Project Purpose

This is a project initiation plan for an organization named Longtau technology. The organization has been rapidly expanding their business processes but recently they have been facing operational issues while dealing with the consumers. Therefore, in order to resolve the operational issues in the United Kingdom department, the management has decided to take up a change management initiative. This change management program will consist of implementing CRM into the United Kingdom operations department and develop a new customer service department for handling these issues.

Longtau technology is one of the Chinese organizations that manufactures, supports and designs network equipments for computers.  After capturing considerable market share in China, they have expanded their business in Europe. The organization has been selling more than 10,000 business units annually across Europe to business consumers and consists of 40 distributors in their network.  They provide support to the business consumers but recently there have been complaints that consumers have been lost between the call center and sales department. Thus, a new project has been initiated for dealing with this issue, which consists of the implementation of CRM as measure of change management.

The project scope statement defines all the essential information required for executing a particular project. The project statement will consist of factors such as requirements, expectations and features of the consumers in a given project.  This project will highlight the initiative and processes required for implementation of change management through CRM (customer relationship management) implementation. The project scope is divided further into parts, which are described in detail in the later part of the report.

The project objective for implementing change management by implementation of CRM (customer relationship management) are defined as follows:

• Evaluation of the existing network systems for identifying the changes required
• Identification of change management strategies for improvement in organizational business model
• To develop document for CRM implementation
• To integrate the developed  CRM software into the business model
• Development of new customer service department for handling consumer grievances
• To slowly adapt to the changes in the organizational business model for better efficiency in operations

Project requirement will consist of all the important processes for successfully executing the processes.  Requirements provide a clear view of the implementation process. In this project, the requirements of the project are as follows:

• Identification of the change management initiatives
• Re structuring of the processes within the business model
• Technical requirement
• Analysis of the CRM phase
• Adaptation of the CRM phase

Constraints are the limitations and restriction which a project manager has to deal with while successful execution of the processes. The time span of the project is high so the employees will have to managed thoroughly by providing proper guidance. The new system developed should be compatible to the initial software used in the organization. The purchases of the products will have to be made in accordance to the allocated budget in the project. The managing director will go through weekly reports for understanding overall allocation of resources.

Project Description

The project should identify assumptions, which will be considered during the execution of the project.

• This undertaken project has full support from the sponsors, the internal stakeholders and all the departments in the organization.
• The objective and purpose of developing and executing this project should be communicated throughout all the departments.
• The addition requirements for successful completion of the project will be provided by the headquarters in China.

  The projects are developed to serve a specific purpose and are mainly focused on fulfilling the needs and wants of the consumers. The success of the project will be determined the various tangible and the intangible outcomes which should be achieved for achieving success of the project. Therefore, simply it can be defined as the input to a particular process can be defined as deliverables. Generally, project deliverables consist of information, plan, documents, software, equipment and money. The project deliverables for bringing about change management by implementing CRM are as follows:

Milestone

A simplified definition of project milestone is that they are the tasks having zero duration but signifies completion of a crucial component in the project. The sequence of events signifies completion of different phases of the project is known as milestone. Milestone does not have any impact on the time span of the project and will only define completion of stages in the project. The milestones in this project are as follows:

The table consists of the overall schedule of the project and defines each of the tasks in the project. Each of the phases in the project have a significant importance as each phase will contribute to the overall success of the project. The change management phase identifies the different changes required for better organizational model. The first task will identify the different changes required in the organization for providing the consumers with better experience. After the identification of the change management requirement an official document, have to be developed that will define the activities necessary for achieving the goals of the stakeholders.  The developed document has to deployed so that it can be approved and the other processes can be commenced.  This will end the first phase and the first milestone is reached which is the development of the change management document.

The next phase is the re-engineering the business processes. This means that the documents will be used to develop functions for restructuring of the organizational processes. The first task in this phase in conversion of documents into effective functions, the second task will examine the existing processes to identify the changes and compatibility of the processes. The next task is conducting various workshops for confirming the feasibility of the proposed measures.  The next task will map the proposed processes so they can be further fine tuned to optimum process. Completion of this task means that the second milestone is achieved that is engineering of business processes received.

Project Scope Statement

The next phase is the technical requirement phase where the technical details will be formulated and implemented into the business process. The first task in this phase is submission of drafts for CRM implementation. The second task is reviewing the proposed methods for CRM implementation. This task will investigate the document for improving the overall implementation process. The next task will document the extra requirements necessary for developing the effective processes.  The second last task in this phase will consist of clarifying the tasks that will have to be performed in this phase.  Then in the phase, the last task will confirm all the requirements for implementation of CRM into the processes. Completion of this task will ensure that third milestone has been achieved.  

The next phase is the most crucial phase in this project as it consists of analysis of the CRM phase where the various CRM processes will be analyzed and the infrastructural requirement for this implementation will be developed.  Completion of tasks in this phase means the first CRM milestone has been achieved. The last phase deals with the practical implementation of the CRM processes into the organization setting. The first task in this phase is integration of the CRM model into the business model and interfacing the tools for effective development. The next task includes customization of the CRM tool so that it can be used effectively for catering to the needs of the organization. Customization of CRM into the organizational business model takes a considerable amount of time and transition of the organization from the old setting to the new setting will be achieved in the last, which completes the final milestone in the project.

However, all the tasks in this project are critical and the cost of resources cannot be reduced by altering resource allocation. On the hand, if the project time span needs to reduced more resources will have to be allocated. This will increase the overall budget of the project.

This part of the project will define the forecasted budget that is needed for execution of the project. However, this is not the final budget as budget may change depending upon availability of resources and time constraint. The budget table shows cost of allocation of resources through each of the activity.

  The resource overview shows the different resources that have been allocated to the project. The first table shows that different, their time span of work and working hours of each of the resources. The second table shows the cost of each of the resources used in the project starting form the cost of managing director to the project manager.

Project Objectives

Graph: Allocated cost

Risk management is an essential component of project management process as involves the identification, analysis and mitigation of possible risks . Risk analysis is executed to identify the different risk factors and their priority levels so that risk can be categorized and avoided depending upon their priority. Risk priority can be illustrated as the probability of occurrence of a risk factor during the overall time period.

Communication plan is developed to reduce the possibility of delays in various phases of the project. There should be effective communication between the external and the internal stakeholders of the organization. Moreover, the communication plan will provide better transparency and accountability to the project. The main purpose for developing a communication plan is to schedule activities related to communication among the project internal stakeholders. The communication has been developed based on the activities set into the project schedule. Communication plan facilitates in teamwork and having better chances of avoiding the risk processes within the organization.  The most suitable form of communication tool for documentation processes is email. Weekly meetings have to conducted with the managing director for providing project status report. The project manager will have to conduct weekly meeting with other managers such as operational manager, sales manager, human resource manager and finance manager for discussing about the constraints, cost and effective management of human resources. This helps in better handling of the resources and workforce of the organization.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded from the project that the new CRM implementation process will be able to improve the operational efficiency of the overall process.  The current issue faced by the United Kingdom department of Longtau technology will be resolved by implementing change management. However, the risk factors will have to be taken into account so that any deviation can be avoided.

References

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Kerzner, Harold, and Harold R. Kerzner. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Nurdiani, Indira, Jürgen Börstler, and Samuel A. Fricker. “The impacts of agile and lean practices on project constraints: A tertiary study.” Journal of Systems and Software 119 (2016): 162-183.

Pheng, Low Sui. “Project Risk Management.” Project Management for the Built Environment. Springer, Singapore, 2018. 159-176.

Pheng, Low Sui. “Project Scope Management.” Project Management for the Built Environment. Springer, Singapore, 2018. 63-77.