Term Paper on "Information Technology Aquarius Marketing Project Plan"

Term Paper 12 pages (3970 words) Sources: 12 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Information Technology

Aquarius Marketing Project Plan

The intent of this project plan is to comprehensively define the development process, testing, training, and introduction of an enterprise-class portal and series of enterprise content management (ECM) applications that will significantly increase the level of efficiency and collaboration within Aquarius Marketing. As Aquarius' business model is primarily focused on generating market reports that contain insights and analyses based on content, development an enterprise-class portal platform that includes a series of ECM applications within it makes the most sense for Aquarius. The proposed system is being specifically designed to provide Aquarius Marketing with both the applications and underlying processes to better serve their clients. As clients mention their three main areas of concern being the time taken by members of the Aquarius Marketing team to produce marketing reports, the depth of analysis in the report, and the fees charged by Aquarius Marketing being much higher than competitors, the proposed ECM system and portal will specifically focus on more efficient access to research and greater levels of integration across content repositories and processes.

Design Objectives of the Aquarius Enterprise Content Management System

The primary design objective of the ECM system is to provide flexibility in how market analysis reports are authored, edited, produced, posted, downloaded, commented on, and synchronized with clients for their benefit. The proposed enterprise system will rely heavily on portal platform technologies and ECM applications that can be quickly aligned

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with research, publication and all customer-facing processes that are critical to the firms' business model. From an analysis of Aquarius' process workflows and manually-based approach to producing analysis reports it's abundantly clear that relying on a portal platform that will allow for greater collaboration between Marketing Associates will deliver a significant improvement to workflow efficiency and productivity quickly. ECM applications have business process management (BPM) workflow applications integrated within them, which further supports the recommendation of creating and enterprise-wide content repository that is agile enough to align with existing workflows yet integrated enough to increase efficiency and performance.

In keeping with the firms' objective of having the system in place within eight weeks, a portal platform also aligns well with this requirement. Both licensed and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery models of portal platforms from leading software vendors in the area of ECM could be operational within eight weeks. Given the relatively short time period to have the system up and running, it is advisable to rely on a SaaS platform for implementation.

Another design objective specifically focuses on quantifying the increase in customer responsiveness, greater levels of tailoring existing research to customers' needs, and the development of entirely new processes for bringing more efficiency and accuracy to serving customers' requests. In order to measure these performance gains it is also advisable that the portal platform have an analytics application or actual layer in the portal architecture to track performance over time, reporting it in a dashboard (Kefi, et.al.) third design objective, relying on the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) approach, concentrates on more advanced features on the portal platform including personalization agents that can be defined by clients, administration-based applications including a web site page builder application, newsletter engine, and report generation and management application, will be integrated into the portal architecture as well. 128-bit security will also be build directly into the enterprise content management platform as well, ensuring all applications have layered security from external threats from the Internet.

A fourth design objective is to deliver user-level applications that can be selectively deployed by Aquarius Marketing as processes are created to support them, or marketing and business development campaigns created to capitalize on them. It is essential that the proposal portal architecture also include authentication of logins, advanced search features, and the creation of mini-sites for the larger clients who have the need of hosting Aquarius' published research on their corporate Intranets. In addition there is a Communication section that includes an interactive forum, Web Mail for customers and prospects that may opt in for free research support for Instant Messenging for clients, and sections for creating blogs, both for employees and customers as well. These user sections will lead to significant amounts of content being stored, which translates into the need to set a migration path to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The decision to begin with an enterprise content management system is a phase 1 of moving into a broader Service Oriented Architecture as use of the portal grows and the need to integrate with a greater number of systems increases.

Taken together, these objectives are the information systems requirements for the planned portal and ECM application. The technical issues center on the aligning of the proposed system components with internal processes, while the most critical non-technical issue is providing adequate training and development of change management strategies to ensure the systems' success.

INTRODUCTION:

Project Objectives

To provide Aquarius Marketing with a state-of-the-art portal specifically designed with an enterprise content management platform that can scale to the needs of its clients, employees and prospects.

To create administrative tools that provide Aquarius Marketing Website Managers with the necessary functionality to create, update, modify and delete entire sections of the portal in a minimum amount of time. Included in this goal is the delivering of functionality to create and update web pages, post research and define which clients will be able to download them, create and edit newsletters and also e-mail them, and generate reports to monitor site traffic.

To create a client section that is flexible enough to allow for quick additions to content repositories for each client, yet also structured enough to provide clients with the ability to quickly and intuitively navigate the site for new information. In addition to secure logins, the client section of the site will include alert functions, advanced search functionality, downloadable research, and a comprehensive communications section for enriching the online experience for clients using the site.

Scope

The scope of this document includes the structural definition of an enterprise content management portal that has significant user and administrative functionality. Within scope for this project includes the uploading, management, and deletion of research for the portal from an internal user, administrative, and clients' perspective.

Definitions

The following are commonly used definitions in the development of enterprise content management portals globally:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - the strategy of making all content available throughout an organization regardless of the database it resides in or its physical location.

Repositories - Where content is stored, and this typically refers to a grouping of databases or date warehouses together in a division of a larger organization.

Schema - the foundational structure of database records within a database.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - an enterprise-level approach to defining how system components integrate with one another to allow for maximum system configuration and functionality. ECM is the first step in creating an SOA platform for Aquarius Marketing so its future growth can quickly evolve.

Structured content - Refers to content that has specifically been created using databases and structured programming. When content is structured it's been organized into a hierarchical database.

Taxonomy - Defines the approach every organization takes in the organization of its content.

Unstructured content - Freeform content that is created when a respondent fills in a question on a questionnaire for example.

Standards Used

The following standards will be adhered to in the development of this portal: AJAX Programming Standards; Java Virtual Machine (JVM); IBM WebSphere for the Portal Technology as it can be extended into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform quickly as Aquarius Marketing portal traffic increases. WebSphere can also be implemented entirely through a SaaS architecutre.

MAIN SECTION

Background

The objectives of this project share common requirements which include the following: user authentication including single sign-on; personalization; unifying content and aggregating it; integrating content and knowledge management databases; build out an enterprise-wide portal strategy that focuses on creating, organizing and distributing content; and lastly, looking at common processes each project has in the areas of creating, organizing, managing and publishing content in each of these five portals. Murphy and Columbus (7) have completed research of how portals can be made more effective by streamlining content management strategies and serve as the first step in adopting a Service-Oriented Architecture. Their landmark report on the subject includes a methodology for organizing content first by information type intersected by point in the information or task process supported and includes vendor evaluations.

Once a portal strategy has been defined the specific requirements of each application can be tailored to the needs of both job seekers and employers. Murphy and Columbus (6, 7) advocate starting small and focus first on critical needs then expand portals to more complex requirements. Specific steps needed to accomplish the objectives of this project concurrently are as follows:

Map out and organize common processes across all areas of the project and look for ways to trim redundancies in them first before applying any technology to them. This is critical for accomplish the first design objective of… READ MORE

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Quoted Instructions for "Information Technology Aquarius Marketing Project Plan" Assignment:

“

Introduction

This one assignment within the module will address all of the module*****s learning outcomes. You

are required to produce a report that addresses the questions in the five Tasks. All five Tasks are

related to Aquarius Marketing. An overview of the business is provided below. However, if you

make any assumptions then you must identify these in your answers.

Assignment

Aquarius Marketing operates from one site housing a number of offices. A Managing Director, five

Marketing Directors, fifteen Marketing Specialists, three support staff and one receptionist work in

these offices. Most of the work is carried out for local companies in producing marketing reports.

Currently, all the staff have stand-alone PCs with standard packages (e.g. Word Processing,

Spreadsheets and Marketing Software). The Marketing Specialists are very-well experienced in all

aspects of marketing but have limited knowledge of the new information technology that has

currently been employed by their competitors. Their customers are demanding a much faster

service than that has been previously offered by Aquarius Marketing. A recent customer survey

identified three main areas of concern:

*****¢ Time taken for Marketing Specialists to produce their marketing reports

*****¢ Lack of in-depth (marketing) analysis

*****¢ Fees charged by Aquarius Marketing were much higher than its competitors

The Marketing Director is aware that using technology to a greater degree and meeting customer

needs more fully is essential if the business is to keep its loyal customer base. Therefore, the

Managing Director has decided to invest in an information system to manage administration

functions, carry out marketing analysis, and produce marketing reports for the clients and

management reports for the marketing specialists. The Managing Director has decided to hire the

services of an IT consulting firm to develop the system. An email has been sent to all staff that new

information systems will result in a review of organisational structures and processes. Some of the

support staff have become anxious as to what changes the new system could possibly bring to their

jobs. Marketing specialists have also shown concerns, fearing that they may not be able to use the

new system.

Your role, as a Project Manager of the IT consulting firm, is to produce a detailed project plan and

a supporting report that is to be presented to the Managing Director of Aquarius Marketing. A

budget of $90,000 has been allocated for the system. The Managing Director of the business is

expecting the system to be in place within eight weeks. You can make any other assumptions, but

these must be made clear in your report. Additionally, the report must address the following Tasks:

Task 1 *****“ 15 Marks

Identify the possible information systems requirements for Aquarius Marketing. Provide a short

discussion on the constraints within which information system requirements will be specified. Your

answer should address technical and non-technical issues.

Task 2 *****“ 25 Marks

Using the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), develop a project plan for Aquarius Marketing that

will meet the stated aims. It is not necessary to provide a detailed project plan but more important

to identify and provide a succinct summary of the key stages.

a) In broad terms discuss how your plan will meet the stated aims of the project.

b) Provide a short summary of each of the key stages of your project plan.

c) Provide a short discussion on the importance of timescales and resource allocation.

d) Identify the resources and timescales for each activity of your project.

Task 3 *****“ 20 Marks

Identify the potential problems that may occur (technical and non-technical) during the

implementation of the proposed system. In relation to your project plan, explain how effective

leadership can overcome some of the problems that are likely to occur in implementing your plan.

Task 4 *****“ 20 Marks

It has been suggested that many of the problems associated with project management can be

overcome by effective means of communication.

*****¢ Identify and summarise key principles of effective communication.

*****¢ Identify and explain the types of communication problems your plan may encounter and explain

how effective communication methods can alleviate these.

Task 5 *****“ 20 Marks

Mentoring and coaching can be useful tools to assist in overcoming potential non-technical

problems. Identify the difference between *****˜mentoring***** and *****˜coaching', and explain how they can be

used to overcome non-technical problems in your plan.

Guidance

Consult with your tutor if you are uncertain about any aspects of the assignment.

Submission Requirements

To pass the assignment candidates must:

*****¢ Complete all the five Tasks.

*****¢ Submit their work in a single word-processed of no more than 5000 words, excluding

appendices.

*****¢ Produce clear and specific reasoning and argument to justify answers.

*****¢ Make appropriate reference to relevant concepts, techniques and theories

*****¢ Appropriately cite all information sources.

*****¢ Include their project plan in the appendices.

Warning: All media must be virus free!

Media containing viruses, or media which cannot be run directly, will result in a FAIL grade being

awarded for this module.

*****

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