APA paper on Cow wow

Running head: IT Strategy FOR Cowwow 0

IT Strategy for CowWow

Venkat Rajula

IST 7100

Prof. Gregory Hughes

Table of Contents

IT Strategy for CowWow 3

Description of the Business 3

IT Strategy Proposal 4

Incentive based customer satisfaction survey 4

Exploring option of Social Media presence 5

Inventory management system 5

Sourcing Strategy 5

Financial Case 6

Implementation Timeline 8

Plan for Sustaining the IT Initiatives 8

Summary 8

References 10

IT Strategy for CowWow

As part of IT Strategy research paper, I have selected Cow Wow case study for my Week 7 writing assignment. In it, I recommended that Cow Wow could improve its business by using IT tools as follows:

1) Implement an incentivized customer satisfaction survey online to better understand the customer's consumer demographic.

2) Create a more consistent and widespread social media presence for the firm to capitalize on their millennial market. 

3) Utilize a more accurate inventory management system to not waste product and to avoid inventory shortages where the product is selling well.

CowWow Cereal Milk product which was owned by Mr. Pouy and his main focus area are children of age 5-10 years old who regularly use these products.The article does not tell us much about how much money is being made per purchase or how many of the product are selling, so those numbers will be hypothetical. The only concrete information we do have is that Cow Wow's creator Mr. Pouy made an initial investment of $175,000 into the first 9000 crates of product and will invest another $100,000 to $200,000 depending on which of the three options he takes for the future of his company (Grossmann, 2014).

Some of the IT initiatives that can be used as part of business growth for CowWow cereal milk are as follows:

1) Implement an incentive based customer satisfaction survey online to better understand the customer's consumer demographic.

2) Create a more consistent and widespread social media presence for the firm to capitalize on their millennial market. 

3) Utilize a more accurate inventory management system to not waste product and to avoid inventory shortages where the product is selling well (Butler, Herlihy, & Keenan, 2005, p. 341).

As part of business strategy and considering input of IT role, Mr. Pouy can use incentive based customer satisfaction survey, where an online survey can be used in order to better understand the customer’s consumer demographic and see how well he can do marketing in the areas that are not seeing any business and focus more on places where he is getting surveys. An online portal from SurveyMonkey can be used in order to reach out to customer to understand their needs. Some of the major inputs for business could be whether the customers are interested in distribution center based supply or picking up based supply or even home delivery needs can be derived based on the inputs from this online customer satisfaction survey (Wadsworth, 2011).

Exploring the option of social media presence will make marketing use of IT. Since, use of social media has been increased and people rely on data that is online to check the reviews and products and any complaints. Mr. Pouy can consider setting up a Facebook Account, Twitter account and even Instagram in order to engage customers to the product. Some of the perks can be added by downloading the application. Clipless coupons have now gained importance and offers can be updated directly in the website or application. Social media presence will improve the overall sales and business growth of the product (Norris, Cavan, & Norris, 2012, p. 1946).

Inventory management system is also an important step to determine the overall tracking activity of the CowWow cereal milk product because the shelf life of the product is also important aspect which will add to the costs of the overall business. Inventory management system will keep a track of stock, raw materials and even inflow of ingredients is essential to track along with supplies to outside vendors need to be tracked appropriately (Regattieri, Gamberi, & Manzini, 2006, p. 347).

Sourcing Strategy is an important aspect to consider to determine the overall implementation of three recommendation of IT initiatives. The three IT initiatives that are recommended can be performed by a hiring a IT analyst or outsourcing this to a third-party vendor to perform all these recommendations. I suggest that hire a IT analyst as it can be useful for successful implementation of the all three initiatives along with thinking of what can be done to improve overall sales of CowWow cereal milk product. Based on our learning from Week 2, it appears that outsourcing can be cost effective, but still hiring a local IT analyst would be helpful as he can coordinate with business people to determine what is correct for the organization (Walse, 2016, p. 2281).

The financial case of the implementation of three recommendations are listed in the table 1 below. It involves the total investment needed to perform the three recommendations along with costs for maintaining IT systems along with evaluation metrics on Return of investments are considered to be 225% and the payback period is expected to be more than 3 years.

Table 1

Return on Investment

The overall implementation of the recommendations made are expected to be a 11-month project timelines, but the payback period will exceed 3 years. The implementation of overall need to be on rolling wave format and each activity is different and integration can be done at a latter point of time. The IT analyst also need to plan for testing of all IT system before rolling out in the organization and this is essential part as it detects any major defects in the software implementation.

Backup and contingency plan are very important in sustaining IT initiatives, post implementation support is major task in terms of IT initiative sustainability. An IT support staff need to be present in order to monitor the overall activity of the three recommendations made and prepare some back up and contingency plans to support the downtime of the IT initiatives.

Based on my understanding, IT strategy need to be embedded into any organization along with business strategy and they cannot function separately, while preparing IT strategy business inputs need to be taken along with proactive measures and align with business needs as and when required. IT initiatives need to be of strategic theme based as it has influence on the overall business activity of the organization. Further, based on the recommendation made above, CowWow milks cereal product will gain business.

References

Butler, M., Herlihy, P., & Keenan, B. P. (2005). Integrating information technology and

operational research in the management of milk collection. Journal of Food Engineering. 70(3):341-349. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.689.6207&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Grossmann, J. (2014). A sweet breakfast memory that connects with the wrong market. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/business/smallbusiness/cow-wow-cereal-milk-connects-with-wrong-market.html?_r=0

Norris, C., Cavan, D., & Norris, G. (2012). Identifying social impacts in product supply chains:

overview and application of the social hotspot database. Sustainability, 4(9), 1946-1965. Retrieved from http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/9/1946/htm

Regattieri, A., Gamberi, M., & Manzini, R. (2006). Traceability of food products: General

framework and experimental evidence. Journal of Food Engineering. 81, 2, p. 347–356. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877406006893

Wadsworth, M. (2011). The role of new technology in the dairy industry. Milkproduction.com.

Retrieved from http://www.milkproduction.com/Library/Editorial-articles/The-role-of-new-technology-in-the-dairy-industry/

Walse, R. (2016). Business applications of information technology in dairy industry.

International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technologies, Vol. 7 (5) , 2016, 2281-2286. Retrieved from http://ijcsit.com/docs/Volume%207/vol7issue5/ijcsit20160705028.pdf