Software Training Program ABC Company has 50,000 employees and wants to increase employee productivity by setting up an internal software applications training program. The training program will teach employees how to use Microsoft software programs such as Vista, Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Access 2010, and Project 2010. Courses will be offered in the evenings and on Saturdays and taught by qualified volunteer employees. Instructors will be paid $40 per hour. In the past, employees were sent to courses offered by local vendors during company time. In contrast, this internal training program should save the company money on training as well as make people more productive. The Human Resources department will manage the program, and any employee can take the courses. Employees will receive a certificate for completing courses, and a copy will be put in their personnel files. The company is not sure which vendor's off-the-shelf training materials to use. The company needs to set up a training classroom, survey employees on desired courses, find qualified volunteer instructors, and start offering courses. The company wants to offer the first courses within six months. One person from Human Resources is assigned full time to manage this project, and top management has pledged its support. 1. Project Scope Management Create a WBS for this project and enter the tasks in Project 201 0. Create milestones and summary tasks. Assume that some of the project management tasks you need to do are similar to tasks from the Project Tracking Database example. Some of the tasks specific to this project will be to: a. Review off-the-shelf training materials from three major vendors and decide which materials to use. b. Negotiate a contract with the selected vendor for its materials. c. Develop communications information about this new training program. Disseminate the information via department meetings, e-mail, the company's intranet, and flyers to all employees. d. Create a survey to determine the number and type of courses needed and employees' preferred times for taking courses. e. Administer the survey. f. Solicit qualified volunteers to teach the courses. g. h. Review resumes, interview candidates for teaching the courses, and develop a list of preferred instructors. Coordinate with the Facilities department to build two classrooms with 20 personal computers each, a teacher station, and an overhead projection system (assume that Facilities will manage this part of the project). i. Schedule courses. j. Develop a fair system for signing up for classes. k. Develop a course evaluation form to assess the usefulness of each course and the instructor's teaching ability. I. Offer classes. 2. Project Time Management a. Enter realistic durations for each task and then link appropriate tasks. Be sure that all tasks are linked in some fashion to the start and end of the project. Use the Project Tracking Database as an example. Assume that you have six mont.

1. Software Training Program
ABC Company has 50,000 employees and wants to increase
employee productivity by setting
up an internal software applications training program. The
training program will teach employees how to use Microsoft
software programs such as Vista, Word 2010, Excel 2010,
PowerPoint 2010, Access 2010, and Project 2010. Courses will
be offered in the evenings and
on Saturdays and taught by qualified volunteer employees.
Instructors will be paid $40 per
hour. In the past, employees were sent to courses offered by
local vendors during company
time. In contrast, this internal training program should save the
company money on training
as well as make people more productive. The Human Resources
department will manage the
program, and any employee can take the courses. Employees
will receive a certificate for completing
courses, and a copy will be put in their personnel files. The
company is not sure which
vendor's off-the-shelf training materials to use. The company
needs to set up a training classroom,
survey employees on desired courses, find qualified volunteer
instructors, and start offering
courses. The company wants to offer the first courses within six
months. One person
from Human Resources is assigned full time to manage this
project, and top management has
pledged its support.
1. Project Scope Management
Create a WBS for this project and enter the tasks in Project 201
0. Create milestones
and summary tasks. Assume that some of the project

2. management tasks you need
to do are similar to tasks from the Project Tracking Database
example. Some of the
tasks specific to this project will be to:
a. Review off-the-shelf training materials from three major
vendors and decide
which materials to use.
b. Negotiate a contract with the selected vendor for its
materials.
c. Develop communications information about this new training
program. Disseminate
the information via department meetings, e-mail, the company's
intranet,
and flyers to all employees.
d. Create a survey to determine the number and type of courses
needed and
employees' preferred times for taking courses.
e. Administer the survey.
f. Solicit qualified volunteers to teach the courses.
g.
h.
Review resumes, interview candidates for teaching the courses,
and develop a
list of preferred instructors.
Coordinate with the Facilities department to build two
classrooms with 20 personal
computers each, a teacher station, and an overhead projection
system
(assume that Facilities will manage this part of the project).
i. Schedule courses.
j. Develop a fair system for signing up for classes.
k. Develop a course evaluation form to assess the usefulness of
each course and
the instructor's teaching ability.
I. Offer classes.
2. Project Time Management

3. a. Enter realistic durations for each task and then link
appropriate tasks. Be sure
that all tasks are linked in some fashion to the start and end of
the project. Use
the Project Tracking Database as an example. Assume that you
have six months
to complete the entire project.
b. Print the Gantt Chart view and Network Diagram view for the
project.
c. Print the Schedule table to see key dates and slack times for
each task
3. Project Cost Management
a. Assume that you have four people from various departments
available part time
to support the full-time Human Resources person, Terry, on the
project. Assume
that Terry's hourly rate is $40. Two people from the Information
Technology
department will each spend up to 25% of their time supporting
the project. Their
hourly rate is $50. One person from the Marketing department is
available 25%
of the time at $40 per hour, and one person from Corporate is
available 30% of
the time at $35 per hour. Enter this information about time and
hourly wages into
the Resource Sheet. Assume that the cost to build the two
classrooms will be
$100,000, and enter it as a fixed cost.
b. Using your best judgment, assign resources to the tasks.
c. View the Resource Graphs for each person. If anyone is over
allocated, make
adjustments.
d. Print the budget report for the project.

4. 4. Project Human Resource Management.
a. Assume that the Marketing person will be unavailable for one
week, two months
into the project, and for another week, four months into the
project. Make adjustments
to accommodate this unavailability so the schedule does not slip
and
costs do not change. Document the changes from the original
plan and the new
plan.
b. Add to each resource a 5% raise that starts three months into
the project. Print
a new budget report.
c. Use the Resource Usage view to see each person's work each
month. Print a
copy.
5. Project Communications Management
a. Adjust the timescale on your Gantt chart to enable the chart
to fit on one page.
Then paste a copy of the Gantt chart in PowerPoint. You can
use your Print
Screen button to copy the image and paste it into PowerPoint.
Also add key
milestones to the Timeline and copy it into a second PowerPoint
slide. Copy and
print out both slides in Power Point on one page.
b. Print a "To-do List" report for each team member.
c. Review some of the other reports, and print out one that you
think would help
in managing the project.
Submit one or more screen shots of your MS Project 2010 file
including tasks, durations, predecessor tasks, and completed
resource sheet with costs
Strategic drivers:

5. Strategic drivers are key factors that determine if a company’s
organizational strategy will be a failure or a success; they shape
organization’s strategies which are influenced by both external
and internal drivers. External strategic drivers include markets,
competition, taxes, laws, customer needs and technological
change. Internal drivers are such as mission, profit goals and
office politics.
(http://business.simplicable.com/business/new/what-are-
strategic-drivers)
An example of a company that has taken advantage of one
strategic driver i.e. competitive forces is the Lamson & Sessions
that manufacturers and markets industry products for electrical,
telecommunication, consumer, construction, waste-water
markets and power. The company ensures that its strategy
prioritizes development and research so as to keep pace with the
competition from other companies. (http://www.lamson-
sessions.com/StrategicDrivers.html) To achieve these, the
company ensures:
1. A high performance culture- it has come up with a set of
norms and values that results to a company-wide culture.
2. It offers innovative products and services.
3. To operate an enterprise information technology to their
competitive advantage.
4. It utilizes the competitive pricing practices to ensure a
sustainable revenue and profits growth.
5. To concentrate all its associates to the concept of continuous
process improvement hence operational access.
6. To meet customer satisfaction.
RFID technology:
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an example of a
wireless communication that utilizes radio waves to recognize
and track objects. RFID technology can revolutionize the way
organizations do business and can also protect and enhance the
lives of consumers. As the most flexible auto-identification
technology, RFID can be used to supervise and monitor the

6. physical world automatically and with accuracy being the most
supple auto-identification technology.
(http://www.impinj.com/resources/about-rfid/)
RFID is enhancing a key innovation to supply chain
management. Merchants loose lots in revenues because the track
of goods was lost somewhere between the factory and the store-
shelf. Apart from lost revenue, it’s also a concern to supply
chain experts to improve productivity in goods transportation
and to secure the source of goods. RFID is the perfect solution
to these necessities. Locating and tracking is made easier and
quicker by the technology. RFID was identified as a cost
reduction technology by the Department of Defense (DOD) and
Wal-Mart. It’s used to identify both outbound and inbound
products. RFID is used in warehouses to locate and track
products. RFID is used in processing and manufacturing
industries to locate and track finished goods and Work In
Progress.
A Journals article by Sixt Car Rental Company finds RFID
technology is major to improving customer service
(http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12414). Sixt is one
of the world's largest car rental agencies based in Germany. One
of the company's greatest problems has been to keep the wait
times down for those renting vehicles, and making sure
customers can rent the cars of their choice. The amount of time
essential to locate keys for a specific vehicle was frustrating to
customers and employees.
The company’s solution was provided by Vilant Systems using
keys embedded with RFID inlays and installation of readers on
the sales counters, at the lock boxes I which customers can
bring back the keys when the sales office is not open and at the
bins where keys of cleaned vehicles are kept. The technology is
now being used in most of its branches (over 200) to locate car
keys hence saving on time as customers wait for the key to be
found and also the technology has automated the collection of
data related to when the cars are being brought back.
1. Direct marketing:

7. Direct marketing is a marketing instrument which contains
activities such as mail order, telemarketing, direct mail, direct
response advertising and email marketing. Direct marketing is
very beneficial since it allows you to directly engage with your
targets– whether they are prospects, end users, leads or existing
customers. (https://www.selectabase.co.uk/blog/2013/04/what-
are-the-advantages-of-direct-marketing)
Advantages of direct marketing are:
· Cheaper than mass market communication.
· Flexible targeting that allows you to communicate with your
target markets in a well defined way.
· Easy to manage than other marketing methods.
· Swift and flexible in getting the results.
· It’s relationship building since you engage into a meaningful
talk with your new customer.
· Enables the marketer to target different messages to different
targets.
For a company to earn a customer’s loyalty, it takes them
through very essential stages of increasing commitment:
Acquisition: after you have attained the attention of the people
you intend to reach, the task is to attract and bring the people
reached into the organization’s influence sphere. Growth at
acquisition is a cheaper, quicker, and not risky proposition than
the examined and true methods of expanded marketing and sales
efforts. Further, acquisition offers a multitude of other
advantages for instance instant economies of scale and easier
financing. The competitive advantages are very formidable, you
can catch up with your competition by getting them off guard,
and even deep market penetration to weak point to the do away
with competitors through its acquisition.
Conversion: The customers we reach and established concrete
business relationship with, they are confident and have an
interest to buy your product. The company benefit from being
able to follow on the key points a client goes through before
converting.

8. Retention: this is where you now intend and try very hard to
keep the customers and sell them more (up-selling, cross-
selling). Its far much easier to retain clients than to gain new
clients. The company should work extra-hard to keep clients
happy and determine a lifetime value of a client.
2. Four Is of internet marketing:
I was overwhelmed by the experience in FANDANGO.com. It
has advertisements that run across the top and sides of the
website (most of the time movie trailers and/or banners). If it
catches your eye and you want to learn more about it you can
click on it. Its tried to touch on all the four Is of internet
marketing:
· Interactive: the site is very interactive. The consumer is
involved in the advertisement. The site has been able to make
the customer feel part of the advertisement. This has been made
simple by the inclusion of a chat room, a game, survey, and
other fun apps.
· Information-driven: the site has made it possible for the
company to track consumer’s clicks on their websites. The
information can then is gathered and be used to prediction of
consumer’s movements based on what others have done. It has
also made it possible for the company to trace how the site is
being accessed by the consumers in that, since they get more
traffic from the site they can put more effort into the
advertisements on that website. It’s a more intelligent way to
spend the money.
· Immediate: One of the challenges that on-line companies have
had to bear with is immediate satisfaction by giving an essential
answer. To try curbing this problem, many companies have had
to cut prices and give on-line discounts. Though, some on-line
companies have been able to get a more creative solution to this
hurdle by giving much information about their products just
instantly after a click. Use of interactive chat rooms has allowed
the on-line company to have an immediate respond to a

9. customer’s query.
· Involving: it rounds up the other 3 Is. All having a common
goal i.e. involving the customer so as to make them to take a
step and involving them in the purchase. You should be wise on
how you use it since it could become frustrating and back fire
on you. I personally get annoyed when adverts pop up
everywhere covering the important stuff. This has made me
close the website I wanted to make a purchase from.
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