James Madison University

Final Analysis Report

COB 204: Section 11

Professor Lough
Group 21
Mason White (CIO and Project Manager)

Shaila Sadia (Customer Representative Manager)

Jessica Beam (Marketing Manager)
Josh Gould (Systems Analyst)
Kenia Lopez (Accounts Receivable Manager)
Preview:
Beginning with a total budget of $1,480,000, our company, Anonymous Inc., spent
$50,000 on “Software and Hardware Acquisition” and $30,000 on “Training.” Additionally, we
invested $49,824 on “Hardware and Software Expenses,” $1,252,635 on “Total Systems
Personnel,” and $30,000 on “Training Expenses.” Additionally, we designated $305,000 for
“Total Junior Developer Salaries,” including the $1,000-promotion after training, $375,000 for
“Total Senior Developer Salaries,” $400,000 for “Total Senior Systems Analyst Salaries,” and
$170,000 for “Total Senior Database Administrator Salaries.” We chose to improve our company
by implementing the following software: Magento (an e-commerce startup), Tableau (a BI data
visualization tool), and Rackspace (a virtual, Cloud-based server). In addition to purchasing
these software systems, we have decided to create a Facebook store and a new website for
posting blogs. Finally, we plan to upgrade our CPU to Dell PowerEdge and improving our
company website.

Goals and The Porter’s 5 Competitive Forces

Our three goals for improving are business in order of significance are improving
customer service to boost the company’s reputation, attract more customers by enhancing new
forms of marketing, and speeding up data analysis with upgraded technology, respectively.
Our first goal, improve customer service, relates to the force “Competition in the
Industry” in that it involves creating a more user-friendly system that will draw customers away
from our competitors, consequently increasing our competitive power within the industry. This
goal also decreases the “Threat of New Entrants” into our market industry. Specifically,
observing that customers are already content with our company, Anonymous Inc., many
potential entrants will reconsider joining our market. They would have to compete with us,
which would be difficult for them as they, a new business, are competing against an already
thriving company with an established customer base. Additionally, customers have little
bargaining power over us (“Bargaining Power of Customers”), as there is currently a high
demand for our products. Improving our customer-service quality would only increase this
demand for our services. Fourthly, we plan on improving our customer service by enhancing our
current website. Making these changes will not require any additional money from our budget.
Therefore, since we will not be performing transactions with supplier, we do not need to worry
about “Bargaining Power of Suppliers” hurting our revenue. Finally, making our customer
service faster and more efficient reduces the likelihood of customers leaving our company for
another brand and, therefore, reduces our “Threat of Substitutes.”
 Our next goal is to attract more customers to our company by augmenting our current
marketing capabilities and implementing new marketing software. Anonymous Inc. Already has
an advantage over the other companies within the industry with its cost-efficient and high-quality
in-house product development process. Increasing our customers base by enhancing our
marketing capabilities will only further our competitive advantage in the industry (“Competition
in the Industry”). Expanding our marketing presence also reduces the “Threat of New Entrants,”
as it acts as a warning sign to potential entrants of our strong foothold in the industry. Also, with
high-quality, low-cost products, our company’s product demand is high. Therefore, customers’
bargaining power over us is low. As for suppliers’ bargaining power over our company, our
company has different social media platforms and marketing-enhancing software to choose from
and consequently, we are not at risk of losing money due to high-pricing from suppliers. The last
force, “Threat of Substitutes,” is also unlikely to be a problem for us because we are one of the
few companies in this industry that offers high-quality products at a low price.
Our last goal is to upgrade our current data analysis software and implement new
software to improve our company’s ability to predict consumer preferences and trends in buying
behavior. With these improvements, our company will have an advantage over our competitors.
Specifically, consumers will choose us over other companies if our products are better suited to
their tastes than those of our competitors. With these new upgrades and software, we should be
able to find out exactly what customers want from us. This advanced software also gives us
leverage over potential new entrants, who new to the industry, cannot afford this technology and,
therefore, will have much more difficulty finding out consumer preferences, ultimately resulting
in them losing customers and ultimately profit. Additionally, because this technology enables us
to offer better services than are competitors, customers would be inclined to choose even if are
prices were higher than those of the other companies. As a result, “Bargaining Power of
Customers” is low. Suppliers also do not have strong bargaining power over us, as there are
numerous data analysis systems to choose from, and if they software company we decide to go
with does raise their price, we can always go with someone else. Lastly, although our
competitors could also use this software of predicting consumer trends, we would still have an
advantage over them as the products we offer are not only high quality, but also, reasonable in
price. Therefore, offering relevant, cheap, and quality products, are company is not likely to be in
danger of “Threat of Substitutes” any time soon.

Problems and Opportunities

When we started to improve Anonymous Company, we were faced with a lot of pre-
existing problems within the infrastructure of the company. First problem we faced was slow
customer service. To improve his area, we first needed to improve our company website and
understand our customers by connecting to them through social media. To do this we allocated 1
senior developer and 1 junior developer 1 Senior System Analyst towards the website to make it
more interactive. The two workers overtime will allow the website to provide a comment section,
product review section, product return section and most importantly develop an online chat room
through the website to allow customer feedback via chat improving customer feedback. Second
problem we faced was promoting company to customers. To fix this issue, we decided to
implement Magento, an e-commerce package for marketing tools and promotions to customers.
We assigned 1 Senior Database System Administrators and 1 Senior System Analyst tot this
task. Additionally, we opened a virtual store on our Facebook site and create a new website for
blogging about our company in order to update our current customers on new products and
service innovations as well as increasing our brand awareness. Both the Facebook store and the
blogging site were assigned a Senior and a Junior Developer to maintain the site and answer
customers’ questions. The next problem we face was that our system performance lacks during
peak hours. During peak hours (10-12 am and 2-4 pm) there are many users on most of the
servers. This creates too much demand for the scarce resources available. Particularly, the CPUs
and RAM are hit too hard, which causes a significant slowdown in system performance.
Conversely, at the other times of the day (especially at night), few people are using the system
and are almost idle. To fix this problem, we decided to upgrade our five rack servers from Dell
PowerEdge R220 to Dell PowerEdge R730. The next problem we addressed involved our
reports, which were difficult to read. We solved the first issue by reformatting the reports so that
were more legible and the second. The last issue we fixed was expanding our small storage
system by implementing Rackspace, a huge cloud-based server. Finally, the one issue we did not
address was the website breech. However, we focused on the problems we felt were most
significant to the success of our company and believe we should be able to easily address this
issue the future.

Feasibility Analysis
Tangible Benefits and Costs
In order to improve our pre-existing problems in our company, we decided that it would be
necessary to allocate $1.245 million towards system personnel. Our funded workers consist of 5
trained junior developers, 5 senior developers, 4 senior systems analysts and 2 senior database
administrators. The 5 trained juniors received a $1,000 bonus after completing training during
the first week of May. We decided that in order to improve the company we did not need to hire
or fire any workers. Instead, the company would give the junior developers training which would
full fill the role of a social media expert. Our tangible costs include our system personnel
salaries which is dispersed by various amounts to the different levels of workers and our
hardware and software like Magento for example which specifically we will use as a tool to
improve marketing skills and provide promotions for customers. With having these tangible
costs, we also receive tangible benefits. These benefits include increased revenue, resource cost
savings, productivity gain and process improvements
Intangible Benefits and Costs
Intangible costs are an aspect we need to keep in mind while planning our schedule.
When we train the 5 junior developers, they will be unable to work during that time so we will
lose a week of work for those developers. Our schedule will consist of week-day hours since no
overtime or weekend work is allowed. The company will experience increased revenue since the
workers of anonymous company will be working on a timed basis which will ultimately allow
the company to function at its maximum potential. The company can improve all together if we
implement these schedules.

Strategies and Actions

Improve Customer Service and Boost Company Reputation
The company can improve customer service by utilizing the company website and being
involved in more social media platforms. The company should assign 1 Senior Developer and 1
Junior Developer to handle the company’s accounts on social media sites by promoting products,
engaging customers through online surveys, posting about improvements in the products. The
website will also improve by having links to the company’s social media accounts and having a
help center that will allow the customers to get direct information from the 1 Senior Developer
and 1 Senior System Analyst who work as the Customer Help Service. The website would also
have an FAQ section available to the customers to allow them to help themselves and decrease
the amount of questions sent to the Customer Help Center. The website would add a space for
customers to add their emails when setting up their accounts online. The website would be
managed by 1 Senior Developer and 1 Junior Developer. Each Junior Developer got assigned to
a task with a senior employee to guide them after a week of training and a promotion with an
increase of $1000 to their salaries. By being more involved in social media and our website to
reach more customers.
Marketing and Attracting More Customers
The three ways we plan on improving our marketing presence are by (1) implementing
Magento, (2) opening a Facebook store, and (3) creating a blog website. Our competitors have an
e-Commerce system, which we do not currently possess. To increase our marketing power, we,
therefore, intend to implement the e-Commerce start-up Magento, which cost us $15,000. This
system is extremely user-friendly, providing the following capabilities: Customers can create
their own account, where they can customize, add and save unlimited addresses in the Address
Book. They can also view their purchase history and status and gain quick access to product
information online, including updated product pricing, specifications, and availability. This
online transaction software will make are products much more accessible to consumers, allowing
customers to view product options and make purchases anywhere at any time. We also plan to
open a Facebook Business Package store for $35 per month, which would enable customers to
reach us from varying sources. The employees assigned to handle social media will overlook the
Facebook store. The last change we would like to make to enhance our marketing power would
be to start a new website for blogging, using the system Squarespace, which would enhance our
company-brand awareness, drawing new customers to our business, as well as strengthen our
relations with existing customers.
Speed Up Data Analysis
Due to the slow data gathering process, implementing decisions is difficult and the employees
are kept busy. Our current prototype of Business Intelligence could be improved by
implementing Tableau Desktop (Professional) and Rackspace and upgrading from Dell
PowerEdge R220 to Dell PowerEdge R730. Tableau is a data visualization software that enables
users to view data in an easy-to-read, aesthetically pleasing format. With this visualization
software, users can input data into Tableau’s data engine from various sources via an interactive
dashboard. The software will, then, generate a chart and even provide statistics on trends and
relationships within the data. Tableau Desktop would be a tremendous help to our company,
speeding up our analytics process with its automated chart creators and trend detectors. Next, we
want to upgrade our current Dell PowerEdge rack servers to Dell PowerEdge R730. This highly
versatile rack server excels in a wide range of intense tasks, including data warehouses, e-
commerce, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), databases, and high-performance computing
(HPC). Using this software system, our company can fix many of its performance issues by
boosting data access for applications with up to 16 x 12Gbps SAS drives and high-performance
dual RAID. The last change we intend to make is to purchase the cloud server provider
Rackspace for managing and storing customer data. This server provider offers Cloud Files, an
online system storage for files and media, and Cloud Block Storage, an on-demand storage for
applications hosted on Cloud Servers, and enables user to manage their cloud usage via an online
control panel, desktop software, or other third-party tools connected to the Cloud Files API.

Budget
The amount of money that our group was allocated was $1,480,000. In order to stay within our
budget, we needed to strategize with our money in order to reach our goals to the best of our
ability. We ended up using all our Training Budget, training all our Junior Developers for one
week. This ended up costing our group $30,000. In addition, we implemented many tools such as
Magento, Rackspace, Tableau Professional. We ended up keeping all our current employees, as
we found many jobs for them to do. It was beneficial to keep them all in order to have almost
two workers per task, to run efficiently and make sure that we had a lot of help in case problems
arise. Our remaining budget was spent on building our own website which includes a Facebook
Store and a Blogging Website in Square Space. Our Total Systems Personnel Expenses came to
$1,252,635. Our staff is integral to our success, which justifies this large budget expense.
Making sure our speed and CPUs could handle the increased activity as well as run smoothly, we
upgraded all five of our Dell PowerEdge 220’s to Dell PowerEdge R730 servers. Our total
expenses totaled $1,322,459. We have $147,451 left over for unexpected situations that arise, or
for a nice Christmas bonus for our staff.

Team Collaboration and Technology Use

 We used the chat option in Teams to efficiently communicate ideas and meeting times
with group members. We used it to work on documents at the same time online even if we were
not going to meet in person. Everyone worked on the project and no one was absent during the
in-class meetings. Although some of the group members did meet in smaller groups to complete
specific tasks without the rest of the group, we made sure to involve everyone though the chat.
We each took part in working on the Final Analysis and the members with the costs/time
information worked on the budget and the Project Libre. Everyone had tasks that they were
assigned and did their fair share by dividing up the workload. Everyone had efficient
communication and made sure that everyone supported the decisions before anything was
implemented. Our group used Office 365 to make the report analysis and the budget through
Word and Excel. And we used their PowerPoint option to make the presentation. The Planner
was utilized to assign tasks to each member and schedule meetings. Project Libre assisted us in
developing a schedule and assigning resources (like employees and materials) to tasks to help
understand the budget and properly allocate available resources.

Conclusion:
Although we were not able to address the problem of securing our information from potential
hackers as much as we wanted, we were able to accomplish the goals that we prioritized. We
came up with ways to benefit the company’s reputation by improving our customer service,
enhance marketing through outlets, and speed up our data analysis system with upgrades in
technology. We allocated the budget in an effective way to meet those goals and used portions of
the Systems Personnel Budget in areas that were lacking.
 Works Cited
Build a Website – Website Builder – Squarespace. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2019, from
https://www.squarespace.com/?channel=pbr&subchannel=go&campaign=pbr-dr-go-us-
en-squarespace-core-e&subcampaign=(brand-
core_squarespace_e)&gclid=CjwKCAjwzPXlBRAjEiwAj_XTESTyvrkc8AMXh1InLmc
Y--n_YRXqwoqXXUrNVtfWeT2ZK0RWllHc-BoCymYQAvD_BwE
Tableau Desktop. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2019 from
https://www.tableau.com/products/desktop
What is Rackspace Cloud? - Definition from WhatIs.com. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2019, from
https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Rackspace-Cloud