Business Case

Executive Summary
This Business Case briefly explains how the Web Platform (WP) project for fulfilling the current
business concerns of the Milson Corporation. This business case outlines the issues/problem,
benefits, recommendations, and justification of the project. This business case outlines the
problem, identifies the possible solutions, recommends the best option by weighing up the
costs and benefits. The business case aims at convincing the key stakeholders about the
advantages of the project and helps in laying the foundational step of the project.

Introduction
The Milson Corporation is a medium sized company that manufactures a test equipment that is
supplied to the electronic product manufacturers. The corporation has an annual revenue of
about $600 million. Milson Corp. is the second leading company all over the globe for testing
devices. There has been a serious rise in the client base since the corp. is leading the test device
market. Most of the client base belongs to different countries of the world such as America, and
European countries. The company is creating a competitive advantage by expanding into the
business into international markets (Porter, 1980). Furthermore, Milson corporation is also
aiming at being more efficient and innovative.

Statement of the problem

The client base of Milson Corporation is expanding over the last two years and moving the
company towards a de-centralized business model. The corporation has been supporting more
and more clients in different locations, the workforce administration has become a difficult
task. Since, the establishment of the business all the internal requirements of the workplace
including reporting, payroll activities, and resource management is continued through legacy
mainframe systems. But with global expansion of the corporation’s client base the legacy
mainframe system has become ineffective for the management of administrative activities
(Walsworth &Verma,2007). As the number of the employees have grown in different branches
this has increased the burden in the headquarters of Milson Corporations. This ineffective
system is leading to high costs and an increase in the employee turnover in last 12 months.
Hence, the ineffective management of the workplace due to an increased client base is the
current problem of the Milson corporation.

Analysis
With the international expansion of the workplaces at Milson corporation have turned into high
performance workplaces. According to Handel and Gittleman’s (2004), the job tasks in the high-
performance need a variety of skills unlike the traditional jobs. This further requires formal job
rotations schemes. The employees must be participative in the organisational decision making,
training, and problem solving.

The most possible option in the workplace management for the Milson corporation is to hire
new people at administrative position for fulfilling the internal requirements of the workplace.
But as per the company facts the Milson corporation has hired 5 employees at the overhead
positions. But unfortunately, these positions haven’t provided enough return on the investment
(ROI). This is because such positions are only helpful in maintain the status quo and do barely
minimum for the improvement of management system.

Another possible option is that the employees must ask the regional mangers for taking up the
workplace issues and doing the administrative tasks. But this option seems to put additional
burden upon the managers, who would have to perform double duties.

Furthermore, the reporting is a crucial aspect for the effective organisational working. But in
the legacy mainframe system all the reports are generated manually. This offers a high
probability of error and is time-consuming as well. These tasks put external burden and adds to
expenses of the company. Hence, the company needs a computerized system for minimizing
the errors, reducing the costs and decreasing the time.

The most viable option is to enable the use of a centralized web-based administrative platform.
This system will allow the Milson corporation to effectively manage the payroll systems of the
employees and running the administrative tasks seamlessly (Kambala, 2018). This option would
reduce the overhead costs of the large workplace. The employees would have the autonomy to
manage other crucial tasks at work. Furthermore, the corporation would also benefit from
updated and error-free reports.

Cost- Benefits analysis

Cost

Initial Investment in the purchase of the software= $400,000.00

Software Installation & Training = $100,000.00

Benefits

Reducing the HR staff -$183,495.00

No extra working hours for regional managers -$471,744.00 ($36.00 x 14 hours/wk reduced
non-billable time x 18 managers ; per week)

No monthly system review ( after 6 month only) -$42,000

Reduction in Employee turnover -$50,000

Net Savings in first 12 months = $247,239.00

The cost benefits analysis of the WP option indicates significant cost-reduction and financial
improvement for the company.

Recommendation & Justification

The proposed solution for the issue must offer greater role for the employees in the
management of the workplace and must be managed from one central and common platform.
For the effective management of the administration, reducing the increased costs, improving
the employee turnover, the Milson corporation needs to an online application.

Various options have been analysed for finding out the best possible solution for addressing the
problem, along with the financial considerations for every option available. It is recommended
to act upon the Web Platform (WP) Project. This approach would allow us to meet the
corporate goals of the Milson Corporation that includes improving efficiency, reducing costs,
and bringing innovation. The recommend Web Platform Project would migrate the data and the
functions of the current mainframe system into the online system. This process would also
preserve the data integrity and give enough time to the employees and the mangers about
their responsibilities and the administrative functions (Kambala, 2018). Furthermore, the WP
also goes well with other current IT systems and that would enhance the overall efficiency and
the accuracy of the reporting system within the Milson Corporations through following ways:

 This system would enable the employees to edit and enter their rotation schemes and
timesheet data from any location without the involvement of their regional manager.
 All the essential data could be accessed for the quality control check and reporting.
 This process would reduce the burden of the staff members for collecting, analysing,
and compiling the data.
 The employees would be able to register for the staff training (García-Peñalvo et al.,
2012) to reduce the burden upon the managers and other staff members.

Shifting towards WP would result in giving better efficiency in the work management, the
company resources, and the business processes as well. Moreover, the web-based systems are
most efficient and cost-effective methods for workplace difficulties such as stress management,
problem solving, and emotion regulation (Heber et al., 2013).

After analysing the status quo of all other alternatives, we have recommended to select WP
Project for the Business case proposal. This would provide the best opportunity for gaining
business outcomes, improving the efficiency, and reducing the costs. All other possible
solutions are assumed to have greater risks, give lesser benefits, and do not align with the
current corporate strategy of the corporation.

The estimations for WP project:

 First 12 months- 15% decrease in overhead costs

 First 12 months- 10 % decline in employee turnover
  50%-time reduction for preparing financial reports
 25 %- decrease in time for payroll issues

Details of your Chosen Option

In the chosen option the corp. would replace the legacy platform with the latest WP (web-
based platform). For executing this option, in Phase 1, the software would be purchased, a web
environment would be created and tested by the IT department. In Phase II, a temporary legacy
platform would be set up by the IT department for the running the daily tasks and would be
utilized as a back up option as well. All the data from the mainframe would be archived through
this method. In Phase III, the web-based platform would be filled with the updated data. In
Phase IV, the employees would be trained about the WP and it would go live within the Milson
Corporation in Phase V.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the WP project will replace the Milson Corporation’s previous mainframe system
with an online system. This could be possible by selection the appropriate product that could
conveniently replace the existing system and would still grow for the coming years. If selected
this project could completely transform the existing system. This system would be implemented
in phases and would become operational after the previous system has been adequately
archived.

References
García-Peñalvo, F. J., Colomo-Palacios, R., & Lytras, M. D. (2012). Informal learning in work
environments: training with the Social Web in the workplace. Behaviour & Information
Technology, 31(8), 753-755.
Handel, M. J., & Gittleman, M. (2004). Is there a wage payoff to innovative work
practices?. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 43(1), 67-97.
Heber, E., Ebert, D. D., Lehr, D., Nobis, S., Berking, M., & Riper, H. (2013). Efficacy and cost-
effectiveness of a web-based and mobile stress-management intervention for employees:
design of a randomized controlled trial. BMC public health, 13(1), 1-12.
Kambala, C. (2018, October 13). The Benefits of Web-Based Systems for Business — Aezion.
Aezion. https://www.aezion.com/2018/10/13/web-based-systems-benefits/
Porter, M. (1980). Competitive Strategy New York: Macmillan.
Walsworth, S., & Verma, A. (2007). Globalization, human resource practices and innovation:
Recent evidence from the Canadian workplace and employee survey. Industrial Relations: A
Journal of Economy and Society, 46(2), 222-240.