Club IT: Part Three 1

Club IT: Part Three

Ryan Nichols XBIS 219 Professor Rahn April 24, 2011

Club IT: Part Three 2 The internship at Club IT was easily the most significant experience of my budding business career. The owners, Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada, have created a fun and inviting environment in which to work. They accepted me with open arms and acted as mentors to help me achieve my goals. The Club itself has proven profitable in its infancy, and has quickly developed a strong base of repeat clientele. During my time there it was fairly busy all nights of the week, but things were especially crazy on the weekends. The owners are always looking for new and exciting ways to grown the business, and that is the main focus of this report. I have learned a great deal about day-to-day nightclub operations during my time here, and this is my way of paying them back. The following will break down all the business and demographic information, and offer technological solutions to any problems encounter. My hope is to be able to improve the overall profitability of the business by further improving the customer experience.

Business by the Numbers

Club IT was created with the intention of creating a desirable destination for young and old alike. Just for the sake of argument I would say the most reached demographic would be between 21 and 35 years of age. The Club has a unique, high-energy atmosphere with above average dining options and a revolving door of live musical acts. It would be fair to assume

that the larger majority of the patrons are part of the digital age, and are more than computer literate. This puts the business in a perfect position to use the Internet to its fullest advantage. The business will be able to grow and thrive through repeat customers and word of mouth situations that can be provided by various social networks. It seems that these days the grass roots or guerilla form of advertising proves the most effective. Customers can also visit the

Club IT: Part Three 3 Clubs website to obtain a variety of different information. Tings such as hours of operation, dinner menus, and a detailed schedule of live music is literally all at the customers fingertips. The constant innovations and improvements to the website will only increase customer enjoyment and improve operations.

The owners are extremely interested in the prospect of improving business operations through the use of information systems. Such systems can be used to streamline a number of different areas of the business including finance, marketing, and human resources. They will also be able to track purchases and deliveries from various vendors that supply the Club. The website currently offers intranet access to their employees. This feature is beneficial for the business as it lets management and employees communicate more easily. Employees can see their current scheduled hours, and track their wages on a week-by-week basis. Literally everything thing they could possibly need is all in one easily accesses database. New features will allow employees to contact Human Resources and put in for vacation time amongst other things. With the proposed Club expansion the system will also have to grow to handle the increased use.

New Customer Amenities

As part of the new plans customers will have a few more amenities to improve their overall experience. The biggest of these would be the addition of a Wi-Fi hotspot. This should prove a good addition to the Club and hopefully open the door for things like corporate functions. This can even help to streamline parts of the business such as the ordering of food

Club IT: Part Three 4 and drinks. Customers will be able to put in digital orders or contact management without ever leaving their seats. Wi-Fi should prove a useful addition to the Club. The initial cost of such a system should prove minimal compared to the potential returns. Service time will be greatly reduced allowing the staff productivity to increase. This will smooth out employee communications as they can also use the system to contact management when needed. There are various different resources a business can use to calculate whether or not something is worth investing time and money. After the numbers were crunched the when Wi-Fi and in house ordering system where deemed a good investment. If the number showed that the cost would outweigh the potential benefits that project would not be pursued.

M-Commerce is the Future

The basics of improved m-commerce come down to customer convenience. The easier, and more pleasurable, the experience for the customer the higher the probability they will continue to bring their business to Club IT. Not only will they keep coming back but they will probably also bring friends. As previously stated Club ITs website currently offers things like hours, concert schedules and other activities. Improved features will allow customers to make reservation and order concert tickets online. An e-mail system will also be part of the improvements to the website. This will allow customers to receive notifications of upcoming events and special discounts. This should be another feature that will help to spread the Club IT word to new customers.

Streamlining the online experience will not only make the customer experience better but

Club IT: Part Three 5 also it will help further reduce costs in the long run. Giving the customers the ability to take charge of things will reduce labor costs and allow employees to focus on other projects. The cost of designing and implementing such a system could prove to be steep but in todays digital world there are always multiple options. There are services that offer pre designed systems that contain all the features that the Club IT owners desire in their improved website. They can also rent or lease server space from a larger company which would prove cheaper in the long run. They would save money by not having to employ their own fulltime technical team. Given all this information the implementation of such a system would seem to be more a necessity than anything else.

Design Farming is the Way to Go

Basically the choices for Club IT come down to whether they want to have a unique system designed or purchase a service. It all comes down to cost and whether or not those cost outweigh the gains. I have already mentioned what my recommendations are for Club ITs particular situation and I will now go into further detail as to why. Being a smaller company the task of having a system designed uniquely for them would be much to expensive. Those types of undertakings are reserved more for huge businesses with proven business models. Two types of design models used in conjunction with one another are Joint Application Design (JAD) and System Development Lifecycle (SDLC). This direction would require high priced designed teams to due analysis and design. Following the completion of the program it would be necessary for Club IT to employ its own IT department in order to maintain and secure the new system. A company as small as Club IT would not be able to afford such an undertaking as it

Club IT: Part Three 6 would likely prove to be the end of the business. This is why I suggested renting or leasing a pre-designed program that comes complete with technical support. This will allow Club IT to save time and money while maximizing their return on the investment.

Using Dashboards and Accessing Information

An important tool in a information age business are digital dashboards. These are applications that allow people within a company to quickly access a variety of different information. Managers are typically the ones that have access to these applications since they need to be aware of everything business related. The dashboards perform a number of different functions like analyzing trends and pattern deviations. This could prove useful at Club IT by affording the managers and owners the ability to predict business changes ahead of time. Various computer companies offer pre-made digital dashboards. Microsoft offers perhaps the most widely used information dashboards in its Access system. It has the ability to take in data and analyze it for a variety of different purposes. This system can be used in conjunction with other applications to present the data generated to make it easier to interpret and use.

Coming to Conclusions

It is my personal opinion that the outlook for Club IT is extremely bright. They have already proven to be a profitable endeavor with no signs of slowing. The Clubs success has come in a relatively short period of time, which means that interest is still very high. The owners understand that part of keeping that interest is by constantly evolving the business. As it stands

Club IT: Part Three 7 the information systems employed by the company are inadequate for a business on the rise. That is why a push towards the future as begun with the implementation of a new master system. The system and business upgrades will be part of a step-by-step expansion. They have determined that a Wi-Fi hotspot and new in-house ordering system will increase sales and employee productivity. This will go a long way towards showing their customers, and potential customers, that they are committed to improving on an already working model. The dedication shown should help to generate Club IT even greater business moving forward into the future. I have no doubt that when all the particulars are analyzed these improvements will be worth pursuing since their gain will vastly outweigh the costs.

The complete revamping of the company website would probably be the largest of the initial expansion projects. It is important for the website to break to confines of a boring information site to a completely interactive and full service Internet experience. People want to be able to take care of everything in one easy to understand digital location. There will always be those that do not subscribe to the web revolution but they are in the minority. To be perfectly honest it is likely those people do not fall within the desired demographic anyway. The site should be put together and monitored by an outside service to avoid unnecessary extra cost to Club IT. The new site will offer customers the ability to purchase tickets, make reservations and offer suggestions on further improving the business. This will probably be the biggest tool in an effort to spread the word about Club IT to the masses. In summation, I fully believe in the business model of Club IT. With the proper decision-making, growth strategies and a strong push to assimilate digitally moving forward there is no limit to what this company could become.

Club IT: Part Three 8 References Club IT. Retrieved on April 19, 2011 from http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470169001,descCdrelatedWebsites.html?filter=TEXTBOOK Rainer. Kelly, R & Turban. Efraim. (2008). Introduction to information system, 2nd edition. Retrieved on April 19, 2011 from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary /content/TOC.aspx?assetdataid=8ce5dd76-71ad-4bc7-bc00-82deceee89a5&assetmetaid= e4d04ec0-ab0c-46a4-8085-21a0a0626735 Saunders. Carol S., & Pearlson. Keri. E. (2005). Managing and using information systems. A strategic approach, 3rd ed. Retrieved on April 21, 2011 from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/content/eBookLibrary2/content/eReader.aspx? assetMetaId=e28cd183-113d-4b30-86f7-4a919f3ab6bf&assetDataId=d90c38f9 -366e4628-a1be-2de884381d3d&assetpdfdataid=8131597a-1a3b-4533-bc21- 07cded3b0747.