We will be developing a real project for this course. You will need to define a

Question

We will be developing a real project for this course. You will need to define a project that is critical to your current business (or former business).

You will need to outline the following in this discussion thread:

• What the project is and why is it important to the success of the business?
• What is the level of support for this project at the upper levels of leadership?
• Will the project require financial support to get it completed, if yes does it have the right level of management on board to support the cost outlay?
• Does this project fit the strategic plan for the business, if yes what part of the strategic plan, if no why do you see a need to do this project? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

This is a very interesting and a topic relevant to most businesses. I would like to cite an example of a project for a Logistics ompany. As per Indian Customs Rules and Regulations, all Logistics companies that manage the import and export business in India need to establish the identity of the importer and exporter respectively.

This means that before presenting the documents of export and import shipments to customs for customs clearance of the shipment, the logistics company needs to be in possession of the KYC - Know Your Customer Documents of the importers and exporters.

The main challenge area is Imports as the logistics companies can collect all the KY documents (Government laid down KY documents like Passport, Driving License, Address Proof laid down by the Government) at the time of collecting the shipment.

However, imagine imports. Imagine a situation, when someone sends a shipment for me from USA to India. The courier company needs to contact me and collect KYC documents from me (soft copy) before the shipment is presented to customs for customs clearance of this shipment. The shipment arrives in India on Day 1 ( if we consider day 0 as the day of shipping). Hence, the logistics companies need to act very very fast if this shipment needs to be cleared and delivered asap.

Hence, we decided to outsource the calling and collection activity to a vendor who specializes in this activity. This was a huge project as there was a requirement of 100+ agents for calling all India customers.

a. Hence, this project was extremely critical to the business and a mandatory requirement. There was a trade off between in-sourcing and out-sourcing. Outsourcing was a better option as it is faster and the performance and productivity can be controlled with a target project outlay cost.

b. The Project got support from the Management and it was driven by the Management. However, it is critical to appoint a permament senior head who is in charge of this project and its deliverables due to its importance. Due to the magnitude of monthly expense and the cost consideration ( with increase in the no. of projected shipments the cost of the project will continue to increase as more and more manpower will be required to manage the day to day collection of KYC documents) and the complexity and ambiguity of this regulation and project it requires the hand-in-hand support of the Senior Management of Operations and the CEO of the company.

C. This project can be kicked off without a firm and long-term commitment from the Finance Head as this is a pure cost center with no direct impact on the revenue of the company. Hence, funds for this project need to be committed for the next 5 years at min. of 10% year on year increase. This will have a direct bearing on the total Operations cost and it will swell with this new additional cost. Hence, this needs to be well discussed and agreed and signed off with all the Departments inculding Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Finance and Operations. There needs to be one dedicated Team consisting of lower level, middle level and senior level executives / managers to monitor the costs, performance and productivity of this team and to have regular meetings with the Management team to keep them updated on the current performance and costs vis-a-vis projected costs. Budgets and forecasts need to be maintained and shared with the management team.

d) Yes. This project is in fact a Strategic Project as it is 100% critical to the day to day operations of the company and for it to survive in the market for the next 10 years. It is an investment cum operations cost which cannot be escaped. This was not part of the 2015 strategic plan but has gained prominence overnight due to strict Government rules and regulations. This has become a strategic project and lot of innovative thinking at all levels will be required to make it successful.

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