Inspire Financial Services: Project Investigation Proposal
Analysis and Write-Up by Team YACJS
Yousef Saead, Ching Li, Stephan Hopkins, Jian Zheng, Andrew

“Solving Problems Today while Building Tomorrow’s Future.” That is our motto here at Team YACJS Consulting, and we are excited to be working with Inspire Financial Services to help you build your future. We thank you for the opportunity to develop your project portfolio and assure you we are dedicated to Inspire’s success. In the following proposal, we analyze Inspire’s current business conditions and project ideas using a series of project analysis methodologies. The following paragraphs further explain our analyses. Let’s begin our journey toward ensuring Inspire Financial Services remains the premiere company in financial concierge services.

Appendices 1 and 2 contain Problem Alignment and Project Alignment matrices, which list Inspire’s current problems and proposed projects, as they relate to Inspire’s opportunities and strategies.
When compiling the Project Alignment chart (Appendix 2), we determined certain projects lacked detailed descriptions or pertinence to Inspire’s most pressing strategic concerns. Such projects include HR system replacement and function point estimation, for which we are still investigating details, offshoring to India, which should be determined by the Board of Directors, CoBIT implementation and CMMI accreditation, for which we suggest Inspire simply utilize best-practice, and system enhancements and break/fix projects, which can be addressed through the pursuit of other projects. For the above reasons, such projects lack placement in the project portfolio and consideration in our project scoring methodology1.

Utilizing a numerical scoring system, we scored each portfolio project (Appendix 3). Projects with higher scores receive more consideration from our team. First, we scored each of Inspire’s problems and opportunities based on their urgency, cost, risk, and nature (strategic vs. operational). Multiplying the scores determined the weight of each problem and opportunity. Then, we noted how many problems and opportunities each project addressed, as well as their weights, to determine a project’s ultimate score.

After scoring each project in Inspire’s portfolio, we categorized each project based on how seriously Inspire should consider pursuing it. We utilized the MoSCoW ranking method, which contains four levels of consideration for pursuing a project: Must, Should, Could, and Won’t. We determined Inspire must pursue projects scored above 250 in our scoring methodology, while they should pursue projects scored 150-250, could pursue projects scored 50-149, and will not pursue projects scored below 50. Please see Appendix 4 for the MoSCoW portfolio.

Based on our project scoring methodology and MoSCoW portfolio, Inspire should further investigate system stabilization and ERP system implementation2. Both projects address Inspire’s most pressing problems and opportunities. To proceed, we will examine several options for achieving system stabilization, which include fixing current systems, upgrading current systems, and replacing current systems. Moreover, we will examine various ERP implementation options, which may overlap with system stabilization solutions.

We invite Inspire’s feedback on our Project Investigation Proposal, and we look forward to delivering a detailed Project Initiation Document.

1 In other words, the designated projects did not pass Gate A in our seven-step Gateway Reviews approach to project implementation. Please see Appendix 5.
2 Both projects should champion to Gate B in our Gateway Reviews approach. See Appendix 5.

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Appendix 1: Problem Alignment Matrix

Problem
Opportunity
Business Strategy
IT Strategy
Projects
Supply chain systems not compatible with industry standards (creates difficulty with data exchange)
Increased efficiency due to simpler data exchange process with 3rd party suppliers
Increase