2. Q 1) Provide the summary of the case ?

3. • VTB was founded in the year 1981 by John Sortino,
who sold Teddy Bears from a cart.
• Company offer three types of products
I. Teddy Bear
II. Pajama
III. Flowers
• Sales are highly seasonal, peak volumes at Christmas,
Valentine day and Mother’s day
• Bob Stetzel working as CIO of the company and John
Gilbert holds position of CEO of the company

4.  Revenue of the company during 2005 and 2008
was $66 million
 Case deals about problem of IT architecture
which use to collapse during peak demand.
 Company has Resource constraint and limited
capital
 Company is working in three brands and
through four channels.(Retail, mail, phone,
web)
 Company is considering the replacement of full
fledged ERP.

5.  CIO is in dilemma weather to go forward with
the project of improvement or not.
 Major aim of the company is to eliminate the
complicated Middleware which is like “Black
Box”.

6. Q 2) What are the overarching questions faced by
CIO & CEO ?

7.  IT architecture failure during Peak
season(Valentine’s day, Mother’s day,
Christmas day).
 Mother’s Day is nearing bugs needed to be
fixed before that(Time Constraint).
 Limited IT employees to take care of current
and the improvement projects, just seven are
working under CIO.
 Incomplete IT architecture document existed at
VTB and control changes were minimal.

8.  Different employees are using different
programming languages like MySQL, PHP,
Access as per their convenience.
 High cost is associated with the full fledged
replacement of ERP.
 Time for completion of project is nearly 1 to 1.5
yrs.
 Some of the applications which is currently
used are back dated and needs to be updated.

9.  Demand is only Seasonal and not through out the
year.
 Shadow applications has been developed by users
to fill various needs when the IS organization lack
resources to help.
 Necessary information resided in the heads of
siloed individuals.
 Middleware was complicated and contained a
great deal of business logic, the company has lot of
system that haven’t been managed overtime.

10.  Implement the Content Delivery Network
(CDN) for Scalable server space.
 Prioritizing task among IT professional
between bug fix and system improvement.
 Proper documentation of the IT architecture
and information available with individuals
 Reducing the complexity of the middleware
and maintaining the business logic separately.
 Implementation of strong Content
Management System(CMS).

11.  Understanding the current software supporting
different channels to implement newer e-
commerce processes.
 Implementing ERP as a long term solution so
that one package is used and understood by
everyone to support different operations.
 Increasing the capacity of the middleware
during peak time.

12.  Feasibility Study
1. Acquiring the required hardware, networks to
implement ERP or CMS.
2. Hiring and training of employee to design
website and to maintain ERP.
3. The time required to implement ERP can be
between 1 to 1.5 years
4. The cost of implementing the ERP and the
breakeven point needs to be evaluated.

13.  Requirement Analysis
1. The hardware, software and network required
to implement ERP and CMS.
2. The short term requirement of a bug and
congestion free system and long term
requirement of a stable system need to be kept
in mind.
 Detailed Design
The IT architecture for the new design needs to
be well documented.
 Implementation and Testing
 Maintenance