Assignment

Introduction

You have been informed by the CEO of your company, that the company wants to implement a DSS to facilitate decision making and you will be the one to lead the project from vendor selection to implementation if you convince him of your skills. However, before entrusting you such a responsibility he would like you to submit a report covering what the criteria will be for selecting the right DSS for the organization, and how your company should plan and prepare to implement it.

Your company, Engelhard Chemicals, has enjoyed fifteen years of continuous profitability. Unfortunately, Engelhard's revenue is going down - losing market share to new competitors. A study conducted by outside consultants working for Engelhard has revealed that these competitors are able to react very fast to changes in the market place. They change their prices immediately depending on market demands, they are able to work with a large number of suppliers to find the best prices and delivery times for raw materials and fulfill orders faster than Engelhard can do it, thus allowing them to cut their prices and increase their revenue while maintaining reasonable profit levels. The consultants recommended that Engelhard need to implement a DSS to help management react faster to the market conditions

After reading the report provided by the consultants, the Engelhard CEO wants you to prove that a DSS system will get the right knowledge in the required form to the right people when they need it so they can make better and better decisions - that will make Engelhard Chemicals more competitive on the market place. The CEO also wants you to specify who in the company will be considered a user of the new DSS. He wants you to convince him about the utility of such a system before he approves the budget for the project.

After discussing with the consultants, he is also concerned about the way his employees will receive the new system. He knows that any system is as good as the input data provided to it - and he wants you to propose an implementation and training plan that will ensure that the employees will embrace the new system. The training plan needs to be targeted by roles. This is your time to shine and convince him that you are the right guy to manage this project.

Deliverables

The deliverables for your Final Project includes a report that describe for your CEO how a DSS will benefit the organization and make it more competitive in the market place, what criteria will be used to assess and select the right DSS for your organization, who will use it, and how the system will be implemented and training conducted.

Your final report should not be less than six pages in length or more than ten pages. Be sure the report is in MS Word, Arial 12-pt font, with single spacing. The CEO doesn't like flowery language and has a tremendous appetite for financial facts and numbers, so be prepared to be very specific and succinct in your argumentation, with solid return on investment numbers to back your recommendations.

In addition, you should know that your CEO is a very busy man and he will read your report only if you manage to convince him in under 3 minutes that your report is actually worth his while reading. To accomplish that you need to include a brief executive summary of the report, and you can do this in either of two ways: (1) Short PowerPoint slide show- up to 6 slides; or (2) A 25-line e-mail addressed to your CEO, also in single spacing, Arial 12-pt font.