Trendr Information Technology Strategic Plan

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Introduction

The following represents a background of the company called Trendr. It exists in the small to medium enterprise category. Its revenue is $5 million per year. In addition, Trendr has growth potential. This comes from its revenue targets of $20 per year if it markets its products effectively. This will also come about if the company takes advantage of the emerging business opportunities throughout the country.

Trendr is established in the central business district of London, where it has two boutiques located in up-market malls. The company also has an online presence, where it accepts pre-orders online. The company sells trendy clothing and footwear targeting the 18-32 age demographic in urban areas.

It is a retailer sourcing merchandise from different suppliers in the UK and abroad, which it sells in its two boutiques located in upmarket malls in London. The company’s vision is to transform urban trends as a pacesetter in fashion and style. The company’s mission is the provision of merchandise that enhances the customers’ sense of style, fashion and esteem to increase the expression of self in society.

Company situation – current

Trendr intends to come up with several security features for its online business. The aim is to protect against intruders and fraudsters. The management also hopes to use technology to escalate the efficiency of procedures, especially in data management. The company is aware of the risk it faces when it launches its online selling platform. The company is presenting its products as trendy fashions.

It has to appeal to a population that mostly exists online. Although it can also rely on traditional marketing channels, the company is still growing and does not have enough funds to sustain a traditional advertising campaign. Therefore, it must find a suitable strategy to use its limited marketing resources and still achieve sufficient communication with its target customers.

The company is looking for a robust and scalable online integrated marketing communications platform. The platform should be available throughout. It should ensure that the company is accessible to its clients always. It should also ensure that the company can capture market trends. Therefore, consumer intelligence is a priority. The firm requires easy to use technology.

It needs technology that is affordable and allows the management to make informed decisions. Therefore, in addition to consumer intelligence, the firm is also looking for the opportunity to have easy-to-interpret data. The data should be passed from senior managers to store managers and sales people, who are working in the field in different capacities.

A description of five IT roles needed for success

Based on the required technology solutions for the company, Trendr can proceed with a technology plan after fulfilling the following five roles. The functions should lead to a better traction of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The positions are senior technology administration, security administration, social media administration, database administration, and IT consultancy.

Five or more personnel, depending on the need of the job, may fill these five roles. The networking infrastructure for the business will have a low footprint, given that there are two physical stores within the same city. Therefore, personnel also equipped to handle other roles such as the senior technology administration role can easily cover the role of network administration.

The social media administration role will also cover web administration. The person occupying the office will have to be capable of leading teams, providing web support, and getting additional web support officers when needed.

The work in social media administration will involve setting up of accounts, monitoring activities in social communication, channelling marketing messages through social media, running marketing campaigns, serving customer relations needs, and responding to any other inquiries that arise and are related to the Web 2.0 technology usage by Trendr (Van De Velde, Meijer, & Homburg, 2014).

There will be the database administration role, in addition to the two functions described above. The company will be handling information from a number of sources. It is the role of the database administrator as an individual or a team to come up with a database framework. It will ensure the goal of capturing and making information useful is achievable and operational.

Here, the duties will include setting up the database, scaling it to include any additional communication channels that arise, and providing access privileges to particular staff members. For example, the database administrator will link the Web 2.0 databases together in a company-wide system and then combine it with traditional information storage databases used in the company, such as financial records.

Eventually, this should lead to a single repository with various access privileges that managers and line staffs can use to inform their daily job decisions.

The internal IT consultancy role will cover all other roles that are not significant enough to qualify as separate actions. This will include the administration of the company’s intranet and the handling of cloud services accounts to ensure that service providers provide dedicated and required cloud services to the business.

The IT consultant/s will be in charge of any research on the main developments in information technology and keep the business informed of any new developments. This will allow Trendr to remain updated on its options for increasing its presence online, using tools to cut costs, and increasing its marketing and business objectives. It will also be able to operate efficiently in its public relations and human resource development functions.

The IT consultancy role will involve the management of social media accounts to help the social media administrators, especially in the coordination of technical activities beyond the role of social media administrators. For example, the internal consultants will find service providers to develop the required mobile apps that enhance the social media strategy of the company.

They will work with marketers and business development officers to interpret consumer intelligence reports, create frameworks for apps, social media account, and cloud computing infrastructure that supports solutions, which Trendr demands as part of its growth.

SWOT analysis of Trendr

Strengths

Trendr already has a website. The website is efficient enough to take customer pre-orders on clothing and footwear. Trendr can plan its inventory based on the early feedback it obtains on its website. The presence of a website is strength because it provides the first step that both the customers and the company’s personnel can interact to build better relationships.

Besides, the website gives customers an active communication channel that also gives Trendr intelligence on the demand trends for its merchandise. Creating additional social network accounts and directing users to them through communication on the website will be easy for Trendr.

Consumers expect the company to have a social media presence as a business operating in the 21st century; thus, they will look for the options on its website. A website also provides an avenue for press releases to inform customers of developments in the business (Michaelidou, Siamagka, & Christodoulides, 2011).

Another strong area is the willingness of the management to implement a technology strategy that should increase the operational scalability of the business, increase its presence online, provide it with business growth opportunities, and enhance its competitive advantage. The willingness of the management is a major factor for change management. The company is likely to face resistance as it develops its technology capabilities.

Resistance might arise in employee training and acceptance of new formats of work performance. Employees may also restrict the need to avail their personal data to a centralized database; therefore, it will be the duty of managers to convince them.

Doing this will require the managers to come up with change management programs that will ensure the technology intended for the business is successful, based on the recommendations of this report and any other finding.

Weaknesses

Lack of experience in e-commerce and online customer engagements may derail the development of a new technology framework for the business. It might take too long to train staff and create an additional office for personnel to handle technology roles. The business does not have sufficient funds for outright growth; thus, it will have to take the process slowly.

This will hinder its ability to realize the benefits of technology integration as fast as it would technically be possible. Nevertheless, the business will likely succeed, albeit at a slower pace because the development will be ongoing. This is why the lack of experience appears as a weakness and not a threat.

With the willingness of the management and the need for growth, it is important for the business to embrace technology to increase efficiency and cut costs. It might take a while, but technological change is inevitable as a common trend for most companies in the clothing and footwear retailing industry.

Opportunities

The first opportunity exists in the growing, youthful population in urban areas around the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. This demographic has access to both well-paying jobs and entry-level jobs. The target population has the disposable income required to support the business growth of Trendr. Besides, there is a growing availability of firms providing IT solutions at affordable rates.

Competition in the IT start-up industry ensures that firms like Trendr can get mobile apps and cloud services at affordable rates. Trendr can take advantage of software as a service offering. These offers allow a company only to pay for use and save on capital expenditure.

This option allows a company like Trendr to limit its initial capital expenditure and be able to adopt a wide-scale installation of IT systems, including mobile apps, social media, and cloud computing to catch up with retail industry trends (Stanphill, 2014).

Threats

Changes in social media usage trends serve as the biggest threat to the company’s growth. The firm might adopt a social media strategy that is outdated. It might also create integrated technologies for its social media that do not reflect the full opportunity for gathering consumer intelligence.

Such an outcome is threatening because it goes against the purpose of the technological system installation in the company. It will leave the business with an installed capacity for marketing, communication, and commerce that does not provide an adequate competitive advantage.

Five major goals for the information technology strategic plan

Increase the efficiency of business services covered in the Trendr business structure of retail clothing and footwear with an urban customer base.
Create enterprise practices and shared resources that allow every member of the business to communicate easily with other members, irrespective of their position. This should lead to informed and fast decision-making.
Increase brand awareness of Trendr among its target consumer population to lead to a substantial increase in revenue from the first year of implementing the technology strategic plan.
Come up with a scalable IT infrastructure that allows Trendr to spread its operations throughout the country and abroad through e-commerce and partnerships with supply and distribution networks (Rodriguez-Ardura, Meseguer-Artola, & Vilaseca-Requena, 2008).
Link internal stakeholder relations with external stakeholder relations management duties to allow streamlined management of Trendr’s business growth.

Speculation on three positive organizational impacts of implementing the strategic plan

First, with an integrated technology system, Trendr will be able to develop marketing communications for one platform, such as social media, and concurrently engage its customers and staffs on issues related to the business. For example, it will be able to use one platform to inform clients of the current offers based on their shopping experience.

In the process, it will find out about customer queries that went unanswered and then follow up with the employee concerned to satisfy the customers. Such actions will increase customer loyalty to the Trendr brand and improve its marketing through the word-of-mouth.

Second, there will be an increase in the speed of decision-making. The company will be able to get live store feedback on customer interaction, stock movement, employee concern, store design, merchandise design, and supplier relationships. It will be able to match its marketing communication with the customer expectations and meet the expectations of its store designs and employee reception (KPMG, 2011).

This will be made possible by the increased flow of information through an integrated system that is always live and provides various ways of access, such as the web, mobile apps, and text messages. Third, profit margins of Trendr will increase as cloud computing and social media marking reduce its costs and increase the revenue.

References

KPMG. (2011). Going social: How businesses are making the most of social media. Web.

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N. T., & Christodoulides, G. (2011). Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(7), 1153-1159.

Rodriguez-Ardura, I., Meseguer-Artola, A., & Vilaseca-Requena, J. (2008). Factors influencing the evolution of electronic commerce: An empirical analysis in a developed market economy. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, 3(2), 18-29.

Stanphill, J. (2014). Cloud computing should be a no-brainer solution for retail industry. Web.

Van De Velde, B., Meijer, A., & Homburg, V. (2014). Police message diffusion on Twitter: analysing the reach of social media communications. Behavior & Information Technology, 1-13. doi:10.1080/0144929X.2014.942754

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