Sample Research Proposal On Some Of The Recommendations That Have Been Provided By The Company’s Consultants For Its Long Term Expansion Plants Are:

Implementation of an IT Proposal

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive IT Proposal for a small private business named Peninsula that operates by selling construction-related service equipment to contractors and other for-profit entities; leasing of off-site self-storage facilities; and collecting huge amounts of trash from commercial, residential, and industrial areas. The proposed IT project is to be composed of Four Phases and is aimed to be completed within 8-9 months. This paper outlines the different aspects of each phase and how the IT team and the company can arrive at a successful IT framework development and integration.

Introduction

Peninsula began as a company that sells heating oil to businesses and individuals in 1930s. It then expanded its operations into different business sectors, particularly the selling of construction-related service equipment to contractors and other for-profit entities; leasing of off-site self-storage facilities; and collecting huge amounts of trash from commercial, residential, and industrial areas. For a brief background about the company, it is a privately-owned non-public (i.e. not listed in the stock exchange of its country of origin) company that has some 80 employees. Using the type of business operations that it handles to generate revenues, however, it can be said that it is a retail company, because it functions primarily as a reseller of various goods and services to other suppliers and to end consumers. In terms of annual sales, it generates some 30 to 50 million in sales. All in all, these details paint a picture that shows that Peninsula is a small company, with a lot of growth and expansion potential, although based on the number of years it has been since it started its first business operations (and generated revenue from it) was decades ago. The objective of this paper is to discuss what areas or aspects of the company’s infrastructure and core business operations can be improved and or optimized in order to bring the company to a stronger and perhaps more competitive position in the business sectors that it operates in, particularly in selling of construction-related service equipment to contractors and other for-profit entities; leasing of off-site self-storage facilities; and collecting huge amounts of trash from commercial, residential, and industrial areas. This paper will focus on the implementation of an information technology-related project that would benefit not only Peninsula (the company) but also its stakeholders, and perhaps in the long run, even the entire industry it does its business operations in.

Improved capability for IT related services and applications

Data for inventory, technical specifications, invoicing, payment acceptance, and a help section loaded into the company’s tablet units
An online scheduling feature for business process managers
Online marketing website where prospective and present customers can browse the company’s services, rates, availability, schedule, make payments, and track their services and or affiliations.
Assuming that all preparations have all been made in time such as the information technology requirements namely the websites, the codes, the programs, and the information technology hardware components (i.e. additional computers, tablets, and servers), the company’s shift towards an information technology assisted business operations management is expected to be rolled out within six months, including all the trial and error or pilot tests and evaluation.
The information technology shift program will be divided into a total of 4 phases. Each of the phases will have a specific goal that has to be attained in order to move on to the next phase. The IT project timetable is shown below.

Phase I

The first phase is one of the most crucial parts of the IT project, if not the most crucial one. This is because nothing can really be done and no change can really be done if that aspect of change is not even present in the planning change. So, if there is an intention to improve, which in this case there is, everything should begin from careful planning.
The most important part of the planning phase would be the setting of the project goals and objectives . In this case, what the current management team aims for is the incorporation of an information technology-assisted business operations management framework for Peninsula (the target company). Considering the size of the company and the span of its operations, the current IT project we are proposing can be classified as a small scale one. So, unlike other large-scale information technology projects such as the ones done by corporate giants like Microsoft, Google, FedEx, and other huge companies both in terms of organizational size and span of business operations, the planning and execution for Peninsula will be pretty much direct, straightforward, and much simpler.
The ultimate goal of this IT project is for Peninsula to realize a considerable improvement in terms of efficiency and volume handling productivity in the selling of construction-related service equipment to contractors and other for-profit entities; leasing of off-site self-storage facilities; and collecting huge amounts of trash from commercial, residential, and industrial areas (which are their core business operations) with the help of the information technology framework that will be developed by the team within a span of 8 to 9 months as specified by the project timetable shown above.
Peninsula is a company that offers a mixture of products and services to its customers. Unlike companies that rely solely on product sales to generate revenue, Peninsula generates a huge chunk of its revenues from selling services to clients. This means that the span of the business operations that can be automated via this information technology project would be smaller because their employees would still have to provide for the services that the client needs in order to generate sales—unlike in product sales-based businesses where customers can easily buy and or sell, and even receive their deliverables via a completely IT-based and a somewhat automated IT framework. So, the point is to be realistic.
Considering that Peninsula is still relying on traditional aspects of supply chain (and at some point, service chain) management, the IT team believes that there certainly is a large room for improvement for Peninsula when it comes to improving their product and service volume handling capacity and their efficiency in handling such volumes. This, if planned, executed, and evaluated properly, can translate into high sales, profit, and earnings growth for the company which is naturally something that any business owner or administrator would want.
In order to consider the IT project a success, the following set of success metrics have to be met by the end of the fourth phase.

Online scheduling of at least 75% (from the current level of 0%) of the company’s appointments

Recordkeeping accuracy improved by 95%
A record of the GPS coordinates of 100% of the company’s customers stored in the IT servers
Growth of customer base and market share by at least 10% on a year on year basis
Increased revenues of at least 15% annually
Decreased expenses of at least 10% annually
Also, a room of error has been given for the entire IT project team. This means that as long as the utilization of the newly developed and introduced IT framework could lead to the realization of at least 4 out of 6 of the success metrics listed above, then the IT shift project will still be considered a success no less.

Phase II – Hiring and Procurement

Before the implementation proper phase of the IT project, everything that the team who will handle the tests and implementation should already be stored in warehouses within the said teams’ reach. This is because the IT management team cannot afford to waste a lot of time trying to figure out what personnel and or hardware are needed for a particular operation; and they certainly cannot do it that way during the second to the last phase of the entire project. This is why in the planning stage; the planning team should be able to come up with a complete list of additional personnel to hire and the necessary tools, hardware, software, and equipment that will be needed for the IT project. This is the most systematic way to execute a relatively linear project such as this one. Additionally, it can also save the company and the IT project team a lot of time.
The company expects to hire a set of IT employees, IT consultants and experts, and additional maintenance personnel to man its supposedly newly introduced department by the end of the timetable. When it comes to equipment procurement, items that the team must focus on are the hardware, software, facilities and infrastructure (depends on whether the company would construct a building extension to their current headquarters or rent an offsite space for its IT operations), marketing, training, networking, and other recurrent costs.
All in all, the IT team expects to spend a total of $83,000 for the second phase of the IT project alone. Over the span of five years, the total estimated costs for the expenses related to the second phase of the IT shift project would be $415,000.
Nonetheless, the costs of investment should far outweigh the integrality of this phase to success of the entire project. Without the hardware, software, infrastructure, equipment, and staff to complete the operations, the implementation and evaluation teams would have nothing to use—a scenario which could automatically turn the entire project into a failure.

Phase III

The third phase is perhaps the easiest, albeit the most time-consuming and repetitive phase. This phase will be all about the implementation and evaluation of the results. This is the longest phase because it spans over four months’ worth of operations (120 days) as stated in the project timetable. However, it is the easiest because all steps that need to be taken and all the equipment and resources (including human resources) needed to complete the necessary steps for this phase would already be present (supposedly) even before the third phase starts. So, the members of the team that will be assigned to work under this phase would have nothing to do but to follow the planned procedures, execute them, and make use of the procured resources and ideas from the first and second phases.
The third phase can be further subdivided into four (sub-phases). Each sub-phase will span a total of 30 days or 1 month. After the end of each fourth business week in a month, the implementation teams will have to determine the effects of the utilization of the new IT framework on the performance of the company (directly based on the success metrics established during the planning stage) and check if there are any discrepancies. This is the test phase. So, over the span of four months of 120 days, there will be a total of four test sub-phases. Looking for bugs and gaps in the integration of the new IT framework to the company’s current operations is a key to the success of this phase. This is because after each test phase (except for the last test phase), the implementation team will have to have solved all the problems they encountered during the previous implementation phase so they would not be carried over to the next implementation phase anymore. Over time, assuming that the implementation team managed to successfully follow these standards, the IT team should be able to see a gradual but significant improvement with the way how the personnel mans the IT framework in such a way that Peninsula’s success metrics are slowly but surely being reached.

Phase IV

The fourth phase is like another round of tests, only that by this time, the tests would be bigger and grander because it would already cover the entire project from the planning to the last phase of Phase III. This is perhaps the most crucial to the success of the project because any problem that would remain unsolved after this phase would most likely become a long term problem for the IT team who will operate the new framework and of course, Peninsula, the target benefactor of the entire project. So, the aim of this phase is to check all necessary errors, bugs, and gaps, and address them all before a final re-launching or reintegration of the newly developed IT framework to Peninsula’s core business operations. Unlike the third phase which would be divided into four parts, the fourth phase will be divided to three. Every month, there will be a single round of implementation and evaluation—which is the same model that the team would use in phase three. However, because of time and resource constraints, the phase IV team would only have three attempts to perfect their craft or the entire project would potentially be unable to meet all the metrics that it has to meet by the end of the fourth phase. As mentioned in the planning stage, at least four out of the six success metrics should have been met by the time the fourth phase finishes.

Conclusions

In summary, this is a project that offers real promise. For non-startup but still small company like Peninsula, implementing an IT project may be pretty direct, simple, and straightforward. However, hurdles along the way cannot just be ruled out so planning, testing, evaluation, and successful remodeling procedures would still be necessary. With this current IT framework development and integration project, there is a great chance that Peninsula would be able to meet not just four but rather six out of the six success metrics that the IT team targeted, assuming that all necessary steps per phase have been completed properly of course.

References

Haughey, D. (2014). Project Planning a Step by Step Guide. Project Smart .