Showhomes Applied Information Technology Project

Abstract

This report provides a proposal for a new Showhomes information system based on the cloud computing paradigm. The customized cloud computing solution will fully support all five of the legacy system components: the Home Staging Component (HSC), Task Management Component (TMC), the Home Manager Component (HMC), the Sales and Marketing Component (SMC), and the Accounting/Finance Component (AFC). The proposed cloud solution will entail some upfront costs, but over the long run, Showhomes will greatly reduce its information system maintenance and upkeep costs. In addition, the complex tasks associated with ongoing maintenance and security will no longer fall on the shoulders of Showhomes’ IT staff. Across the five system components, business processes will be highly automated and streamlined. Successful implementation of the new cloud-based system will depend, however, on adherence to technology and business practices like decoupling, support for elasticity, and utilization of a formal vendor selection process. A custom high-level implementation plan is also recommended - one that is built on Lewin’s Three-Step Change Management Model and the traditional software development life cycle scheme (SDLC).

Showhomes Applied Information Technology Project

For companies like Showhomes, staying competitive and viable in the real estate industry is a constant challenge. The real estate market not only has its cyclical ups and downs, but real estate businesses are also extremely susceptible to external factors like interest rate fluctuations, trends on Wall Street, the overall state of the economy, and more. As executives at Showhomes have learned, having a finely tuned information system can help the company stay ahead of the competition despite market uncertainties. However, Showhomes’ current IT solution is a legacy system that has been patched together over the last 20 years. It no longer provides Showhomes with the competitive edge the company needs. Therefore, the current report provides a proposal for a new Showhomes information system based on the cloud computing paradigm.

Company background

Showhomes was founded in 1986 and has operated as a franchise organization for the past 28 years (Showhomes, 2014). The basic service provided by each franchise is home staging. Home staging involves the furnishing and maintenance of vacant homes that are for sale. The goal is to make homes on the market more attractive and appealing to potential buyers. Through franchise interdependence and collaboration, Showhomes has become one of the more resilient staging companies in the business. In fact, Showhomes has “helped over 25,000 homeowners sell vacant homes in every type of market condition imaginable” for nearly three decades (Showhomes, 2014).

Discussion of business problem(s)

Showhomes’ legacy information system has been a vital part of the company’s strategic success throughout the years. The legacy system consists of five mission-critical components: the Home Staging Component (HSC), Task Management Component (TMC), the Home Manager Component (HMC), the Sales and Marketing Component (SMC), and the Accounting/Finance Component (AFC). Each franchise is connected to a centralized information system via a virtual private network (VPN). The basic problem with the legacy system not only concerns the fact that it has been patched together for many years, but maintenance and security are the responsibility of the company. Maintaining the system has become more and more difficult and increasingly cost-ineffective. Showhomes is losing its competitive edge because its legacy information system no longer provides the company and its franchises with seamless access to the type of information and resources needed for collaboration and teamwork. In sum, the company needs scalable, low maintenance, cost-effective information system solutions.

High-level solution

Rather than using resources to support an in-house information system, Showhomes is advised to focus on what the company does best – namely, staging homes. This will allow the company to focus on “the core competencies that result in competitive advantage” (Garrison, Kim & Wakefield, 2012, p. 62). A custom cloud solution will not only allow the company to meet its information technology needs, but it will also help the organization use its limited resources more efficiently. Specifically, it is proposed that Showhomes invest in a customized cloud computing solution that fully supports all five of the company’s legacy system IT components.

Benefits of solving the problem

In discussing the benefits of the cloud computing solution, a cost-benefit assessment is in order. Ten years ago when Showhomes first implemented its VPN solution, executives recognized that it was a relatively cost-effective solution. It eliminated the high costs associated with leasing communications lines from telecom companies. The VPN solution also assured Showhomes of a secure platform supported by symmetric key encryption and public-key encryption (Lammle, 2011, p. 783). These benefits continue to present themselves to the company to this day. However, for Showhomes to continue leveraging the legacy system, the company will need to invest a lot of money to purchase new servers, replace outdated network components, and support system security and maintenance.

The proposed cloud solution will entail some upfront costs, but over the long run, Showhomes will greatly reduce its information system maintenance and upkeep costs. In addition, the complex tasks associated with ongoing maintenance and security strategies will no longer fall on the shoulders of Showhomes’ IT staff. As the company has discovered over the years, information system security is all too often like the little Dutch boy holding his finger in the dike. The legacy system has never been fully secure despite the ongoing work and efforts of the company’s IT staff. With cloud computing however, security becomes the responsibility of the cloud-service vendor while Showhomes can focus on providing the best service possible to customers.

Business/technical approach

The business service management (BSM) approach will be used to align IT activities with business objectives and priorities. BSM is all about the continual improvement of business operations through the alignment of IT activities with business objectives (van Bon, 2008, p. 125; Burnett, 2011, p. 228). As such, the proposed cloud-based solution will support Showhomes’ customer-focus business strategy by ensuring that the new system is flawless in every respect. Showhomes employees and stakeholders will never need to worry about the integrity of the system. It will always provide accurate data that meet the operational objectives and needs of the organization.

Business process changes

In this section of the applied information technology project report, the discussion is provided concerning the business process changes that will result from the proposed cloud solution.

Home Staging Component (HSC)

The Home Staging Component will provide basic information on all homes, past and current, in the Showhomes franchise network. As a new business process, each franchise will be required to update the cloud system database for all new accounts. The basic fields of data will include information on the homeowner(s), contract details, realtor information, and all other vital statistics related to the customer’s home and the staging process. As another new business process, the cloud system will support the development of virtual tour videos of the staged homes. To support this new business process, franchise operators can upload pictures of the staged home by means of a smartphone, laptop, or PC Internet connection. Once the cloud has received the image files, franchise operators will be responsible for finalizing the virtual tour video through an editing and publishing process.

Task Management Component (TMC)

Just as the legacy system Task Management Component supported delegation and assignment of tasks and jobs, the new cloud-based system will also help bring the most pressing issues and tasks to the collective attention of employees and key stakeholders in the organization (Showhomes, 2014). The new system will, however, entail some business process changes including: customer status reporting and invitation generation. Customer status reporting takes aim at keeping customers happy and satisfied. As such, the new system no longer leaves it up to the discretion of franchise employees to monitor and management customer relations. Tasks to this effect are assigned to Showhomes employees on a daily basis and must be completed by the end of the workday. Relevant task examples include friendly phone calls, courtesy emails, invitations to open houses, and so forth. Under the legacy system, the invitation generation was largely a manual process. Showhomes employees will be happy to discover that with the new cloud-based system, this business process will be fully automated.

Home Manager Component (HMC)

Under the Showhomes legacy system, the Home Manager Component was used to store customer data. Just as the legacy system allowed Showhomes system users to query field-level data on customers, the new cloud-based system also supports the same type of functionality. In addition to query capability, however, two new business processes supported by the cloud system include automated generation of timelines and checklists showing key statistics for each contracted customer and home. In addition, Showhomes franchise managers will no longer be required to spend hour upon hour rating the efficiency of a home manager and his/her operation. The new cloud system fully automates this business process by tracking the activities of each franchisee according to a set of benchmark standards. Each month, franchise managers will receive an auto-generated report that ranks his/her respective franchise operation. The score will indicate how well the franchise is doing in terms of sales and profits, operational efficiency, and other key business variables.

Sales and Marketing Component (SMC)

The new Sales and Marketing Component will support key business processes including: homeowner solicitation, real estate agent solicitations, market research and open houses, and promotions. Again, the Showhomes legacy supports all of these business processes. With the new cloud-based system, however, automation features will make these business processes easier than ever. Email lists will be automated and managed for newsletter, blog and account update processes. Also, the system will be fully integrated with third-party support providers. This will enable greater visibility in the supply chain. The interconnectivity and system integration will also help the company better manage its various outsourced business functions such as advertising and marketing.

Accounting/Finance Component (AFC)

Under the legacy system, the Account/Finance Component offered limited support for business processes including: accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and job estimates. In fact, most of the tasks related to these basic business processes involved tedious manual operations. With the new cloud-based system, however, all of these business processes will be fully automated and integrated across the entire Showhomes franchise organization. This will help each franchise spend less time on bookkeeping and other related business processes. As a result, time and resources can be spent supporting the company’s main source of competitive advantage – namely, providing the best customer service possible.

Technology or business practices used to augment the solution

As a technology practice for augmenting the cloud solution, Showhomes should decouple all five components of its new cloud system. This will reinforce “the SOA design principle that the more loosely coupled the components of the system, the bigger and better it scales” (Varia, 2011). The point of decoupling is to ensure that problems with one component are isolated. In other words, if a problem were to occur with the AFC, the last thing the company wants is for SMC to fail at the same time. In sum, Showhomes needs to emphasize to the cloud vendor that no “code-wise” or functional dependencies are acceptable in the custom cloud solution. The system must be reliable for each and every business day.

As another technology practice to augment the cloud solution, Showhomes management is advised to implement elasticity in the component applications. An example of elasticity includes a proactive event-based scaling, such that when Showhomes is “expecting a big surge of traffic requests due to a scheduled business event (new product launch, marketing campaigns)” the system will not crash at the most inopportune time (Varia, 2011).

As a matter of business practice for augmenting the cloud solution, Showhomes executives and managers have been controlling their own information system for nearly three decades. With the proposed cloud-based system however, management of the information system will now be in the hands of the cloud service provider (CSP). As such, it becomes important for Showhomes to make sure that they “keep up to date on any infrastructure or policy changes for [their] CSP” (Rochester Institute of Technology, n.d.). The point, more exactly, is that access to security information will be limited in the cloud environment. Showhomes management must adjust to this change by adopting a vendor relations model rather than a systems process approach.

Conclusions and overall recommendations

With respect to the existing legacy system, Showhomes is literally at a point of no return. In other words, even though information technology never represents a silver bullet solution for an organization’s information and computing needs, Showhomes cannot lose with the proposed cloud-based solution. The solution offers cost savings, scalability, and elasticity. In addition, it is clear that the cloud-based solution provides Showhomes with greater flexibility in relation to market trends and changes. In sum, the new system will help Showhomes leverage the company’s basic competitive advantages which include: three decades of success and experience in the industry, a broad national network of franchisees, and a vast reservoir of tacit knowledge.

The number one recommendation for Showhomes to consider is the adoption of a formal vendor selection process. In effect, the proposed cloud-based solution calls for Showhomes to enter into a partnership with a cloud solutions vendor. Showhomes must be careful to find a vendor with the capabilities to support an enterprise solution consisting of all five mission-critical business components. Beil (2009) of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan recommends a six-step process: 1) identify potential suppliers; 2) information requests to suppliers; 3) contract terms; 4) negotiation process; 5) supplier evaluation and contract award, and 6) supplier selection. Each of these steps is important and interrelated and must be attended to with detail to ensure a successful vendor solution. Also, as a critical success factor, Showhomes should focus on managing the cloud vendor relationship such that it is characterized by trust and the promise of gaining an advantage in a competitive market (Garrison, Kim & Wakefield, 2012, p. 62).

High-level implementation plan

In effect, the proposed cloud-based system represents an enterprise-wide solution for Showhomes. The implementation of the new system will be a complex change process for the organization and its cloud solution vendor/provider. As such, the success of the project will depend on the utilization of a high-level implementation plan. In this respect, it is proposed, that a custom high-level implementation plan be developed according to two key components: i) Lewin’s Three-Step Change Management Model and ii) the traditional software development life cycle scheme (SDLC).

Lewin’s Three Stage theory identifies three stages of successful change: stage one, unfreeze; stage two, change (transition); and stage three, freeze. The unfreeze stage is concerned with preparing the organization for change - getting people ready psychologically and emotionally to understand that the change is necessary (Liu, Akram, & Bouguettaya, 2011, pp. 89-90). Implicit to stage one rationale is the recognition that people tend to resist change. Change causes psychological and emotional discomfort in the face of new procedures, new routines, and new responsibilities. Showhomes executives and project managers must plan for these types of contingencies and inevitabilities. The change (transition) stage concerns itself with the process of transformation (Liu, Akram, & Bouguettaya, 2011, pp. 89-90). In addition to the technical implementations of the proposed cloud solution, Showhomes management must also be prepared to provide training, coaching, and support for employees and stakeholders throughout the organization. Finally, the freezing stage is all about establishing stability and normalcy in the organization (Liu, Akram, & Bouguettaya, 2011, pp. 89-90). At this final stage of the cloud-based solution implementation, employees and stakeholders in the company will become comfortable and adept with new business processes and routines.

As for the second major component of the implementation plan, the traditional SDLC is a five-step process: planning, analysis, design, implementation, and deployment (Crabtree, 2008, p. 9). System planning is the orientation stage of the cloud solution project. Showhomes management will need to evaluate the scope, cost, and time that the project will require for completion. Once the feasibility of the cloud-based solution has been confirmed, the analysis will be used to develop a perfected logical design for the five component cloud solution. The blueprints and documents developed during the analysis phase will then be developed into a working cloud solution by the selected vendor (implementation phase). Finally, as the organization enters the freezing stage of the change process, the new system will be deployed and tested to ensure that it is bug-free and secure.

Summary of Project

In the final comment, the current report has provided a proposal for a new Showhomes information system based on the cloud computing paradigm. Showhomes is losing its competitive edge because its legacy information system no longer provides the company and its franchises with seamless access to the type of information and resources needed to support the company's source of competitive advantage - namely, superior customer service. To help Showhomes regain its competitive edge, it has been proposed that the company invest in a customized cloud computing solution that fully supports all five of the legacy system components: the Home Staging Component (HSC), Task Management Component (TMC), the Home Manager Component (HMC), the Sales and Marketing Component (SMC), and the Accounting/Finance Component (AFC). The proposed cloud solution will entail some upfront costs, but over the long run, Showhomes will greatly reduce its information system maintenance and upkeep costs. In addition, the complex tasks associated with ongoing maintenance and security will no longer fall on the shoulders of Showhomes’ IT staff. Across the five system components, business processes will be highly automated and streamlined. Successful implementation of the new cloud-based system depends, however, on adherence to technology and business practices like decoupling, support for elasticity, and utilization of a formal vendor selection process. A custom high-level implementation plan is also recommended - one that is built on Lewin’s Three-Step Change Management Model and the traditional software development life cycle scheme (SDLC).

References

Beil, D. (July 2009). Supplier Selection. Retrieved from <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dbeil/Supplier_Selection_Beil-EORMS.pdf

Burnett, K. (2011). Practical Contact Center Collaboration. Pittsburgh, PA: RoseDog Books.

Crabtree, C.A. (2008). Presenting a Conceptual Model for the Systems Development Life Cycle. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest Information and Learning Company.

Garrison, G., Kim, S. & Wakefield, R.L. (September 2012). Success Factors for Deploying Cloud Computing. Communications of the ACM 55(9), 62-68.

Lammle, T. (2011). CCNA Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide, 7th Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Liu, X., Akram, S., & Bouguettaya, A. (2011). Change Management for Semantic Web Services. New York: Springer Science+Business Media.

Rochester Institute of Technology. (n.d.). Cloud Computing Best Practices. Retrieved from <http://www.rit.edu/security/content/cloud-computing-best-practices

Showhomes. (2014). About Us. Retrieved from <http://showhomesfranchise.com/research/start-a-home-staging-business/

van Bon, J. (2008). Best Practice: Service Operation Based on ITIL, Volume 3, A Management Guide. Netherlands: Van Haren Publishing.

Varia, J. (January 2011). Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices. Amazon Web Services. Retrieved from <http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_Cloud_Best_Practices.pdf