Two years ago, Susie Hernandez knitted a pink sweater for her poodle and posted
ID: 435576 • Letter: T
Question
Two years ago, Susie Hernandez knitted a pink sweater for her poodle and posted it on Instagram. The picture of the snarling beast in its cute sweater went viral and orders for similar sweaters poured in. Over the next two years, Susie grew her business by selling custom sweaters on Etsy and handled everything herself. Soon, demand outpaced her ability to keep up and Susie hired additional help. Susie also founded Canine Couture. Recently, Susie signed two contracts with major pet supply distributors to carry Canine Couture’s Fall Collection and Susie needs to make major adjustments to her business in order to grow and meet the demands.
Canine Couture recently rented new office space in Fort Worth, Texas to serve as its corporate headquarters. Susie, acting as CEO, has hired a director of marketing, two sales associates, two product designers, four logistics workers, and two support staff. Susie has also contracted the garment production to a factory in Kansas City, Kansas. Susie has hired your consulting firm to help her establish a working infrastructure to help support her business. In addition to getting the headquarters ready for business, Susie has also indicated that she needs help managing her product line. She needs to be able to handle the ordering of supplies needed at the factory to meet production needs. She needs to be able to manage the ordering, production, and shipment of her products to the new pet stores carrying her Fall line. In addition to brick and mortar stores, Canine Couture needs to continue to service the needs of its online customers at caninecouture.com. The director of marketing and the sales staff will work on ways to increase demand and sales of Canine Couture’s products.
The current office needs to support the existing twelve employees but needs to be flexible to accommodate additional growth once the company is settled in its new headquarters. Because business has mainly been conducted from Susie’s home to this point, there is no existing equipment in place. Susie’s budget is somewhat limited but she does need top-of-the-line workstations for her designers.
One area that concerns Susie quite a bit is her company’s ability to keep up with demand. In the past, Susie has ordered most of her fabric and materials from a wholesale company in New Jersey but works with other vendors from time to time on specialty supplies. She would order materials as needed and placed most of these orders with the websites of the various vendors. Susie needs a more efficient way to order supplies and get them to the factory in Kansas. In addition to getting product created, Susie needs a much more efficient way to ship and predict inventory levels with the new contracts. The two pet companies have their own shared supply chain management software and they have indicated that they would like Susie to participate as a supplier in their system.
Susie’s business is growing rapidly and she has hired your team to help ease some of the growing pains and to move her business forward.
During your initial conversation with Susie Hernandez, she asked about whether she should hire an IT staff or use contractors to manage the information systems that will need to be installed at Canine Couture.
In addition to the information provided in the case, what additional information systems-related “reasonable” assumptions are you making related to Canine Couture? Note: “Reasonable” assumptions do not include that the organization has unlimited amounts of resources (e.g., money or personnel). Why are you making these assumptions?
What are the most critical information systems-related organizational issues facing Canine Couture? Why?
What specific recommendations do you have for Susie Hernandez to address the most critical information systems related issues?
Explanation / Answer
In addition to the information provided in the case, what additional information systems-related “reasonable” assumptions are you making related to Canine Couture?
Solution :
A management information system is primarily used for decision-making purpose, control, co-ordination, visualization and analysis of information in any organization.The assumptions that can be safely made from the above case study are that Canine Couture was a run from home and home grown business by Susie hernandez till now, so she does not have the adequate management information systems to manage her business. But now as she is going large scale and setting up her own office and got a new contract, she needs adequate data and an efficient system to manage her business. Canine couture lacks the required resources and needs a enterprise resource planning platform to be more effecient in it's working.
The only prior experience Susie has is selling her products online through a thrid party site. So she knew the working of a online store. But as demand has to be increased effective marketing strategies should be taken up by Canine couture to increase the revenue both through online store and brick-mortar store.
It can also be assumed as Canine couture was small scale till now, it lacks an efficient supply chain management system, customer relationship management system and a proper knowledge management system.
Regarding product line it can be asumed as Susie worked alone till now, she made primarily customized product as per the demand of the customers. So now shee needs to enhance her product variety to increase the customer base.
What are the most critical information systems-related organizational issues facing Canine Couture? Why?
Solution :
Canine couture's most critical information system related issue is forecasting the demand of their product in the market and ordering adequate quantity beforehand to the contracted Factory, so as to meet the demands of their customers efficiently and ship the products in time. Logistics is another critical issue for it's online store , as brick and mortar stores ensure buyers are visiting the store or it's the concern of the pet stores to sell the merchandise. Susie also does not have a in-house IT employee and thus it is have to be decided whether to outsource the job to a third party or hire her own IT guy. Managing the product line and creating a new product line for the Fall collection is another issue faced by Canine Couture. She and her designer has to look into the latest market trend and design the collection accordingly to attract more customers.
She also needs to build an effective management information system, that would help her to take important decisions based on the facts and figures, manage the finance of Canine couture, human resources and marketing aspects of the company.
Managing a process redesign and setting up on a large scale is a very critical issue for any new business. Without a good management information system it is very difficult for Canine couture to achieve the desired results and control each and every aspect of the business single handedly by it's CEO.
What specific recommendations do you have for Susie Hernandez to address the most critical information systems related issues?
Solution :
First of all their are pros and cons for both in-house IT employee and third party vendor. An in-house IT employee would ensure Susie has the overall control and can oversee her employee, but it would also put an extra burden on Susie, and incurring extra expense for setting up the office with required machineries and hiring IT employess. So it is better for Susie to outsource the IT job as it would lower her operating cost, and moreover as IT is not central to Canine couture's product or services , it can be safely outsourced. She can retain fund and free up resources to perform key internal functions. She also does not have to worry about hiring IT experts as the vendor company would ensure that and provide Canine couture with the best services. So bottomline she can outsource and hire contractors to manage the information system.
Next, she needs to give a contract to build a more integrated management information system, that will include decision support system, executive information system to collaborate and analyze all the reports, marketing information system to manage the marketing aspects of Canine couture, human resource management system, accounting information system to handle the finances and office automation system to eliminate bottlenecks.
She should also hire an inventory manager to ensure that her inventory is well managed and is stocked up adequately to meet the demands efficiently. Delay due to inventory issues would hamper the business of Canine couture and effect the revenue earned eventually. Next comes a logistic manager , who would ensure efficient transportation of raw materials to the factory as well as to find most feasible ways to transport the finished products to its destination. If the inventory is large scale then Susie should also contract a warehouse to store her products. An efficient management information system would help her to predict the future demands so that she can work likewise to meet the market demands effectively.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.