Starbucks is a United States based coffee manufacturing company that has been in existence since 1971, and has various branches in the country, but due to the continuous technological advantages, the firm has been forced to improve the quality of its softwares. The present learning management system for the firm that has been in use for the purposes of generating reports, documenting, and e-learning appears to be out of date because of the increasing size of the firm. Therefore, the management has been forced to contemplate on two options, which include upgrading the existing learning management system or adopting a new learning management system being offered by the various cloud service providing companies (Govindasamy 290). The importance of the learning management system for the organization is very vital considering that it helps to enlighten the new employees regarding the various practices of the firm in terms of what they should and should not do. Therefore, this paper will provide an analysis of the two options in terms of the technicalities and steps involved and offer the most economical choice that the management of Starbucks Company should go for in order to ensure maximum benefit for the organization.
Starbucks organization mainly uses its learning management system for the purposes of offering tips to new employees on hoe they should carry themselves within the organization considering that all new employees need to abide by the safety guidelines. Basically, a learning management system in an organization helps to avail and manage instructional content, recognizes and assess employees of the organization or the training goals, keeps track of employees progress and assists in the collection and presentation of data for the supervision of the learning process. The value that a learning management system offers to Starbucks Company cannot be underestimated considering that the firm no longer has to shift employees from one region to another for the purposes of offering training. Moreover, employees in an organization need refresher courses from time to time, which can be facilitated by a learning management system in addition to tracking their performance. The issue of safety management has also been of concern within the organization considering that employees are required to master the safety regulations; hence, the management intends to incorporate these guidelines within the learning management system. Within the last few years, preventable accidents have been occurring within the company considering that employees seem to be negligent of the safety regulations that they are required to observe. However, the reason for these incidences appears to be the failure of the management in providing a well documented training on these safety regulations; hence, the need of a learning management system that will address the issue. Another reason as to why the firm needs an advanced learning management system is because the coffee industry is today going through a transformation with new coffee products being introduced into the market. These new products require the employees master the way they are manufactured in addition to finding ways of continually improving their quality; hence, an advanced learning management system will help to address the issue promptly. The management intends to open more branches across the country by the end of the year, but the opening of these stations need to be done after an advanced learning management system that is scalable in nature has already been implemented. Therefore, there is an urgent need to carry out the process of implementing the advanced learning management system within the organization, but the resource factor needs to be addressed. In that, the management has to factor in the cost of implementing the system, the features that will be supported by the new system in addition to the time that will be taken to carry out the implementation. As a result, two options of implementing an advanced learning management system have been arrived at which include the upgrading of the currently existing system or implementing a new management system being offered by the many cloud computing vendors.
Option One: Implementing a New Learning Management System
Planning is the first step in the successful implementation of a new learning management system especially in the beginning stages of the project implementation, but the plan will also need to be refined and expanded as the project progresses. During the planning stages, analysis should appear at the beginning, where the project management team that has been selected within the organization carries out an assessment of the various organizational aspects in terms of the features that will be required. During the assessment, assessing the employees who will be the key users of the system should be the beginning point followed by the aspects of learning that will need to be incorporated into the system like the courses existing and the one’s that employees will need to access via the internet. Technical analysis will be the third step where the assessment of the existing bandwidth is carried out in order to find out if it will support the new system in addition to the organizational laptops and workstations on whether they are running on the recommended operating systems and hardware specifications. Business cases analysis will be the fourth step in terms of the assessment where the various departments like the finance department and the human resource department will be required to provide a list of the functionalities the need the new system to support.
The second step in the learning management system implementation is carrying out an analysis on the training department, which in the case of Starbucks Company constitutes the humane resource department considering that that it is the part of the organization that will mostly make use of the system. In this step, the project management team should provide information regarding the administrative roles of the LMS in terms of the individuals who will be responsible for regular data entry and updates followed by the overall structure of the policies like the passing online grades. The other issues to be considered would be the instructional design, the delivery of the content to employees, the professional development and finally the reporting part of the system in terms of the executives who will need to see how the employees are faring on (Greenwood et al., 40).
The third step or stage of the implementation system will be find a suitable LMS vendor among the many in today’s market, with the aspect of research being the most vital thing to carry during this stage in order to have adequate information and ample choices. For instance, Starbucks Company will have to go through the websites of the various vendors and contacting customers who have left their reviews behind in order to get more information regarding the vendors. Next, the company will have to contact these vendors by providing them with the needs of the organization followed by preventing the vendors and shortlisting them for interviews in order to get a chance at looking at their demonstrations, white papers and webinars among others. The firm will therefore be able to gain the much needed knowledge regarding the vendors prior work experience with similar firms like Starbucks or any other manufacturing cooperation followed by the documentation of the needed features for the new system. The firm will then design a request for proposal to the shortlisted firms and review their responses by ranking them in accordance to the vendors capability to address the objectives in addition to considering the vulnerabilities related to each of the vendors. Next, the firm should ask the vendors to carry out demonstrations on the most vital tasks based on a created script, which can be used for the selection of the most appropriate vendor followed by negotiations regarding the payment that will be involved. Building or designing of the proposed system will be the next stage where the selected project management team will have to work hand in hand with the vendors in order to ensure that all the requirements are met. In this step, data migration will be needed where the already existing data in the old learning management system will be transferred to the new learning management system bearing in mind that the incompatibilities of the two systems will have to be catered for (Martin, Quigley, and Rogers 125). The next stage will be the testing of the system by the employees to ensure that all the requirements and features have been incorporated in addition to correcting any errors and eventually launching the system.
Figure 1: Vendor selection steps
Option Two: Upgrading the Learning Management System
Upgrading of the existing learning management system by Starbucks Corporation is quite a simpler process as compared to the implementation of a new management system considering that only a few steps are incorporated. The first step in the upgrading process is the definition of the requirements in terms of the features that the upgraded system will need to support, which are not supported by the system at its current state. One of the needed features for the for the upgrade is ability to support a large number of users considering that the firm is intending to expand further within the next one year. Moreover, the project management team will need to assess the available workstations in order to establish whether they can support an upgrade of the learning management system or whether new workstations or upgrades will need to be carried out. The next step in the upgrade of the learning management system involves the assessment of the available options regarding the upgrade of the learning management system. In that, the project management team will have to weigh on whether they can be able to attain the outlined requirements through enacting configuration changed or a few customizations on the existing learning management system. The second option for the management will be to inquire if a new version for the existing learning management system is available, and if the new version will be able to cater for the new needs if it is upgraded. The last stage of the upgrade option will be to weigh the two option in order to find the benefits, costs of each of the option and the vulnerabilities associated with the two options in order to arrive at a good optimal decision.
Comparing the Two Options
According to the perceived needs of the company, it has been forced to implement a new learning management system or to upgrade into a newer version; hence, a decision has to be arrived at on which of the options will best serve the interest of the organization. In terms of cost, upgrading onto a new version of the learning management system will be cheaper as compared to implementing a new LMS considering that the latter will involve many tasks that will consume more resources. The time taken to upgrade to a newer vision of the learning management system will also be less considering that it will take three months more to implement a new learning management system bearing in mind that the firm is in dire need of the system. Upgrading into a newer version will not be able to support all the features needed considering that there is no new version that has all the requirements enlisted by the project management team. Therefore, going for a new LMS will solve this problem because the system will be built from scratch and all the features and requirements suggested by the various departments will be incorporated. The issue if scalability is also a factor considering that the upgrading into a newer version will offer limited scalability to the organization yet, the firm is going through transformation that will see to it that more branches are established countrywide. Expanding of the firm also requires that the option selected should offer enough storage space with the most advisable one being the cloud, which cannot be offered through the upgrade of the existing learning management system. Going for a new learning management system through a vendor that is supported or hosted on the cloud appears to be the best option for the organization because it will be able to expand as he firm expands. Moreover, a learning management system that is being hosted on the cloud by the vendor will reduce the maintenance cost for the organization in addition to ensuring that the firm utilizes the most recent technologies adopted by the vendor.
Schedule:
In conclusion, Starbucks Corporation is a coffee manufacturing company that has been existence since 1971, but it is going thorough transformations that will require either a new learning management system is implemented or the existing one is upgraded to a newer version. According to the management, more company branches will be established in the coming few years that will require a new learning management system to cater for the training of new employees in addition to tracking their progress. In either the processes or options, the project management team will be required to first analyze the requirements of the new system in order to find out what will need to be supported. However, upgrading to a newer version will take a few steps and will be less complicated as compared to implementing a new learning management system that will be more intricate, but with many advantages like higher scalability.
Works Cited
Govindasamy, Thavamalar. "Successful implementation of e-learning: Pedagogical considerations." The internet and higher education 4.3 (2001): 287-299. Print.
Greenwood, Charles R., et al. "Classwide peer tutoring learning management system applications with elementary-level english language learners."Remedial and Special Education 22.1 (2001): 34-47. Print.
Martin, Kathleen, Mark A. Quigley, and S. Rogers. "Implementing a learning management system globally: An innovative change management approach." IBM Systems Journal 44.1 (2005): 125. Print.
