the distributor might be limited into selling out all the goods or products of the organization and thus having freedom in marketing various product lines as well as services from the several firms.

The next significant business opportunity of the GAP Inc. Company mainly involves selling of all the products of other company through the means of distribution system of the racks within a specific variety of several stores, which are being serviced by the process of rack jobbing (Simon, 2013). Within the business opportunity of rack jobbing, the buyer will be agreeing with an agreement with the respective parent company for marketing the various goods into several stores to strategically locating the stored racks. With this particular agreement, the specific parent company will be obtaining a series of various locations where the racks would be placed on the basis of consignment (Henny et al., 2013). The agent of this organization of GAP Inc. Company will be maintaining the inventory and thus moving the specific merchandise for attracting the customers and also doing the bookkeeping. The agent of GAP Inc. Company will be presenting the respective store manager with a particular copy of control sheet of the inventory for the purpose of indicating the amount of merchandise to be sold (Clarkson et al., 2013). Thus, the distributor is paid by location and the commission of the store is lessened.

Business Opportunity

The third significant business opportunity of the GAP Inc Company is the development of information technology or IT. Information technology is the successful utilization of various computers and systems for the purpose of storing, retrieving, transmitting and finally manipulating the information or data within the context of any business or significant enterprises (Hockerts, 2015). Since, it is the subset of ICT or information and communications technology, it provides various advantages or benefits to the company. GAP Inc. Company is responsible for providing various and several accessories and clothing to the world and thus they have to maintain bulk amount of data or information within their business. Information technology will be extremely helpful as well as useful for them for the better dealing or handling of the information or data and thus their problems would be highly as well as effectively resolved. Outsourcing to an information technology will not be enough for this company and thus they should focus on bringing a string information technology or IT department within their business (Das et al., 2015). This would eventually reduce the complexity of data handling and data management and thus they would be enjoying more significant advantages. These above mentioned business opportunities are for the organization of GAP Inc. Company.

The business of the GAP Inc. Company is supposed to bring major profit for the business and thus the stakeholders of this business will be absolutely benefitted from this. The business result is based on the business performance management. It is the specific set of analytic process as well as performance management, which enables the performance of the organizational management for the purpose of achieving each and every business goal or objective (Jayawardhana, Welton & Lindrooth, 2014). The three major activities in this scenario are the goals selection, consolidation of the information measurement that is relevant to the organizational progress for three objectives and the interventions that are being created by the managers with the view for improving the future performances with these three goals.

The organization of GAP Inc. Company has implemented Big Data and Digital Data Analytics within their business. They have implemented these technologies within their businesses for the core purpose of bringing enhancement and profit to the business. There are various potential impacts of their business results (Good et al., 2016). The most significant impact of Big Data on the business of GAP Inc. Company is on their product manufacturing. This manufacturing of products is the vital requirement for any organization and thus this should be kept on first priority. The complete supervision or planning of the process is done with the help of big data in their business. For the purpose of running a particular line system most effectively, the organization of GAP Inc. Company has successfully implemented the technology of big data in their business. They have even planned the entire procurement process of their raw materials as well as the systematic feeding within the line for ensuring that their results would be exactly as they have desired (Golkar & i Cruz, 2015). When this is properly ensured, the database of the company is proved to be the most effective and efficient tool or technique for refining the quality of the product and thus systemizing the detection of defects of all the products.

Potential Impact of Business Results

The complete role of the supply chain management for this particular organization of GAP Inc. Company has made the fact extremely easier for all the manufacturers for forecasting their orders and outputs accordingly (Grace, 2014). Since, GAP Company is popular for their retail businesses, the implementation of big data was the most important and significant feature in this particular organization. The retailers are provided credit of all the explicit successes to the new specific technology. Big data has provided the retailer of GAP Company with the most effective forecasting of the behaviour of the consumer buying and thus helping them in finalizing their portfolio of products. Big data has also provided various aids in the proper maintenance as well as replenishment of the volume of inventory and hence, helping GAP Inc. Company in the proper analysis or profits and sales of their business (Cassel et al., 2015). The sustainability of the business is also enhanced with the incorporation of big data within the business.

The data analytics is the next implemented technology within the business of GAP Inc. Company. The revenue of the business has been increased and the overall cost has been reduced simultaneously (Targoutzidis et al., 2014). The cloud based data analytics have provided utmost important and significant advantages to their business and thus the overall risks with the management of bulk amount of data are solely reduced with this technology. However, they have faced various problems due to these implementations.

The GAP Inc. Company should change their business view for achieving business value and thus maximizing the competitive advantages of the organization (Grace, 2014). The RBV or Resource Based View of the GAP Company is given below:

1. i) Tangible Resources: Hardware and People
2. ii) Intangible Resources: Networks, Data, Software, IT values, IT services and IT capabilities

The tangible and intangible resources are heterogeneous and immobile in nature.

The VRIO Framework on the above mentioned resources is give below:

Resources	Valuable	Rare	Inimitable and Non-Substitutable	Organized to Exploit	Impact on Competitive Advantages
Networks	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Helps to increase the communication
Hardware	Yes	No	No	Yes	Helps to realize competitive parity
Software	Yes	No	No	Yes	Helps to retain the IT capabilities
Data	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Helps in providing constant data resource
People	Yes	No	No	No	They are employees or staffs and works for the company
IT Values	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Provides exclusive values to company
IT Services	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Provides better services to the customers and hence they are happy
IT Capabilities	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Enhances various capabilities

Thus the competitive advantages could be easily viewed with RBV and VRIO Framework.

The IT Portfolio tool is the most effective tool in this scenario. It is utilized as the application of the systematic management for the various investments, activities and projects of IT department of GAP Company. The ongoing IT services are extremely important examples of the IT portfolios.

There are various alternatives or options for the organization of GAP Inc. Company to eradicate all of their business problems (Oberfield, 2014). The most significant three alternatives or options for this particular organization are given below:

1. i) Implementation of Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure
2. ii) Investing on Technology of Internet of Things or IoT.

iii) Implementation of Information Technology

1. iv) Digital Transformation

The description and analyses of all the above mentioned three alternatives are given in the following paragraphs.

The various assumptions of this business case report for the organization of GAP Inc. Company are given below:

1. i) The first and the foremost assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that they would be able to properly invest in their business.
2. ii) The second assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that the organization would be eradicating all the current problems that are being faced by them in their business.

iii) The third assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that the business opportunities will be successfully achieved by them and thus the organizational goals and objectives will be fulfilled eventually.

1. iv) The next assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that the technology they will be implementing in the business will be helping them in fulfilling all the organizational goals and objectives.
2. v) The fifth assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that all the decision makers and executives of the business will be happy with the business.
3. vi) The next important assumption of the business case report in this particular case study of GAP Inc. Company is that all the risks identified in the process will be properly mitigated with the respective plans.

All the above mentioned assumptions clearly depict that the organization of GAP In. Company is expecting from their business.

Alternative 1: Implementation of Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure

Pros: There are various advantages of the artificial intelligence infrastructure implementation. They are as follows:

1. i) The first advantage is that it helps to take faster decisions (Swensen et al., 2013). Due to the presence of cognitive technologies, the decisions as well as the actions could be easily carried out by the particular organization.
2. ii) The second advantage of AI infrastructure is that it is completely error free and thus manual errors are completely avoided in this case.

iii) The third important advantage of AI infrastructure is that it helps to deal with all types of mundane tasks and thus the overall productivity is highly increased (Singal, 2014).

Cons: In spite of having all the above mentioned advantages or benefits, there are some of the major disadvantages in this technology. The main disadvantages of AI infrastructure are given below:

1. i) The first and the foremost disadvantage of the AI infrastructure is that it does not involve more manpower (Hoobler et al., 2016). Thus people lose their jobs in that organization that has implemented artificial intelligence.
2. ii) The second disadvantage of AI is the power distribution. This particular technology carries out all the risks and thus it often becomes risky to implement this technology.

Alternative 2: Investing on Technology of Internet of Things or IoT

Pros: There are various advantages of the internet of things implementation. They are as follows:

1. i) The first advantage is that it helps in taking the accurate decision (Jones et al., 2013). Moreover, it is responsible for time saving.
2. ii) The second advantage is that it helps in easy tracking. The technology can easily track the quality as well as viability of things.

Cons: In spite of having all the above mentioned advantages or benefits, there are some of the major disadvantages in this technology (Druskat, Mount & Sala, 2013). The main disadvantages of internet of things or IoT are given below:

1. i) Complexity is the most significant disadvantage of this technology. Proper training is required for implementing IoT.
2. ii) Security is the next issue (Burke & Mattis, 2013). Data is often lost and the data in not at all encrypted. Thus, many organizations do not want o implement this technology in their business.

Alternative 3: Implementation of Information Technology

Pros: There are various important advantages of the information technology. All these advantages help any business to gain their organizational goals and objectives (Pulizzi, 2014). The main advantages of IT are as follows:

1. i) The first and the foremost advantage of IT is increasing productivity and time saving.
2. ii) The next advantage of IT is that it helps to improve the communication. Various tools for communication technology are present and thus it is widely accepted by all.

iii) The third important advantage of the information technology is that it helps to store the data and manage files (Goger, 2013). Thus, data is secured with this technology.

Cons: Although, it provides various advantages, there are few disadvantages as well. They are as follows:

1. i) The first and the foremost disadvantage of IT is that it is extremely costly. Only big companies have the ability to afford this particular technology in their business (Flyvbjerg, 2013).
2. ii) The next disadvantage of information technology is that security is often breached in this particular technology.

Alternative 4: Digital Transformation

Pros: Various advantages of digital transformation are as follows:

1. i) It helps to improve the customer retention and acquisition.
2. ii) It helps in extending the global reach.

Cons: Various disadvantages of digital transformation are as follows:

1. i) It is extremely expensive.
2. ii) Digital transformation requires high utilization of software and hardware.

The proper comparison between the recommended option and other two options is given below:

Alternatives	Costs Incurred	Risks	Feasibility
1. Implementation of Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure	The minimum prototyping cost of AI is 25,000 dollars.	High Power Consumption	Less Feasible
2. Investing on Technology of Internet of Things or IoT	The cost is much higher and is about 30,000 dollars.	Complexity	Moderate Feasibility
3. Implementation of Information Technology	The cost is much costly the other two.	Data Security	Extremely Feasible
4. Digital Transformation	Extremely expensive	Hardware and software failure of theft	High Feasibility

The recommended alternative for the organization of GAP Inc. Company is the implementation of IT and cloud computing in their business. They can utilize information technology with cloud computing. This would help them in transferring any data securely. The combination of IT and cloud computing would be the best recommended choice for GAP Company.

There are various reasons for recommending the combination of cloud computing and IT to GAP Company. There are various advantages of IT and cloud computing that provides competitive advantages to the company. Since, GAP is suffering from various technological problems due to the implementation of big data; IT will be able to solve all the problems in this case. Moreover, the customer loyalty rates will be higher and thus they would be enjoying competitive advantages over all of their competitors. Cloud computing will make the system flexible and scalable enough.

There are some of the most significant threats present in the implementation of information technology. These risks could be divided into three categories as per their priorities (Nathan, 2013). The three categories are high, medium and low. The high risks in this case mainly include technical software failures or errors, deliberate acts of theft, deliberate acts of sabotage or vandalism and deviation in data quality. The four medium risks are compromise in product quality, technical hardware failure, deliberate acts of information extortion and deviation in the performance of IT (Doherty, Meehan & Richards, 2015). The four low risks are compromise in retaining employees, deliberate software attacks, technological obsolescence and acts of human error or failure.  The risk matrix for all these risks is provided below.

	Severity
Negligible small/unimportant; not likely to have a major effect on the operation of the event / no bodily injury to requiring minor first aid injury	Marginal minimal importance; has an effect on the operation of event but will not affect the event outcome / requires medical treatment	Critical serious/important; will affect the operation of  the event in a negative way / suffers serious injuries or medical treatment of minors	Catastrophic maximum importance; could result in disaster/death;  WILL affect the operation of the event in a negative way / death, dismemberment or serious injury to minors
Probability	LOW This risk has rarely been a problem and never occurred at a college event of this nature	Compromise in retaining employees	Deliberate Software Attacks	Technological Obsolescence	Act of human error or failure
MEDIUM This risk will most likely occur at this event	Compromise in quality of products	Technical Hardware Failures	Deliberate acts of information extortion	Deviation in the quality in information technology performance
HIGH This risk will occur at this event, possibly multiple times, and has occurred in the past	Technical software failures or errors	Deliberate acts of theft	Deliberate acts of sabotage or vandalism	Deviation in the quality of data

Figure 1: Risk Matrix for IT Risks

(Source: Created by the Author)

The above mentioned risks could be mitigated easily. The mitigation plans for the risks are as follows:

1. i) Retaining Employees: Providing proper training
2. ii) Deliberate Software Attacks: Antivirus, firewalls, access controls.

iii) Technological obsolescence: CAD software

1. iv) Act of Human Error: Providing proper training
2. v) Product Quality: Providing proper training and keeping track (Bergeron & Healy, 2013).
3. vi) Technical hardware failure: Providing proper training to the employees.

vii) Information Extortion: Access control

viii) Performance of information technology: Checking regularly

1. ix) Technical software failures: Antivirus and firewalls.
2. x) Acts of theft: Implementing laws
3. xi) Sabotage or vandalism: Implementing laws

xii) Deviation in data quality: Updating periodically (Mitha et al., 2013).

Phase 1: Planning

Phase/ Milestone Description: Proper planning should be done before starting of the implementation.

Deliverables: Proper plan with work sheet of the entire project

Due Date: Please fill

Accountable Person: IT Manager

Resources needed: Worksheet for analyzing project schedule and risks.

Expected level of benefit: Planning would provide proper outline of the project

Phase 2: Initiating the project

Phase/ Milestone Description: In this phase, the work is started as per project plan made

Deliverables: Project work regular schedule.

Due Date: Please fill

Accountable Person: IT Manager

Resources needed: Hardware and necessary software

Expected level of benefit: The project will be started as per planning and regular follow ups are to be taken.

Phase 3: Personnel Training

Phase/ Milestone Description: The staffs are trained in this process.

Deliverables: Proper training of all the employees.

Due Date: Please fill

Accountable Person: Trainer

Resources needed: Trainer and personnel

Expected level of benefit: Lack of human error or failure

Phase 4: Performance Monitoring

Phase/ Milestone Description: The performance of the project is monitored subsequently.

Deliverables: Proper performance throughout the project

Due Date: Please fill

Accountable Person: IT Manager

Resources needed: Performance monitoring worksheet

Expected level of benefit: Helps to keep quality and thus data quality is maintained

Phase 5: Completion

Phase/ Milestone Description: The implementation of IT is completed

Deliverables: Proper IT implementation

Due Date: Please fill

Accountable Person: IT Manager

Resources needed: Hardware, software

Expected level of benefit: Brings out the advantages from this information technology.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above business case report, it can be concluded that business case is responsible for capturing all the reasoning to initiate any project or task. It is a well presented and well structured written document. It is also referred to as a short verbal agreement or presentation. The main logic of this business case is that the moment all the resources like effort or money are being consumed, these resources are in the support of the need of their business. The information that is being included within the formal business case can either is the project background with all the expected advantages of the business as well as the considered options. The options also have proper understanding and details. The gap analysis and the expected costs and risks are also mentioned here. The above business case report has properly outlined all the important and relevant details of the business case for the most popular accessories and clothing organization of GAP Inc. Company. This business case report has eventually highlighted all the important details regarding the business of this particular organization. The business case report is being shown to the decision makers and the executives of this organization. The proposed project title is Business Case Development of GAP Company. Various alternatives with proper reasons are provided here. Moreover, the recommended alternative for the business case of the organization is also provided here. The final part of the business case report has provided the entire implementation plan of the solution or alternative selected with various details.

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