Business Objective Of Stoney Crags Garden Centre example essay topic

CONTENTS Section Page Contents... 1 1. Introduction... 2 2. Procedure of investigation... 3 3.

Analysis... 5 4. Conclusion... 11 Report to the Stoney Crags Garden Centre I. Introduction I. 1. Back Ground Information. The Stoney Crags Garden Center is a company participates in horticultural design and provides services for horticulturalists and gardeners in local region.

Because it is located near a famous tourist place, it draws customers from any where. In the past several years, the firm wins good reputation by selling their landscape garden design. The design service is consisted of two parts: 1. Firstly the customers give their requirement of the design to the company. For example the size and the shape of their garden. 2.

And then the designer of the company will draw up a garden design approach to the criteria of the customer. By the application of modern computers, the company can create a virtual designed basic on the criteria in a short period and demonstrate this prototype to the customer. Necessary modification will be took place until the prototype makes everyone's satisfaction. In addition, the owner of the Stoney Crags Garden Centre is eager to develop multiple - national business within the Europe countries. I. 2. Problem layout. In order to expand the Stoney Crags Garden Centre, the firm has to achieve the tasks mentioned above.

Consequently, a business information system is required for the current need and further. I. 3. Objective. The purpose of this report is to help the Stoney Crags Garden Centre to set up the business information system in the following areas: l Identification of all the users of the system and their respective information requirements. l Critically evaluate these requirements with respect to Operational, Tactical and Strategic decision support systems. l Identification of all the Critical Success Factors approach to the Business Objectives of the Stoney Crags Garden Centre and produce a prioritized development plan for a Management Information System. II. Procedure of Investigation According to this situation, an investigation had been carried out so that enough information was collected for produce this report.

The details of are described below: 1. Date of investigation. The research was take place in 16/03/2003 from 2: 00 pm to 5: 00 pm. The total duration is 3 hours. 2. Place for the investigation.

It was held in the Room 201, second floor at the J. B Library in the main campus of University of Bradford. 3. Investigators participate in the research. Three full time students from the course of Software Application and Development at the University of Bradford had participated in the activity they are Jian Hui CAO (Jeff), Xin Song and Zhu el.

4. Method applied. Discussion is the main method that applied during the investigation. After a certain period's individual consideration, three investigators presented their own opinion about the questions of the requirement and the information reflected from the case.. Analyse After a series of debates, the analysis of each tasks basic on the case it corresponds are shown in the following: I. Analysis of identification of all the users of the system and their respective information. l Identify all the users. Basic on the background information, there are three obvious characters: the owner the staff and the customers.

However, after a discussion, result showed that there is some information belong to neither staff and owner in the company. If discuss from the importance of the information for planning, they should be sorted into tactical level. As a result, there should be a character who is between owner and staff. Therefore in this document, that character is assumed The users of this system are: 1) The owner of the Stoney Crags Garden Centre. 2) The staff of the Stoney Crags Garden Centre. 3) The customers of the Stoney Crags Garden Centre. l Analysis of all the user's respective information.

The owner should know: 1) According to the case, the first thing the owner needs to know is the fashion of gardening themes design and the trend of it's development. 2) Plant requirement to plan strategies is also what the boss should know. The staff should have the information of: 1) Customer's garden region. 2) Type of soil of the garden.

3) The style of the garden. 4) Climatic region of the area to the growing requirements. 5) Cost of the plan. 6) The plants' availability. The manager of garden centre should have the information of: 1) The other garden centres that have close liaison for obtaining plants. 2) Price of the plants.

3) The availability of the plants in the other garden centres. 4) Contractor's information. 5) Dates customers request for deliver. The information essential for customers: 1) Their garden region. 2) Climatic region in their garden zone.

4) The cost of the plans. II. Critically evaluate these requirements with respect to Operational, Tactical and Strategic decision support system. No body would doubt that the value of information is to support people in different occupation to make decisions and setting up plans. Theoretically, plans could be classify into three categories below. (Please refer to figure 1) l Operational Level The staff should have the information of: 1) Customer's garden region.

5) Cost of the plan. Analysis: There are two obvious characters in operational planning: 1. Firstly, plans are set up by approaching to transactional evaluation. In this case, information for normal staffs and customers of the garden centre are mostly relative to real business (theme garden design project) but not any abstract plans.

2. Secondly, all the plans are aimed at short term period. That is to say the period of validity of the information is considerably short than another level. Back to the background, it is not hard to discover that information for normal staffs and customers is limited by the specific project. This reflects once the deal is finished, the information is not as valuable as before any more. Obviously the information mentioned above should belong to Operational Level l Tactical Level The manager of garden centre should have the information of: 1) The other garden centres that have close liaison for obtaining plants.

2) Price of the plants. Analysis: There are two main reasons lead to information mentioned above should belong to the Tactical Level. 1. Tactical level is consists of longer term plan that abstract from operational level, normally the period of validity of the information in tactical level is from one to five years time. In the garden centre's situation, the information such as contact the other garden centre, getting resource from other garden centre is more likely a long term co-operation between Stoney Crags Garden Centre and the other companies.

2. Doubtless, the information in this level is abstract from daily specific business. That is also represents that value of information for such level is not only valuable for which specific project or deal but also contains a certain of common value that could benefit most of deals. As a result, such information should belong to tactical level. l Strategic Level The information for the owner: 1. According to the case, the first thing the owner needs to know is the fashion of gardening themes design and the trend of it's development. 2.

Plant requirement to plan strategies is also what the boss should know. Analysis: Strategic Level is the tope level in the all three levels. The task of this top level is to analysis the situation of the company's business through a term prospect and to set up plans for long-range development. Consequently, all the information for long term development should be classified into strategic level. Return to the business of Stoney Crags Garden Centre, the owner of the garden centre wants to develop international business in European countries. Surely, this is a long term development of a company like the garden centre, as a result all the information subject to such business goal should be sorted in strategic level Figure 1: Category of information in three levels.

Identification of all the Critical Success Factors pertinent to the Business Objective of Stoney Crags and produce a prioritized development plan for a Management Information System. 1. Business objective of Stoney Crags Garden Centre: 1) To provide landscape garden design service with the theme customers appoint to is the main business that the garden centre aim at. 2) To develop subsidiary companies in another part of the country and even set up international subsidiary companies in another European countries. 2. Success Factors pertinent to the Business Object: In general experience whether the product of a company could match customer's requirement is the main factor that leads to a company's success.

In the situation of Stoney Crags Garden Centre, the factors could make business success are described in the following: 1) A complete database that contains all the soil type and quality. 2) Always fully understand customer's theme garden requirement such as direction it faces, style of the garden the type of plant customer request etc. 3) Understand customer's theme garden's environmental condition 4) The satisfied cost of the theme guardian 5) The trends in gardening themes and plant requirement in other European countries. 3. Management information system development. As it has been known that internal information originates within the organization and flows horizontally and vertically around the organization.

External information about the environment which should be obtained by a continuous scanning and intelligence gathering process. (T Lucky 1989). According to the situation of garden centre, two sets of information system should be developed: external information system and internal information system. l External information system: The main task of the external information system is to smooth the communication between the company and outer environment like customer, external product supplier and contactor etc. the system could ensure the exchange information between the internal information system inside the corporation and out side environment. Please refer to figure 2 below: Figure 2: External information system l Internal information system: The function of internal information system is to deliver information among three different levels inside a company. 1. Operational management are concerned with implementation and control of the day-today activities of the organization.

(T Lcuey 1989) That means, in the operational level, the main task is just to focus on every garden design project ordered by customers and to report the feed back to upper management level in the company... 2. Common experience that that is no one best design for tactical level MIS due to the unpredictable environmental factors. In tactical level, managers in the company should respond for evaluate the situation of garden centre's business after a certain period. And to set up next plan after such stages. 3.

Owner of the garden centre should consider the international business for example how to develop subsidiary companies in other countries basic on the experience of the headquarter. IV. Conclusion The Stoney Crags Garden Center is a company participates in horticultural design and provides services for horticulturalists and gardeners in local region. Because of the development of the company, the owner wants to benefit his business through the application of modern computer. To sum up, basic on such scenario, a MIS system is request to set up. After analysed the objective, success factors and information mastered by them company, a solution has been found that 1.

Theme garden design projects should be managed in operational level of the MIS. 2. In the tactical level, managers should evaluate the feed back of the situation of the deals and conduct environmental scanning so that next step plan could be set up. 3. The owner of the garden centre who contracts on the Strategic Level is better to put their eye sight to develop international business like set up another companies in another European countries according to current achievement of the company.