Castle's Family Restaurant has eight restaurants in the northern California area with approximately 300-340 employees. Most of the employees are part time, with approximately 40% of them full time. The operations manager, Jay Morgan, also acts as the HR manager and travels to each location each week to take care of scheduling, recruiting, hiring, and answering questions for the employees as needed. He also takes care of payroll using an Excel spreadsheet and has a computer application to print payroll checks. Mr. Morgan approaches you, an HR consultant, for a proposal. Due to the increase in gasoline costs, he would like to greatly reduce his travel time for visiting each location each week and wonders if there is anything you can suggest to him to help him complete his HR tasks in a cost-effective manner. He hopes there is some way he can do part of his HR tasks from his office instead of traveling to each location.

Stage I

Using the case scenario above, provide an assessment of the current business. Describe the company in terms of size, type of business, and so on. Explain why you think an HRIS is needed. As the owner of your own HR consulting firm, write a 2-4-page paper that includes the following paper headings, which are denoted in all caps.

INTRODUCTION: provides sufficient background on the topic and previews major points.

BUSINESS ASSESSMENT: the name, type, and size of business you're assisting. Make assumptions in your business description using theory as needed and include the information in your paper for this case scenario. These assumptions would include background about a restaurant work environment and industry.

IDENTIFIED PROBLEMS: Review all HR problems identified. I recommend making a list of HR functions that you believe could be more efficient based on the information provided in the scenario. From that list, choose one HR function for analysis, which will be the main focus for your business plan. You want to explain why you chose that HR function as your first item, and substantiate with theory.

HRIS NEEDS ASSESSMENT: Explain how automation might create a more efficient process from the HR function chosen. How might an HRIS application assist the business?

CONCLUSION: The conclusion is logical, flows from the body of the paper, and reviews the major points.

Stage II

Provide a detailed description of the HRIS application(s) chosen for the business. What type of HRIS might create a more efficient process for the HR function chosen? This is not a copy/paste of information from a vendor website, but an analysis and business plan to share with your customer. As the owner of your own HR consulting firm, write a 2-4-page paper that includes the following paper headings, which are denoted in all caps.

INTRODUCTION: provides sufficient background on the topic and previews major points.

HRIS TYPE: Now that you've conducted some research in the previous assignment, you should have a good foundation to take the next step in your business plan. You should have a good review of the scenario and have conducted some research on HRIS systems, and now your next step is to choose a type of HRIS. Share the type of system you plan to implement to help your customer. This must be substantiated in this paper to your customer from a theoretical perspective.

HRIS VENDOR CHOICE: Now that you have an HRIS type chosen, you need to conduct research to find an HRIS vendor. You want to do a compare and contrast in this section of at least two vendors. Then, choose a vendor. Explain why you chose this vendor over another/others. Include the Web address and proper citations for the vendor applications compared. You must have theory to support your decision.

CONCLUSION: The conclusion is logical, flows from the body of the paper, and reviews the major points.

Stage III

At this point of the project, you have identified the problem and a technology solution for the business. Now, you want the business to accept the idea.

Using your text, the previous stages completed with feedback provided, and the business plan template (see Doc Sharing), write a business plan to give your customer that details the risks, assumptions, impact, and so on of the proposed implementation of the HRIS.

This stage of the project should be a professional document that you would present to a customer leadership team to accept your business plan.

See the Business Plan Template in Doc Sharing for details of each section required.

Do not copy and paste Stage I and Stage II information into this Final Course Project. Stages I and II are considered raw data. You are now finalizing and summarizing. You are applying critical thinking skills to the data you've collected.