Role Of IT Monitoring And Control In E-commerce Projects - GECAB Essay.

This project depicts the role and positive impact of IT monitoring and controlling process in different e commerce based project. In order to gain competitive advantages and high level profit from the market it is necessary to understand the role of Information Technology in business development projects. This project is based upon the mission vision and strategies developed by GECAB Company. The project aim or goal, objectives, scope of the project and the business procedure those are needed to be followed by the management authority are elaborated its report.

It has been found that, the aim of GECAB is to make the daily life easier and with the products and services developed by GECAB they are willing to be the leading food distributor in their commodity area.  The report is focused on monitoring and controlling IT sub projects in the dinner online DOL project that should be carried out. The role of the sub project manager of the company is to focus on business models and theoretical concept of IT those are helpful for developing business projects of GECAB. A risk management plan, communication plan, cost forecasting management and forecasting plan is developed in this project those are helpful to achieve the project diaries. The company has developed different real world based projects such as Dinner-On-Line (DOL) and Herman’s bag on line (HOL) project ideas. However, the assumed next phase of the project is to continue itself with different programs by establishing

GECAB, a company in the SydpoleN Group is visualized to become one of the leading foods in their daily commodity area. The mission of the company is to make the life of their consumers easier than the existing situation.  The company has delivered many current projects like DOL and HOL but now they are willing to expand their business to an extent so that they could get measurable success from the competitive market. Although, the company has completed both of the projects but currently they are willing to move further with the DOL project. The DOL project is all about online food service. As this project is based upon E-commerce model, thus certain things that the company is required to be considered include IT project monitoring and control. With the help of project monitoring and control not only the project manager but also the project teams members will be able to understand about the importance of project details.

GECAB Mission and Strategies

Figure 1: Organizational chart of GECAB

(Source: created by author)

The members who are working on the project are VP of GECAB administration, CIO, chairman and the main project manager, finance manager and the control manager itself. In order to handle the document properly it is very much necessary to spread the information for achieving the rules in terms of project diaries. The objective of the task is to describe the way through which the monitoring the control of IT sub project in the dibber on line DOL project could be carried out successfully.

The goal of the project is to understand the previous case projects developed by GECAB business group. From clear understanding of the project, the project manager and the project team members will be able to get to know about further projects details that they are willing to deliver to their clients. The lead of the project or the project head should consider every managerial aspect with detail synchronization and managerial guidelines. At the same time, the project sponsors and the IT project lead should deploy each and every project requirements including both functional and non functional

• To understand the monitoring and control mechanism that should adopt for the IT project development and long term success
• To consider every monitoring and control procedures those are necessary to guide an IT based project so that it could generate positive cash flow in terms of NPV.
• To increase the public recognition within the upcoming 5 years

• Analysis of all the necessary investments those have been done for the project execution and it must be considered by the project manager that the return on investment rate is higher than the input
• Different advertising agencies will be used for increasing the marketing procedure
• Specific requirement including hardware and software
• Investigate the public recognition of the GECAB
• Understanding about the market share so that it could provide 10 % of all meal
• To investigate the security elements those are required for developing an online food delivery project
• To improve the existing delivery system and service

• Appointment of delivery boys
• Purchase of the delivery vehicles

 For this particular Dinner-On-line (DOL) Project, triple constraints have been considered in terms of scope, time and cost by GECAB. From the background of the project it is found that in order to complete the project successfully it is necessary to hire expert project team members. From the activities and objective of the project it is determined that in order to complete the project 14 months are required. Even some days ago the company was able to count households as a completely direct consumer’s jus after the success of E-business developed by GECAB Company. The company has reliable delivery and functional approaches as well however due to lack of managerial and operational approaches currently the company is facing major level challenges from the competitors. In order to mitigate the challenges it is very much necessary to adopt proper IT based project monitoring and control mechanism. GECAB was able to serve household food and over 11 million of deliveries throughout Sweden in an annual basis. However, the numbers of online food delivery companies are growing everyday and thus the level of competition is also expanding horizontally. In order to reduce the rate of error it is very much necessary for the IT project developer to adopt different challenging and advanced technologies so that the competition level could be minimized. Different brainstorming sessions are covered by the business development department of GECAB group. However, certain new IT based solution are developed in the company to evaluate the business management approaches of the company.  The two different E-commerce based solution are recommended by the management authority the approaches are as follows

• Develop and launching a service that might bring cooked meals from the consumer’s desired restaurants to their home
• Develop and launch services for the consumers with a bag prepared with needful recipe ingredients for the dinner requirement

IT Sub-projects in the Dinner Online (DOL) Project

After studying the details of both of these projects, it has been found that rather than cooking ingredients cooked food delivery is much helpful for the consumers. In that case the consumers will be able to get prepared food and they need not to provide any other addition effort for cooking food.

Document Handling, Spread of Information and for Archiving Rules or Project Diary

 

Figure 2: Detail representation of the project

(Source: Colin & Vanhoucke, 2014, pp-120)

For controlling and monitoring the E-commerce IT based project for GECAB, the four major steps those are required to be followed include initiate, planning, execution and monitor and closure. With the help of these steps the consumers will be able to get prepared food at their door steps regardless of the location and time as well. In the project initiation phase, the project manager and the finance manager are needed to make a feasibility study considering the existing, upcoming situation and competitive market as well to make sure that the project is feasible for GECAB Company. If it is found that the project is not enough feasible then the project requirement and other necessary components are required to be changed by the project manager. In the project initial phase a detail assessment on the quality management and quality control is also required to be done to make sure that the project outcome will meet the expectation of the project developer.

Not only the quality management but also quality control is another factor that must be done by the project developer at this very project initial period. The project developers must create a change control and configuration management team so that, as per the changing requirement of the consumers the necessary changes can be brought to the project. This department is responsible to formalize the project goal with defined project schedule and cost as well. If during the project development period it is found that some portion of the project is required to be changed then, according to the requirement the project is required to be changed within the estimated cost. The risk management is another important thing again he project manager should maintain to control the rate of risks both the existing and upcoming. After getting approval from all the operational department of GECAB, the kick off activities should be developed and the output ought to be collected in the project monitoring and execution period.

The last phase of the IT project developed by GECAB group implies that, in the closure phase the post project activities should be arranged and released in the real filed of application.  The human resource management department and the project manager should monitor whether all the project development activities are running properly or not. The leading modern technology that is required to be considered by the project manager from the project initiation up to the project closure phase is the location tracker. With the help of location tracking approach the service providers could deliver the requirement of the consumers.   

Project Monitoring and Control

 Time Reporting 

Time reporting is one of the most interesting and effective tool that is strictly required to be considered by the project manager. If the project managing and execution time is changed then the project budget will also increase as per the change. Different software is there those are used by the project manager to track the time. Time to time reporting must be done by the project manager and the project team members. Time tracking technology has the potential to improve the procedure of work planned. Even, the project manager should also estimate it much appropriately. Many reasons are there for which the time tracking improves the project management skills of the project manager:

• With time reporting the project manager and the project development team members will be able to estimate the project much accurately.
• Time measurement for the completion of any project is the single way to improve the project development and execution
• Time tracking helps to set clear of project objectives
• Project changes could be anticipated with the help of time reporting
• The project tasks could be prioritized with the help of time tracking
• With the help of time sheet management the project manager will be able to identify the activities those are forgotten by the project developers.  
• Important organizational decision could be made based upon the time reporting management.

Project budgeting and forecasting is another important aspects that is strictly required to be considered by the project manager. The entire project budget could be saved by proper project budget management. A project outcome can be managed well through the help of top level comparison and real time applications. DOL is not the first E-commerce project developed by GECAB thus the company should learn from the previous projects to make accurate budget estimation. It will help the project manager to deal with the following factors:

• It will help the project manager to understand that whether the project will be completed on time and within the estimated budget or not
• Project cost can be tracked with in terms of labor cost, expenses and non labor cost as well
• Reporting must be done over the planned values and earned values as well
• Capturing the billable project charges
• View a quick project budget

The different project change categories include normal change, emergency change and standard change. After analyzing the details of DOL project it is determined that for mitigating the issues that might create error during the project development phase it is necessary to bring emergency change. The emergency changes include the changes those must be changed sooner by the project manager and project team members as well. For this particular project, implementation of security patch in E-commerce business model is very much important. The change management approaches developed by the GECAB is as follows:

Factors	Purpose
Change initiative	After going through the details of the dinner on line project it is found that the project has no proper security practices. Thus, in the change initiative phase the project manager is needed to fill out the request for change. The person who is responsible to make the change include change manager and the project manager himself.
Change processing	The IT consultants associated to the project are needed to develop proper encryption algorithm so that both the service providers and the transformation channel keep secured from the external attackers
Change advisory	The change advisory is responsible to go through about the detail of all the approaches those are helpful for mitigating the security challenges. The change requests served by the advisory department include cost benefit, reliability, viability and its potential impact as well.
Technical review	After going through the details of dinner online project it is determined that, the AD Hoc group and technical exert team should give review on technical details of the project

For managing the quality of the online E-Commerce project it is necessary to consider certain procedures. The necessary steps those are required to be followed for managing the quality of the project are as follows:

Procedure	Description
Project management plan	In order to capture the essence of the project in terms of profile of the project, success criteria and other conditions it is necessary to identify the project details appropriately.
Scope management plan	The project scope is divided into two different parts in scope and out scope. In order to serve quality service to the consumers with a reduced rate of competition it is necessary to develop communication plan, stakeholder identification and acceptance procedure as well.
Communication management plan	Proper communication approach in terms of open communication is needed to be adopted by the project manager to ensure that the project team members are sharing their ideas to others.
Financial report documentation	The financial details after each step of planning are needed to be documented by the project team members to understand that whether the budget is getting exceed or not.
Risk management	Proper technical risk management approaches are needed to be developed by the project manager and risk management office so that they will be able to serve quality service to the consumers on appropriate time zone.

 Risk Management Procedures

Risks	Management process
Data risks	In the online dinner delivery project data integrity and data management are identified as the most effective things. In order to mitigate this issue it is necessary to adopt proper data encryption algorithm so that none of the unauthorized users could come and access data from the storage server. Data retention and data update policies should also be needed.
Data update	Automatic data update will help to collect and update data as per the changing requirement of the consumers. In order to maintain data as well as system security, contracted protection for data transfer are needed to be adopted by the head of the project management authority
Data access	The information regarding the employees and the consumers are stored in the storage server and could be accessed by anyone. In order to protect data from external and unwanted access it is necessary to adopt application firewall and encryption as well so that none of the external attackers could access data from the server without permission

 Communication Plan Development 

The major terms associated to the formal communication plan development for GECAB includes meeting, report submission, memorandums and emails. In order to plan and execute the project successfully it is necessary to adopt proper communication plan for the project. In order to share the project view with the project team members it is necessary to adopt open communication so that every individual involved to the project could share their point of views to others.  The communication plan developed for the project is as follows:

Person to communicate	Whom to communicate	Frequency	Purpose	Medium
Project manager	Project team members	Daily	The role of the project manager is to make the project team members familiar to the project details and project values. With the help of project value positioning the team members will be able to understand about the project goal and aim as well.	Emails, face to face meeting and video conference and phone calls
Vice president of the administration	Project manager	Monthly	The vice president of GECAB is responsible to control the financial structure of the company with the earned value follow up procedure. With the help of document handling the project guidelines could understand by the project manger and by the project team members as well.	Emails, face to face meeting and video conference and phone calls
Chief Information officer	Project sponsors and project team member	Monthly	The chief information officer is responsible to speak to the project manager and team members about the agile approach among all the other different things. Not only this but also stakeholder management is another important thing that they are also required to be considered. The IT department utilizes the scrum for maintaining the software those are used for developing the project	Emails, face to face meeting and video conference and phone calls
Chairman of GECAB	Vice president and project manager	Monthly	The chairman is responsible to develop the business development strategies. With the help of these meeting the project team members will be able to able to understand about the control cost and favor for time control management and forecast as well.	Emails, face to face meeting and video conference and phone calls

E-commerce Based Solutions

 The monitoring and control of IT –sub project in the Dinner-on-Line – DOL project to be carried out by GECAB

 Conclusion

From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, the GECAB is one of the largest online food serving companies in the world. The company sales their products to consumers such as super market, hyper market, kitchens and even in canteen kitchens also. Different types of projects are developed by the company however in order to gain competitive profit from the marketplace it is very much necessary for the company to compare all their projects simultaneously. After critically analysis of the project details of DOL and HOL it is found that,  for further success they are willing to continue their project establishment period that is prior to the management. For continuous business development and long term success it is very much necessary to provide proper IT business strategies to the project manager.  The role of IT project controlling and monitoring including risk management, quality management, change management and time reporting as well are elaborated in this paper. Apart from this in order to reduce the work load from the project team members it is necessary to divide the entire work in small parts. It has been expected that with the help of proper IT project monitoring and controlling the project manager and the project team members will be able to develop every necessary aspect for project implementation. Not only this, but also, at GECAB the company have a commitment for the ambiance and community engagement that moves from one hand to another hand, with a long term profitability. The leading role of a business organization is to deliver is to consider every ethical aspects and basic decision making approach. The main strategy of the company is dependent upon six different cornerstones such as the profitability, organizational growth, consumers, environment and social responsibility as well. Though it has been assumed that the company is getting measurable profit ranges but at the same time,  certain issues are identified by the management head of the company. In order to mitigate those challenges it is very much necessary to consider different issues mitigation and IT monitoring and controlling mechanism. Based on the type of the business the company should consider different IT based suggestion and recommendation.

Security: Security is referred to as one of the most important aspects that help to deliver a secured and high level service to the employees and consumers as well. As the company provides online food chain system to the consumers coming from different zone thus it is very much necessary to adopt proper firewall and encryption based security so that they can secured their confidential information from the external attackers.

Triple Constraints of the DOL Project

Marketing strategies: In order to gain effective as well as efficient revenue from the online service it is very much necessary for the management authority of GECAB to deliver proper marketing and managerial business strategies.  

IT requirements: In order to execute the project successfully both the functional and n functional requirements are required to be completed by the management authority of the business organization to ensure that they will be able to deliver as per the requirement of the project objective through meeting the basic project requirement. Not only the functional and nn functional but also the necessary hardware and software requirements are also needed to be completed by the project management authority of GECAB group.

Responsibility management: In order to deliver a successful project outcome to the consumers it is very much necessary to process proper responsibility. Not only the project lead but also all the members of the project team are required to serve proper responsibilities. It will help to reduce the total work pressure from the project team members.  

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