Independent Senior Business Analyst Consultant Case Study – Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

You currently work as an independent senior business analyst consultant.  You’ve just been successful in attaining a contract for Australia’s leading Agribusiness, Elders Ltd., where you’ve been tasked to devise a stakeholder engagement strategy for the implementation of a cloud provided software inventory management system (SAP) for the organisation.  The current system is a legacy system that was developed internally by Elders IT.  The solution has provided great reliability (an uptime of 99.99) and is heavily integrated with other systems within the organisation.  Some examples of this include:

• The forecasting system (which uses mathematical models to determine the numbers of items needed for different regions) 
• The warehousing and logistics systems that would aline with just in time supply management of stock, and
• The managerial reporting system, which provides C level executives real time information such as money tied up in inventory levels across the nation.

There are many Elders Units that require continued 24 x 7 access to the inventory management system for regular business function and the system is deemed as one of the organisation’s critical systems.  As such the actual change over (to the new cloud provided service including migration of all inventory – which is changing regularly) must consider business impact and timings.  There must be as little business impact as is possible, as this is a key concern for the organisation.  It is therefore vital that there is a detailed communication plan within the stakeholder engagement strategy plan that you’re asked to provide, so different staff, suppliers and other affected stakeholders can prepare for any potential impacts / disruptions. 

Elders is looking to move forward with SAP as their solution, but has asked you to assess the potential South Australian implementors (as there are many local implementors within the market e.g.Iocane).  While the Elders IT staff are skilled there are always challenges in adopting different software, which specialist 3rd parties may be able to provide.  Also it is expected that the Elders staff will need to continue to maintain the legacy system while the new solution is implemented.  It is anticipated that this may reduce the overall project from approximately 24 months to approximately 9 months.

Some stakeholder lobbyist (e.g. the existing Elders IT staff) believe that introducing cloud software could pose data security risks and are fearful of transmitting / storing inventory and sales information within the cloud, while others are concerned about the data not being backed up adequately.  It is important to indicate how you address these and other potential stakeholder issues in your strategy.