IT Solutions For Small And Medium Sized Businesses – Hosted Desktop Solutions (HDS)

Project, Program, and Portfolio Management

Business Analyst is an advisory role which has the responsibility for investigating and analysing business situations, identifying and evaluating options for improving business systems, elaborating and defining requirements and ensuring the effective implementation and use of information systems in line with the needs of the business.

Some business analysis roles extend into other areas such as strategy implementation, business case production, benefits realisation, specification of IT requirements.

A good business analyst can make the difference between a poor and a great investment in business and IT improvements. A good Business Analyst must have some competencies such as good personal qualities, great business knowledge and professional techniques.

The personal qualities are the skills and characteristics that are useful for a business analyst. These can be explained as communication, relationship building, influencing, team working, political awareness, analytical skills and critical thinking, attention to detail, problem-solving, leadership, self-belief and professional development.

Business Knowledge is an essential as a background and foundation for the business analyst’s work. The essentials of business knowledge can be explained by business finance, business case development, domain knowledge, subject matter expertise, principles of information technology, organisation structures, supplier management and business architecture.

The professional techniques can be considered with the following skills: Project management, strategy analysis, stakeholder analysis and management, investigation techniques, requirements engineering, business modelling, data modelling, gap analysis, facilitation skills, portfolio management, benefits management and agilethinking.

HDS is a small full-service company located in the Sydney IT hub of North Ryde.  It will install hardware, software, configure and manage systems, create websites, intranets and extranets. Clients currently come from design companies and other individual companies who do not see a need to internally manage their IT infrastructure as it is not a core result area.

The company is still delivering some hosted services from equipment within the premises. As well as developing open source solutions for clients, the company has also started to develop and deploy its own applications.

The company is undergoing significant growth as “cloud” computing is becoming more acceptable, and affordable, for businesses small and large.

The company has identified significant opportunities to expand the depth and breadth of its “cloud” computing services, particularly into the education sector.  These services are expected to increase revenues from current customers, increase the company’s market share, and create opportunities to enter other markets.

However, other larger more well-known competitors are also making inroads into these markets. While these companies do not offer the same level of high quality customer service that HDS is renowned for, they can offer very competitive pricing, and are often preferred by the bigger customers that HDS is trying secure.

Agile Project Management Beyond Software Development

HDS still operates under a “small family business” culture. Roles and responsibilities are ill-defined.  Strategic planning is ad hoc at best.

I have been hired as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for a small company “Hosted Desktop Solutions” (HDS), which provides hosted “open-source” IT solutions to small and medium sized businesses. 

Due to internal IT constraints and issues, the founders, Bob and Jeff have asked you to undertake a thorough business IT analysis and to suggest solutions to resolve these constraints and issues.

HDS was started by Jeff and Bob, with a laptop each, and not much else!  While they have devoted time and effort to meeting their clients’ IT needs, their own IT infrastructure has become an ad-hoc affair unable to meet the demands of current growth.

Networking capacity is underdone, with one 4-year-old server being used for networking, storage, file sharing, as well as some legacy hosted applications for customers.  The server box lacks sufficient processing power or RAM, and the server set-up has become unstable over the years, as the founders and the senior technician implement quick remedies when something goes wrong.  Staff computers are becoming old, with a messy jumble of hardware, operating systems, and software versions.  Email is hosted through Google Apps, and the website is externally hosted. 

Customer management systems are also a mix of paper based and Excel files from the company’s beginnings, together with an initial but undeveloped CRM system. Mistakes with customer’s records are inevitable because of the mix of systems.  Telephony has also become inadequate. As well, helpdesk email monitoring and response management is under increasing pressure.

While many of the hosting services supplied to customers are externally hosted, older clients are still managed using the company’s own IT. Most client IT system monitoring and maintenance is still undertaken through internal IT.

There is a separate application development “box”, however, but as with other systems it is not being optimally maintained and application development has slowed significantly.

It is a classic case of a small owner-operated business, where the hands-on approach of the founders is no longer capable of managing all arising issues. As the company grows, amidst whatever organisational systems are in place, company operations can no longer be effectively managed.  For example, Bob and Jeff used to look after all internal IT but when the senior technician was employed he was given the task of managing internal IT.  However, with customer growth, all 3 are often out of the office on a daily basis, so who does internal IT fixes, and when these are done is unclear and unsystematic.

Relationships between Project Management Methodologies and Project Success

This case study will focus on improving HDS as a business in general however I will be focusing on a sub project on this assessment: IT Focussed Business Analysis. How to fix the internal issues with the administrative staff and stakeholders will be one of the major topics.

I, as the new Chief Information Officer, will have key internal and external strategic, tactical, and operational responsibilities to help enable the business to manage growth sustainably. The role is primarily focused on:

• Alleviating some of Bob’s and Jeff’s tactical and operational decision making
• Managing internal operations across all areas
• Contributing to IT deployment into larger companies
• Contributing to application development
• Assisting the founders with strategic planning

The idea is to give Bob and Jeff the opportunity:

• To focus on internal strategic activities to enable the business to continue to grow and innovate while still maintaining a culture that is caring and supportive, as well as effective and efficient.
• To focus on strategic activities to take advantage of industry developments and favourablemarket opportunities/conditions
• To focus on the application development strategy which is often delayed and interrupted by new, larger, and ever-increasing service delivery requirements that only the founders currently have the experience to efficiently and effectively manage initially.

Performance reporting is a key significant activity which involves collecting, disseminate the information related to project, and communicate the project progress as well as forecasting the future progress. The performance reports of Hosted Desktop Services are status reports, progress reports, variance reports and forecasting reports. Variance report compares the actual to the baselines. It reports current performance of progress against the performance measurement baseline (Cameron & Green, 2015). Future status of project along with performance is being reported basis current and historical data. Variance analysis is ranged from simple to complex as the cost accounting system is separated the variances into various types of categories.

The tools and techniques used for the performance measurement are as follows:

360 degree feedback: By use of 360 degree feedback performance appraisals, the mangers receive feedback from the individuals with whom they are interacting with the daily operations (Hornstein, 2015).

Balanced scorecard: This approach is combined with sales of quotas along with budgetary requirements with the performance standards. It is used of key performance indicator to track short and long term goals of employees (Kaufman, 2017).

Self-evaluation: This particular tool allows the employees to rate against the similar criteria which is used by the supervisor. This method raises credibility level of business processes in view of the employees.

It is a process to uncover the core culture of the company and the top management commits to lead the assessment process of Hosted Desktop Services (HDS). The professionals of HDS are concerned to provide culturally education to the employees so that they can respect each other’s. It is required for the employees to familiar with the cultural dynamics of different ethno cultural groups into the organization (Betancourt et al., 2017). The data which are obtained from the cultural assessment help the professionals of HDS to formulate mutually acceptable along with culturally responsive plans.  

In order to improve the hosted open source IT solutions which are provided by HDS to SME are done by making changes into the organization. Participation is taken as tool for the change management which helps HDS into post merger integration of the merger and acquisition projects which manage the organizational changes (Benn, Edwards, & Williams, 2014). Therefore, there is successful integration of the organization to make it secured. HDS is managed to make changes into their old system and now they adopt of customer management system. People into the organization is feeling helpless which is the problems behind adaption to the rapid market and technological changes (Kanaane et al., 2015). Participation of the organizational members on planning of organizational changes is increased support for the changes.

Industry Cluster Knowledge Management and Innovation Performance

HDS should design a website for their organization which should meet with requirements of their clients. It should provide required information to the customers. The online technology helps HDS to provide of hosted services to the clients electronically and automatically. It attracts the customers by providing with search engine which result into e-commerce website (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The clients and customers interact with the sophisticated website, social media and e-commerce along with standards is evolved with the platforms.

Due to innovation into the business strategy of HDS, such as development of e-commerce website and implementation of customer management system, there are some of the business opportunities such as better hosted services to clients, online business easiness with convenience, attract the customers with search engine and follow of links into search engine outcomes (Lewis, Passmore & Cantore, 2016). Due to advancement into technology, there is global online community which attracts more and more customers.

Digital marketing helps to make innovation into the team which starts with implementation of centered on building the team environment. Innovation is occurrence into the process in which the team can understand the goals of their clients. The human resource practices as well as policies induce the employees to assume of entrepreneurship behavior into their duties (Grosser et al., 2016). Throughout deep analysis of behavior of manager as well as their attitudes, the study is aimed to analyze the factors which encourage of entrepreneurial behavior from the perspective of manager.   

The change manager is acted as facilitator who is responsible to making changes into the change management process. The manager can authorize as well as approve the changes, coordinate and conduct the meetings with the change advisory board for discussing the risk changes and authority for implementation and rejection of changes (McNeil, Frey & Embrechts, 2015). It ensures that the activities are designed for implementation of changes as per standards. All the policies as well as procedures are defined and reviewed. Document changes are to be made throughout the change management process.

The customer relationship manager approves the innovation into the organization processes. There is adoption of innovations into the organization based on model of adoption of individual innovation (Bessis, 2015). Evolution of new technologies as well as administrative arrangements into the organization manages the client services both into admin as well as IT. Research along with development is key area for future revenue streams for meeting with the performance demands. HDS is undergoing innovative growth as cloud computing which becomes acceptable along with affordable for the small and large businesses. The cloud computing services are expected to increase of revenue from the customers, increase of market share of company along with create of opportunities for entering into other markets.     

Role and Competencies of a Business Analyst

Consultation provides the stakeholders with opportunities to provide input at start of the change management process. The consultant informs the decision makers about accountable of success of particular issues and facts which influence the decision makers to use as well as ignore the inputs. The aim of project stakeholders is to understand changes as well as implications in type of communicational changes (Glendon, Clarke & McKenna, 2016). Therefore, the key to successfully implementation of change management is ownership of stakeholders.

Effective change management plan into the production of It environment into HDS is required to make sure that quality delivery of the IT services and achieve of business compliance. The key change management plan is as follows:

Accurate documentation: It identifies the information which is relevant to specific changes require collecting change management process. The change advisory board is balancing changing needs with need to reduce the risks (Chance & Brooks, 2015).

Approval process: All the changes into HDS are followed of established level of approval process to make sure that routine changes are being completed with minimum restrictions.

Change scope: In order to implement and develop of online services into HDS, e-commerce as well as store applications, supply chain applications and logistics business groups are required.

The project plan is comprised of some of the steps along with project timetable such as:

Project Activities	Start Date	Finish Date
Monitor and control along with the project progress	3/5/2018	14/5/2018
Creation of resources and financial plan for the project plan	15/5/2018	6/6/2018
Identification of the task slippage and overrun of budget	7/6/2018	17/6/2018
Management of internal operations across the project areas	18/6/2018	23/7/2018
Contribution of IT deployment into the larger companies	24/7/2018	7/8/2018
Contribution to the application development	8/8/2018	19/8/2018
Assisting the founders with the strategic planning	20/8/2018	3/9/2018

Risk management of cloud computing services:

Schedule risk: The project plan is not able to manage the project activities along with not able to complete the project on scheduled time.

Budget risk: The project plan is not completed on scheduled budget due to larger allocation of resources to implement and develop the cloud computing services in HDS. There is also lack of project funds (Wolke, 2017).

Supply chain risks: The products and services required to develop the cloud services are not delivered on time by the supplier side.

Resource risk: There are lacks of resources that have technical knowledge to develop the cloud computing services into HDS for providing of open hosted services to SME. Therefore, the company has resource capacity issues across the areas of business such as knowledge management, planning, human, IT infrastructure, organisational, budgets (Lam, 2014).

Management risk: HDS is not operating successfully as per the client’s requirements and demands due to lack of management issues which impact quality of customer services and service level agreement. It restricts IT deployment into the larger companies.

Cost-Benefit –
Hardware	$         30,000.00
Software	$           1,000.00
Development team salaries	$           8,240.00
Training	$           1,000.00
Total Development Cost	$         40,240.00
Hardware	$         15,000.00
Software	$              210.00
Operational Labor	$         12,500.00
Total Operational Cost	$         27,710.00
Approximate salary savings	$       150,000.00
Reduced operating cost	$         50,000.00
Total Benefit	$       200,000.00
Discount Rate Used	5.00%

			Year of Project
	0	1	2	3	4	5	TOTALS
Economic Benefit	$0.00	$ 200,000.00	$ 200,000.00	$    200,000.00	$  200,000.00	$    200,000.00
Discount Rate	1.0000	0.9524	0.9070	0.8638	0.8227	0.7835
PV of Benefits	$0.00	$190,476.19	$181,405.90	$172,767.52	$164,540.49	$156,705.23
NPV of all BENEFITS	$0.00	$ 190,476.19	$ 371,882.09	$    544,649.61	$  709,190.10	$    865,895.33	$     865,895.33
One-Time COSTS	$(40,240.00)
Recurring Costs	$0.00	$  (27,710.00)	$  (27,710.00)	$     (27,710.00)	$  (27,710.00)	$     (27,710.00)
Discount Rate	1.0000	0.9524	0.9070	0.8638	0.8227	0.7835
PV of Recurring Costs	$0.00	$  (26,390.48)	$  (25,133.79)	$     (23,936.94)	$  (22,797.09)	$     (21,711.51)
NPV of all COSTS	$(40,240.00)	$  (66,630.48)	$  (91,764.26)	$   (115,701.20)	$ (138,498.29)	$   (160,209.80)	$    (160,209.80)
Overall NPV							$     705,685.54
Overall ROI
							4.4048

Types of risk	Probability	Impact	Risk level
Schedule risk	Likely	Major	High
Budget risk	Moderate	Major	Medium
Supply chain risk	Unlikely	Moderate	Medium
Resource risk	Likely	Minor	Medium
Management risk	Unlikely	Minor	Low

Type of risk	Schedule	Cost	Performance	Probability of risk
Schedule risk	There is larger slip to the key milestone of contractual importance.	There is larger increase into total project cost.	There is major shortfall into the operational performance.	Likely
Budget risk	There is smaller slip to the key milestone of contractual importance.	There is significant increase into total cost.	There is minor shortfall into the operational performance that impacts the customers.	Moderate
Supply chain risk	There is small slip into the internal milestone.	There is small increase into total cost.	There is minor shortfall into the operational performance that does not impact the customers.	Unlikely
Resource risk	There is small slip into the internal milestone.	There is small increase into total cost.	There is minor shortfall into the operational performance that impacts the customers.	Likely
Management risk	There is no impact on the schedule.	There is no increase into total cost.	There is no impact on the operational performance.	Unlikely

Identification of barrier	Respond to the barriers
Identification of quality	The quality of cloud computing services is identified based on the precision, accuracy and relevance of the system.
Lack of technical knowledge	There are lack of technical experts is working into the project and there is lack of access to informational resources.
Lack of management support	There is lack of top down managerial support to conduct the activity related to risk management.
Time and cost constraints	The constraints raise based on proper amount of time as well as cost allocation such that there is identification of risk activities which are conducted adequately.
Inadequate planning	There is inadequate development of planning approach such that the functional areas are identified for identification of risks.

Successful innovation is dependent on effective communication of business value of the innovation. A transition plan is developed to take chosen innovation into reality. The communication strategy is integral part of the transition plan. An initial transition plan is developed for innovation which recognizes need of people along with impact of changes on the business (Bromiley et al., 2015). Communication plan helps to manage the implementation of online activities into HDS.   

Deliverable information (What)	Recipient (Who)	Delivery method (How)	Schedule (When)	Who is responsible (Owner)
Project related information	Admin team	Team meetings and conference calls	As required	Project Manager
Project status	Planner of the project	Email	Monthly	Project Manager
Update the project timeline	Executive sponsor	Meetings and PowerPoint presentation	As required	Project Manager
Project update actions item status	Project Manager	Team meetings and email	As required	Admin Team
Risks related to project	Project steering committee	Document related to risks and meeting minutes	Monthly	Project Manager

Challenges Faced by Small IT Services Company

The project objective of HDS is to undertake of business IT analysis and provide suggestions related to IT solutions for resolving the issues and problems into the organization. The total timeframe required to complete the project is 4 months. Key performance indicator is taken as measurement tool to measure the performance of HDS due to development of cloud computing services (Joseph, 2017). Communication plan is focused on internal strategic activities which enable the business to grow as well as innovate while maintaining the culture.

The assigned resources to the project are project manager, executive sponsor, project planner, Chief Information Officer, admin team, senior and junior IT technician and project steering committee.

As per the project manager, productivity is being improved with improving efficiency of employees. Communication plan helps the project manager to improve efficiency along with increase into productivity (Marini, 2017). The activities required to deliver communication plan are as follows:

1. Identification of project objectives
2. Choosing the target audiences
3. Designing of key business messages to other project resources
4. Selection of communication methods
5. Planning two-way communication
6. Draft the project timeframe and  budget
7. Implementation of communication plan

Create momentum: A discussion is done with the team to make changes into the organization. It helps to understand what people can talk and think about the changes.

Convince people: The project stakeholders should be convinced that necessary changes are done for success of the company. Strong leadership along with visible support help the key people to lead changes within the organization (Wright, 2017).

 Vision for changes: The vision for changes is to implement of customer relationship management system which increases of team collaboration to administer the resources competence and recover efficiency to provide the clients and staff satisfaction by given that the customers with up-to-date information about hosted open source IT solutions are getting.

The organizational changes into HDS are happened due to financial concerns, expanding into the market, accommodating of growth and shifting into their business model. The changes should both positively and negatively affect people. Positively, it impact by achieving productivity and profitability into hosted open source services (Williams, 2017). Negatively, it impacts loss of benefits, downgrade into job positions, loss of job and relocation to other country.

Contingency plan is required to manage the data into the cloud. The main objective of this project is to implement of cloud computing services into HDS. Therefore, its contingency plan is involved of updated list of the data access permissions, dependencies as well as data controls (Seeliger, Horn & Kloppers, 2018). All the data into the cloud are taken a back up so that if there is loss of confidential information, then the data should be stored into a secured place.

Solutions Recommended by Chief Information Officer

There is opportunity to focus on the internal strategic activities which enable the business to continue growth and innovate while maintaining the culture that is supportive. There is focused on the strategic activities to take advantage of the industry’s developments as well as favourable market opportunities (Blakeman, 2018). The business opportunity of HDS is focused on application development strategy which is delayed as well as interrupted by larger furthermore ever increasing service delivery requirements that only the founders have experience towards efficiency as well as effective managing initially.

The innovation includes integration into the business objectives by taking of holistic approaches towards innovation, establishment of stronger channels of communication and fostering of culture of innovation.

Continuous improvement system is accomplished of use of quality policy, quality manual, quality objectives, and results from audit, data analysis and corrective actions along with management review.

From the project activities, project management knowledge and skills are gained. The project manager is vital to the success of project. This study aims to recognize the challenges faced due to implementation of cloud computing services and determine the critical causes of the challenges (Luxton, Reid & Mavondo, 2015). Risk management plan is done to identify the risks, mitigate the risks in addition to impact and probability of the respective risks. Communication plan is also done to interact with the project resources for discussing the challenges and problems with them.

Monitoring as well as evaluating is required as key component to adapt the project planning. The performance indicators are being monitored which result into determine the actions which are implemented and tracked the success of project plan. Monitoring in addition to evaluation ensures that there are long term success into the plans and actions. It helps to demonstrate the accountability towards the stakeholders as well as communities (Jugenheimer, Sheehan, & Kelley, 2015). It ensures that information is used to inform the decision makers about the implementation of cloud computing services.

Conclusion

There is development of new system into the organization after analysing the communication and risk management plan.

References

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