Project Plan Exchange - Wilderness Empowerment Sdn Bhd

Introduction

Wilderness Empowerment Sdn Bhd is a leading company in Information Technology (IT) training services that provide latest and updated training courses to the corporate and public client especially in Kuala Lumpur as the business center in Malaysia. Being a leader, the workforce has to establish an improved communication among the staff, loyal customer and the potential customer, in order to achieve that an improvement in technology are required.

Project Background

This business proposal is to propose the implementation of new technology that can achieve an improvement in the communication that will lead to productivity and efficiency. Communication lag will impact on the inefficiency and unproductivity, to overcome this the organization need to set-up a communication systems that will cover 35 internal staff and hundreds of clients thru implementing Microsoft Exchange application.

Goals and Objectives

The main purpose of implementing Microsoft Exchange in the organizations is to increase the efficiency and the productivity from the communication angle. The goals are:

* To reduce the latency of the communication to 30%

* To minimize the redundancy of the communication channel

* To minimize the time taken of information transfer

* To lower the IT cost

* Better risk management

Current Situation

Wilderness Empowerment currently implement the basic IT technology to support the communication by a few communication channel such

* Traditional IMAP email system that required them to be in the office to reach their message inbox,

* Personal hand-phone short message services (SMS) and

* Teleconference thru fixed line or personal hand-phone.

Problem and Opportunity

With increasing number of clients and the management staff, the current communication way will not suit the environment. With the era of mobility, the current system will stop the organization to move forward, as Hutchin (Silver Lake CO-CE)) said in one of the article "the mobility trend is by far, by far the biggest technology trend of our lifetime" (Miller, 2010). The workforce is out in the market to hunt the potential clients in the same time the needs of fast and mobile communication is greater.

As a Microsoft certified partner, Wilderness Empowerment are entitled to use the full range of Microsoft software free of charge. This is the main opportunity to upgrade the communication systems with less cost of implementation to overcome the current problem.

Options and Recommendation

The options for the solution are either implementing Microsoft Exchange 2007 or Microsoft Exchange 2010. One of the main differences is 2010 version support voice messaging that could increase the productivity. George Hamin, Director of E-Business and Information Systems Subaru Canada said "With Exchange Server 2010 and voice-to-text conversion, within 20 seconds after a dealer leaves a voice-mail message, our users see an e-mail preview of that message on their mobile devices" (Microsoft, 2009).

With this newly great feature, it is recommended for the organization to implement the latest version of Microsoft and also the organizations are entitled to use the software for free.

Please refer to the appendix 1 for the full product features.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Tangible benefits

* Increase the productivity by 25%

* Handles 80% of the email in 5 minutes time period

* Increase profit by 3%

Intangible Benefits

* Increase customer satisfaction

* Less communication conflicts

* Utilizing the partner benefits

* Promoting Microsoft Exchange as Microsoft Partner

Financial Return

This project expects to have 150% returns on investments, because the main cost are coming from software, which are free.

ROI = (Total gains - Total Cost) / Total cost X 100%

40%= (Total gains - RM 15000) / RM 15000 X 100%

Total gains = RM 37500

The organizations will achieve this ROI in one-year time period, this is quite a short period because the communication is critical aspect of the business so with the improved communication system the productivity of the company will increase accordingly.

Present Value = Future Value * 1 / (1+i) ∧ n

RM15000= Future Value * 1/(1+0.03) ∧ 1

Future Value = RM 15463.9

The investment that the organizations made is RM15000, so assuming the bank interest rate is 3% per annum the future value of the investment is RM 15463.9. So if will compare the ROI and NPV of the investment, the ROI value is higher then NPV of the investment.

Triple Constraints

One of the most basic foundations of project management is the triple constraint that consists of scope, time and cost. Scope is the first constraints that need to be defined before time and cost (Johnson, 2008)

Scope

Project Objective

To implement Microsoft Exchange software to the organizations with the minimum 60% features being used in 50 days at cost not to exceed RM15000.

Deliverables

Based on the project life cycle below please