

A&D HIGH TECH

MANAGING PROJECTS FOR SUCCESS
 Company History
 First store in Nebraska (1988) started by Ted Walter
 Made-to-order products; highly innovative at the time; first to be introduced in the PC industry
 Revenues approached $400mn in 2000
 Sales primarily through retail outlets in malls and via phone orders handled by its call center
 Prior to 1999, sales orders written on paper and passed to order-entry clerks
- added time to order entry, delayed shipment => poor accuracy
- 30%  orders required customer callbacks as compared to 5% at its competitor
 Implemented ERP in 1999 using software from JD Edwards => could be customized to handle
different parts A&D used for production
- customer callbacks reduced to < 1% of orders
- concerns about maintenance as outside consultants were employed to design and build
the system
 In 2001, A&D further invested to improve its systems in handling supply chain, payment
process, CRM and order management => reduced costs; significant ROI on its supply chain and
warehousing projects
 Business Case

 Faced with tough competition and decreasing

margins, company has decided to explore new
segments for growth
 Products approaching commodity status - product
cost largely the determining factor
 Project to create online store
 Build vs. Buy

In-house
Resources

Commercial
Build
functionality
not required
vs. Budget
Buy

Unique
Processes
Key Determiners for Build Decision

Off-the-shelf
Competitive package met
Edge only 60%
requirements
Potential Few
benefits of established
flexible quality
system vendors

“Hidden” Buil IT could be

used as
risks & costs strategic
d weapon
 Project History
Define the business requirements

Define Process Flows

Create technical architecture requiremnts

Build prototype of system

Create work breakdown structure (WBS)

Estimate the effort for each of the tasks in the WBS

Define resources available for the project and assign to tasks

Create schedule with task dependencies and proper resource allocation

 Business Requirements
 Configuration and pricing

 Delivery date based on standard lead times

 Real-time payment processing

 100 validation of required data

 Collection of prospect data about customers

 Integration to back-end (ERP) for manufacturing and

order management
 Serve customers with same quality and care irrespective
of medium of order
Technical Architecture
Physical Infrastructure
 Project History
• Little impact on current process at A&D, simply new front
Process Flow for existing activites

Project WBS • Complete WBS that details all tasks shown in Exhibit 5

• Estimates created for each task as part of planning effort.

Task Estimates Shown in Exhibit 6

• All resources identified except software developers

Project Resources • External contractor solicited for staffing. List of rates and
assignments shown in Exhibits 7 & 8.