Project Management

Project Management

1.         Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The triple constraint ‘involves making tradeoffs between scope, time and cost for a project. It is inevitable in a project life cycle that there will be changes to the scope, time or cost of the project.’

The triple constraint’s importance in project management is its use when planning and managing projects. You cannot change one of these aspects without changing the other two. For example, by tightening the budget a company will be increasing its time but reducing its scope. While increasing the scope will also increase both the cost and time of the project. Also shortening the time for the project will increase the costs and tighten the scope.

2.        Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning.

The two primary diagrams used most frequently in project planning are the PERT chart and the Gantt chart.

·         PERT Chart - Program Evaluation and Review Technique This chart is a ‘graphical network model that depicts a project’s tasks and the relationships between those tasks.’
Dependencies and critical paths are found in PERT charts.

·         Gantt ChartA Gantt Chart is a ‘simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calendar.’
This is the most common tool used by project managers.

3.        Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success.

The three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing in order to ensure success are:

·      Managing people

·      Managing communication

·      Managing change

4.        Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects succeed.

Two reasons why projects fail are:

·         Unrealistic expectationsIf a company were to have unrealistic expectations from the beginning of their project, for example a new product being introduced into an already saturated market with the goal of gaining  a 50%+ market share, it isn’t likely that their project will succeed.

·         Lack of project managementIf a new project isn’t managed properly, it is more likely to fail. This is because when groups aren’t managing effectively they are more likely to do their own thing and not go along with the others.

            Two reasons why projects succeed are:

•  Good project charterBy having a good project charter a project is more likely to succeed as it has a specific plan that maps out where its going. The project charter includes the project scope, the project objectives, the project constraints and the project’s assumptions.
• Good communicationBy having good communication in a project there is less room for failure as the people involved in the project are all in the same mind space as they know what is going on in every aspect of the project.

Customer Relationship Management & Business Intelligence

1.  What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM is the management of all aspects of the relationship between an organisation and their customers. This concept aims to increase customer loyalty and to ultimately have customer retention and profitability.

Most companies try to individualise their services, so each customer is served in a friendly and personal way.

2.  Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRMThis form of CRM focuses on the transactional processing for the day-to-day front office operations. It also deals directly with the customers.

Analytical CRMThis form of CRM focuses on the back-office operations and strategic analysis. It also includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers.

Comparison

	Operational CRM	Analytical CRM
Customer Relations	Customers dealt with directly	Customers not dealt with directly
Operations Location	Front office	Back office
Operations	Transactions and general duties	Back-office operations and strategic analysis

3.  Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

The CRM technologies used by marketing departments are:

·         List GeneratorCompiles all customer data from a range of sources, then segments the information into different areas accordingly.

·         Campaign Management SystemHelps users throughout their marketing campaigns.

·         Cross-selling & Up-sellingCross-selling is selling additional products and/or services, whereas up-selling is increasing the value of the sale.

                The CRM technologies used by sales departments are:

·         Sales Force Automation (SFA)A function that provides data for sales prospects, contact information, product information, product configurations and sales quotes.

·         BundlingIs a type of cross-selling In which a vendor sells a combination of products together, offering them at a lower price than the combined costs of the individual products.

4.  How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

A sales department can use operational CRM technologies through utilising sales, contact and opportunity management. These are:

Sales Management	Contact Management	Opportunity Management
Achieving an organisation’s sales goals effectively and efficiently through planning, staffing, training, leading and controlling resources.	Tracking and recording every stage in the sales process for each prospective clients.	Targeting sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales.

5.  Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business intelligence is the technologies and applications used to find, access and analyse data and information to support decision-making efforts.

Business intelligence’s value to business today is helping companies meet the ever-changing needs of different markets, and helping them stay competitive. It also helps by creating a single point of access to information for all users, creating systems that stretch across many organizational departments within a business and allowing everyone access to up-to-the-minute information.

6.  Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem

The problem associated with business intelligence is the concept of ‘data rich, information poor’.

The amount of data is doubling every year. Organisation’s are realizing that they are generating an abundance of data. From this they can gather some information, but in order to do that they need to analyse all the data, some of which may be unusable. Thus, they have a lot of data (‘data rich’) and not as much information (‘information poor’).

The solution to this business problem is for managers to provide their employees with business intelligence systems and tools. These will assist the employees in making better, more informed decisions.

7.  What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

‘Data mining is the process of analysing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. It can begin at a summary information level and progress through increasing levels of detail or the reverse. Data mining is the primary tool used to uncover business intelligence in vast amounts of data.’

Two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining are:

·         Cluster Analysis‘A technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups that the members of each group are as close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart as possible.
It is used to segment customer information for CRM systems. It can also uncover naturally occurring patterns in information.’

·         Statistical Analysis‘Performs such functions as information correlations, distributions, calculations and variance analysis.
It offers knowledge workers a wide range of powerful statistical capabilities so they can quickly build a variety of statistical models, examine the model’s assumptions and validity, and compare and contrast the various models to determine the best one for a particular business issue.’