Contents

• This paper analyses the following case study –
• ‘Ready To Deliver’
• ‘Ready To Deliver’ (RTD) is a SME owned and run by Ed Brumby and his wife Jenny, in a regional town of Monsoon Valley 379 kilometres away from the state capital city. RTD provides services which are a combination of courier, removalists, and cattle transportation to businesses and home clients.
• A couple of years ago, when he was working for a local courier company, Ed decided to start his own business. He was not happy at all with his job as he was not getting enough financial benefits for his efforts. He was working more than 9-5 on weekdays and sometimes was making deliveries on the weekends. The company was making good money being the only functional company in town and was also servicing local and remote farming communities where capital city companies did not have their networks. The only other company was owned and run by John McCoy, a local man. John started his business at a young age and built it quickly as he had lots of contacts in the area. But now towards his retiring age, John was only completing a few jobs for some of his long standing customers. At the time, Ed did a certificate course in business through the local TAFE and Jenny was finishing her Masters in Accounting through the local university. They both thought this was the right time to start their own business. Ed and John were friends and Ed offered him to buy his business. John agreed.
• John never used any computer or any things related to information technology in his business. Everything was manual. He did not even have an EFTPOS facility. He worked on cash/cheque basis. John only used a landline telephone and a note book to run his business. All work requests were received by phone and noted in the diary. Then job requests were written on pieces of papers and given to the drivers. After finishing the jobs these pieces of papers were collected and kept in a draw for writing invoices and for the bookkeeper to manage the books. The book-keeping became a nightmare due to this manual reconciliation of everything. Managing the vehicles and keeping track of the expenses related to that and paying employees were also manual. The customers’ details John wrote in his diary and after making so many changes only he could work out the information in it. Tracking jobs and lost packages became quite difficult. Over the years, the only thing John did was to buy more vehicles, hiring more employees in and out of the office and getting more telephone lines. At the peak of his business John had around 40 people working for him.
• When Ed and Jenny took over, there were only 7 employees and most of the unused vehicles were sitting in the big sheds. They started to run the business the same way as it had been operating but soon they realised that with manual and hard to find information it was a nightmare to manage the business and compete with the other company in the area. In the early months, they only had the same jobs that John was doing. The marketing strategy was “word of mouth” and personal contacts. Later on, the business grew and they hired more staff. But the problems were still there due to manual management of the business. It was difficult to schedule jobs manually and jobs started to delay either in starting or delivering. There were invoicing problems as customers got incorrect invoices but at the same time Jenny and Ed did not know or could not have found easily who had not paid their invoices. They also had problems in paying to their suppliers due to problems in tracking the invoices. Payroll became too problematic when drivers started to get upset when the right amount of their pay was not in the pay packet.
• Jenny did a course in her Accounting degree about information systems and she convinced Ed to buy a computer and some basic business software to manage the information. Using computer was helpful and they started to put information in the computer about customers, employees, jobs, routes, schedules, payroll, pricing information, other overheads, invoices, and other financial figures.
• In two years, Ed and Jenny worked very hard and now the business has grown significantly. They hired more employees to make a total of 38 to utilise all of the unused vehicles. But now they have a more troubling situation. Having some information on the only PC in the office and most of theinformation manually stored in the filing cabinets, the ‘hybrid’ system created more problems for them. It became difficult to make decisions about business matter as the information may or may not be complete, correct, and current. Now, they have to spend more time in validating and verifying information between the computer and the filing cabinets.
• With their problems in managing the business, the other company started to take some business away from RTD. Ed and Jenny realised they have to do something. Jenny knew that computers and IT could help in managing the business and also getting more business and competing with the other company. They decided to introduce IT in the business and use it to support business operations, decision making and making strategic plans. They also have intention to have an online presence. So, Ed and Jenny contacted an IT consulting company in the state capital which is owned and run by you.

Description

This paper answers the following questions on the case study –
As the business/IT consultant, you need to advise Ed and Jenny on the possibilities that would best suit the requirements. You need to write a non-technical report which should cover the following tasks. The tasks are not in any order, you need to organise them in anyway you like to keep the logical flow of the discussion in the report.
1. Introducing IT is a big change in the business. What would you suggest to RTD to manage the organisational change during the implementation of the information system and online presence?
2. Identify the problems that RTD is having and then formulate the business requirements. Why would the introduction of information systems/information technology help RTD?
3. Which information system(s) can help RTD in managing the problems and fulfilling the business requirements? How will they help?
4. Explain how RTD can use the information systems, which you suggested, strategically?
5. What are the information requirements of RTD? How does this information support the strategies for competitive advantages? What business processes should RTD consider making computerised? Why?
6. For customers, employees, and RTD, what are some of the security and ethical issues that may arise with the introduction of information systems and online presence? What can be done to resolve such issues?
7. Explain how RTD may utilise IS/IT to collaborate and communicate with the key stakeholders. Explain the strategic use of computer networks (intranets and extranets) and the Internet to serve their needs.
8. How the information systems that you are suggesting would help RTD in the business decision making?