Kudler Fine Foods
Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) is looking to develop a system to track customer purchases in order to identify purchasing behavior patterns. They hope to use the information gathered to refine the company's processes and offerings to best satisfy the needs of their valued customers.
Management has decided to approach this initiative is through the implementation of a frequent shopper program. Traditional programs of this sort would not begin to satisfy the sophisticated senses of Kudler's elite customer base; as a result, a decision has been made to partner with a loyalty points program that will provide rewards points to customers that can be redeemed for high-end gifts and upgrades.
System Requirements Gathering
During the initial stage of development, it is imperative to gather enough information to be able to accurately describe the system requirements. The first step is to determine the scope of the project based upon the objective outlined in the request. The next step would be to identify those that have a vested interest in the proposed new system. Once this information is known the project can be divided into modules and tasks can be assigned.
Scope
The deliverable for this project is to create a business/systems requirement document for the development of the frequent shopper program system to track the purchases of individual customers. The project should make use of the existing system when possible and develop enhancements, where necessary, to provide the added functionality necessary to meet this objective. In addition, the scope of this project should adhere strictly to the primary objective and avoid creep into areas not expressly stated through the service request.
Stakeholders
It is essential to the project's success to identify key stakeholders in the development of the new system before attempting to gather information to compile the list of system requirements. Some of these contributors will be directly interfacing with the system, while others are responsible for approving expenses related to the development and for establishing maintenance and training related to the deployment of the new system.
Kathy Kudler, President. Kudler Fine Foods is a small company and Kathy Kudler is very actively engaged in the daily operation of the business. She may want to ensure that the proposed system is in alignment with her vision for the organization and will probably need to be aware of the potential cost for the new system so that funding can be established. The organizational chart does not expressly identify the sales & marketing team, so it is possible that Kathy also heads this functional area as well. If so, she would need to make sure that group knows how the program works and how to use the information it provides to best advance the organization.
Harvey Stephens, Director of Financing and Accounting. Harvey should have considerable insight to the project as his direct reports include the accounting department and "computer specialists", which in a company this size, could represent the entire IT department. Harvey should be able to provide accurate costs, infrastructure requirements as well as the benefits expressed in controlled expense and increased revenue.
Yvonne Reynolds, Director of Store Operations. Yvonne and her direct reports are responsible for purchasing and managing inventory. Her group should be able to express their needs to the analysts so that the system can best accommodate her group in stocking what customers really want and are willing to buy.
Loyalty Points Program Partner. This company would have insight into the development of this program, as there will be logistical requirements that Kudler will need to adhere to during the development of their system. There is a good chance they can bring their experience from working with other clients on similar ventures to KFF. They may also need to know how order fulfillment is going to work as well as how the points