Section 1: project introduction
Background information
Our company is a medium sized fashion designer platform for showcasing and nurturing talent in contemporary fashion today. The company has been in operation for five years. Having realized that many upcoming fashion designers lacked exposure for their wonderful products, our company came up with an innovative way to help them market their wares online. The designers, based on their revenues share with our organization on an agreed revenue sharing matrix. The company has witnessed tremendous growth in both the designers and their customers.
The online shop has changed fashion marketing and helped designers to market their products effectively. Our clients have realized increased sales revenue by engaging with us. Many upcoming designers across the country have registered with us while many more are being on-boarded into our platform. This has made our online solution viable. The company offers publicity and advertisement for the emerging talents via media channels, profile features, social media platforms, online newsletters, and CSR projects. We endeavor to look for avenues to market our products and services through looking for advertisement spots in related businesses and shows.
Potential customers have the option of requesting for customized fashions from the designers in our platform. This flexible production has helped our customer base grow rapidly in the last five years. The company does not interfere with the innovative ability of the designers. We are more into the sales and marketing part of the business than design itself.
Business Activities of the organization
As an online fashion marketing company, there are several business activities that we do. First, we are involved in online content creation. Our online content includes photos, videos, and featured articles. We have fashion bloggers in our office who are responsible for liaison with various fashion designers to get the latest designs. The designers share photos and videos of their products with our team for editing and marketing. The content can is shared on our platform and at times featured in other fashion blogs. Our website covers latest trends as well as most popular.
The second business activity that we do is to source for and onboard new fashion designers. As a means of growing our business brand and ensuring continuity, our marketing team engage talented fashion designers and register them as part of our content suppliers. The discussions in this process include agreement on revenue sharing models based on sales volumes. Once we agree with the supplier (fashion house), we make contractual agreements to seal the commitment.
Our company has online customer support system, where the customers can engage directly with the supplier. Our online site has the chat option where the existing and prospective customers can talk directly to the suppliers. This has helped in growth since there is room for customized designs that suit the consumers’ tastes and preferences.
In order to capture the different market segments, we have customized our content to suit different needs of the customers. Example, on our site, you can shop by gender. We have also catered for all classes of economic power by giving room for shopping by price. A customer can also look for fashion design product by location. In cases where the preferred design is far from the location of the customer, there are delivery costs based on the distance are catered for. Our company arranges for the delivery in liaison with the suppliers
With an excellent growth, there has been a challenge of delivering the goods. The products showcased in our website has attracted many customers across the globe. This challenge has prompted us to go into a merger with a leading retail company. The company is an internet based retail organization with a physical presence in many countries around the world. This merger is strategic in the growth our client’s products and revenue (Grant & Baden‐Fuller, 2004). The advantage is that the headquarters of the company is in the same city as ours hence the ease of integration. With that key alliance, we will not only integrate international consumers but also give room for international fashion designers to join our brand. This will help our company have the international presence and lead to growth in revenue. Our annual sales record has been $35 Million but with the merger, it is projected to reach $100 Million annually in the next three years.
Information Technology System
Our business is supported by Information Technology. We have physical computers in our organization. We also use different software to achieve our objectives. We have various photo and video editing software that help us in content development and management. For customer relationship management, we have used a software called Salesforce. The Salesforce software helps our organization in social intelligence. This helps our organization be able to identify customers’ tastes and preferences. This software does customer analysis and sales records. By using Salesforce software, it is easy to make sales projections based on the existing records. We maintain a database of our suppliers. Our company has a database of customers and the goods that they bought. This helps us to determine the preferred fashion brands (Stair, Reynolds & Chesney, 2008).
Our network and communication are supplied by wide area network. Within the office, we have both wireless and LAN access to the internet. The computers in our organization are networked. For our security, we have put in place various information security measures to protect information leakage and unwarranted access to our information. We have also installed anti-virus to detect and clean viruses and malware. Our storage is done via cloud computing technology. The reason we chose to store our data online is to facilitate ease of access. We needed the employees to access the information from wherever they are. With the merger in place, we are considering the same technology to help the international retail systems. Data security in the cloud technology is enhanced.
The people component of our Information Technology is taken care of by our IT department. There are other staff members working under me as the Chief Information Officer. We have database and system administrators. The members of staff ensure that access to our system is secure. There are system analysts who monitor access to the sites. There are several system reports which form part of the control mechanisms. Also, the IT staff are responsible for supporting the marketing and the HR department. We support the Marketing Information Systems and the HR Information systems. Not only do we design systems for the other functions of the organization, but we also train them on the use. Finally, we have a system analyst who is responsible for translating the information from the business into system requirement documents for development.
Section 2: Project Plan
References
Grant, R. M., & Baden‐Fuller, C. (2004). A knowledge accessing theory of strategic alliances. Journal of management studies, 41(1), 61-84.
Stair R., Reynolds, G. and Chesney, T. (2008). Fundamentals of Business Information Systems, Cengage Learning EMEA, London.
