Company Background

National Booksellers, Inc. (NBI) is a national distributor of books, DVDs, CDs, PC games, Console games, books on cd, etc… for publishers, game companies, and large distributors. They currently market their merchandise to bookstores, computer stores, and other retailers. However, they would like to expand their market and begin selling to anyone who wants their products and develop an e-commerce presence which would allow them to market individual consumers directly. NBI has a single warehouse in Grand Rapids, Michigan where the company headquarters is also located. NBI plans to implement a second warehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan soon. The company employs 100 drivers and owns 150 trucks used to deliver merchandise. Recently, a large retail chain agreed to purchase merchandise from them if they could install a new information system that would communicate with their system within the next six months. The CEO of NBI, Fran Tidewell, has hired you to develop a set of deliverables (see below) to be used in an upcoming meeting with the board of directors. If the board of directors approves the project, NBI will proceed and put the new system in place.   Fran has the utmost confidence in you and the future success of NBI rests in your hands.

Assumptions

1.The new system should support the following business processes: Inventory and Warehousing, Order Processing, Distribution and Shipping, and Reporting.

2.The system should interface with a variety of existing corporate support systems and the executive information system.

3.The system should interface with various customer information systems for the purposes of automatic inventory management and reporting on a daily basis – for those customers desiring this service.

4.Fran has suggested that in order to reduce overall risk, we should parallel the new system with the old system for a minimum of two weeks before cutting over.

5.The system should allow consumers to order products directly.

6.The system should be flexible enough to accommodate any type of inventory in the future – not just books and magazines.

7.The system must be installed within 6 months from date of board approval.

8.The Grand Rapids warehouse will go on-line first.

9.The Ann Arbor warehouse will come on-line 3 months after Grand Rapids goes live.

Project Plan Deliverables

Project Scope Document (Must use MS-Word)

> Defines the work that will be performed and the deliverables that will be produced as part of the project.

> To avoid misunderstanding, it defines what is out of scope as well (work that will not be performed and deliverables that will not be produced).

> This is the basis for all other project documents that follow and must be validated by your customer.

Project Budget (Must use MS-Excel)

> Project budget lists all of the planned costs for the project

> Planned costs should include categories which include: labor costs (employees, consultants, contractors separately); software costs (initial purchase, use and license); hardware costs (application servers, web servers, database servers, middleware, storage repositories, printers, desktop computers, network infrastructure, telephony, etc…); supplies; reward program for project team and incentives; facilities rental or purchase; contingency. All costs to implement the new system should be included.

> Project budget should be broken down by category above by month and totaled by category and by month.

> Project budget should list rates, full time equivalents (FTE), and hours for labor.

Business Case with Feasibility Study (Must use MS-Word)

> Describes why the company must implement the new system and the business value.

> Defines qualitative (non-financial) benefits over the life of the new system. An example might be improved data quality.

> Defines quantitative (financial) benefits over the life of the new system. An example might be $700K additional sales revenue annually.

> Defines the costs over the life of the new system. This would include initial purchase costs, implementation costs, ongoing license fees, ongoing maintenance costs to support the system and retirement costs. In summary, it would include the project budget listed above, along with any ongoing maintenance costs and eventual retirement costs.

> Feasibility study should include at a minimum Payback Period and Net Present Value.

Project Risks (Must use MS-Excel)

> Project risks identify what could potentially go wrong during the course of the project – not overall company risk.

> Generally this is in the form of a sentence or two which describes the risk and the impact (i.e. Management decisions are not made in a timely manner resulting in a delay in schedule)

> Your project should have a minimum of a dozen risks and they should be as specific as possible.

> Project risk management focuses on mitigation - minimizing the probability that a risk will occur and/or the impact if it occurs. It also focuses on contingency - what would you do if the risk actually occurred.

> Your risk register should include at a minimum for each risk identified: risk event description, probability, impact, risk response actions, and a contingency plan.