Comprehensive CRM System Proposal For Primus Hotel Sydney.

The purpose of this assignment is to evaluate your ability to develop a comprehensive implementation proposal for an information system that uses a systems approach. The proposal should be targeted at a potential ‘sponsor’ organisation that will need to be convinced of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the proposed new system.

Choose an information system (e.g., ERP systems, CRM systems, SCM Systems, Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Executive Information Systems, Enterprise Portals, Data Warehouse & Data Mining Applications, Enterprise Collaboration Systems, Knowledge Management Systems, and so on, that you have studied in this unit. Alternatively, you may wish to combine features of several systems. Please note for the purpose of this assignment, mobile apps or other e-business and digital enterprise applications should not be used as the chosen information system). 

Your assignment should describe the steps of the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)  The proposed system must address an identifiable problem/opportunity that exists in the sponsor organisation and relate to particular aspects of the organisation’s overall strategic directions. It is important that you select the features of your system carefully and justify your selection. Do not just use (be critical of the use of) the standard features of a commercially available software package. For the purposes of this assignment, try to keep the system that you are proposing to a manageable size.

The format of the formal assignment will be:

• Introduction
• Body of your assignment with suitable headings and subheadings

Also include the following points in the body.

1. Discussion of SDLC steps-You should choose 7-steps (Haag et al. 2008)-Please note Topic 4 PPTs are organized as per 7-steps SDLC.
2. Discuss associated project management, risk management, and change management

• Conclusions

Overview and Purpose of the Proposal

The purpose of this research proposal is to establish a 7-Step Model for Systems Development Life Cycle or SDLC to implement the Operational CRM System within the Primus Hotel in Sydney. This entire implementation plan needs to be developed through an overall background of the organization presented to see whether the implementation is feasible enough. Next, the proposal would analyse the external and the internal environment within the organization developed through various methodologies (John 2017). This would help in identifying the provision of the CRM system in the organization based on the current state of relationship between the customers of the organization and the organization itself to help understand the methods that the organization should utilize in implementing the CRM system. The last and final leg of the proposal would have the managing of the project, the implementation of the new change included in the system and the assessment and management of the associated risk within the system implementation.

The Primus Hotel in Sydney is enlisted as one of the most popular hotels in midtown Sydney that is declared as a heritage hotel in Australia. It forms one of the most iconic attractions in the city of Sydney and this hotel stands as one of the most ancient hotels in the town. There are almost 172 rooms in the hotels which are endowed with all the amenities (Rapp and Ogilvie 2015). The amenities make up for an engaging and authentic experience for the guests. There are also Presidential Suites that are provided for the people from the cream if the society and the highest of the dignitaries. The accommodation offerings in the hotels are endowed with state of the art settings regarding the application of new technologies to make sure that the hotels are equipped with all the amenities that makes sure that the stay experience of the guests are one to remember. In addition to that, the hotel lives up to the expectation of the heritage status in the decoration of the hotel. The decoration of the hotel describes the roots of hotel from where it had begun.

Other than the decorations owing its credits to the ancient times when the hotel was first set up, the rooms are also divided into specific categories that describe the needs of the people. Not just the suites, but the rooms also have categories according to the availability of the amenities. The relationship between the customers and the hotel also needs to be extremely intimate so that the Primus Hotel lives up to the expectation of the guests. In the changing scenario of the world and the entire industry structure of the hotel businesses, it is identifiable that the hotels would need to implement feasible systems to enhance the quality of services and the relationship between the guests and the people in charge of the operations within the organizational system. The amenities of the hotels include 172 rooms and suites, complimentary wireless internet, room services available at any given hour, concierge, laundry and dry cleaning, business centre, valet parking, gymnasium and outdoor heated pools (Pedron et al. 2016). The hotel according to its external appearance stands an example of the fusion between the new age state of the art amenities with the hint of ancient times when the hotel was set up.

Background of Primus Hotel in Sydney

Before implementing a new system in the organizational set up, it is required that the organization identifies its external and internal environment in an elaborate way, so that it is easy to identify the places that the organization needs to improve within the organization (Rigo et al. 2016). The contemporary industry of the latest times calls for the hospitality industry to evolve with time as it is required that they acknowledge the competition within the other hotels as well in the market. To understand the internal and external environment of the Primus Hotels, it would be necessary to bring about the SWOT analysis, which analyses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within the operations of the organizations and the Porter’s Five Forces analysis to describe the external forces that affect the operations of the organization (Kumar and Reinartz 2018). Therefore, following would be the SWOT and the Porter’s Five Forces rule utilized for the external and internal environment analysis for the Primus Hotels respectively:

Strengths: The Primus Hotels have been in the business since the ancient times when there were no such accommodations provided for the guests. The hotel is listed as one of the heritage sites in the city of Sydney and has an elongated history which makes it an intriguing stay for the guests. In addition to that, the organization merges the idea of age old decorations and state of the art technologically advanced amenities that include a number of people to opt for the Primus Hotels before looking for any other hotel (Gholami et al. 2018). Other than the accommodation system, the restaurants and the bars inside the hotel is also known for its state of the art amenities provided for the guests.

Weaknesses: The organization has been set up at the times when there was less to no provisions of luxurious hotels in Australia and it was one of a kind (Jaber and Simkin 2017). The Primus Hotels have evolved and developed ever since with changing times for providing the best quality of services to the guests within the hotels. However, it is not identified as the most technologically advanced hotels in Australia since the major focus remains on the amenities provided to the guests with an amalgamation of the old and the new eras. The operations within the Primus Hotels are not identified as one of the most technologically advanced ones.

Opportunities: The Primus Hotels can utilize the changing technological advancements since it has so far accepted the ever changing technologies when it comes to providing amenities to the guests within their stay. This can be seen through the ancient times decorations that is seen in the physical appearance of the hotel but the newer technologies adopted to form the technologically advanced provisions to the guests (Kumar and Reinartz 2018).

Internal and External Analysis of Primus Hotel in Sydney

Threats: The ever changing world of hospitality industry is developing with the advancement of time and it has been reported that the organizations in this industry are happily accepting the changes in the industry (Cambra-Fierro et al. 2017). The competitive organizations in the same industry are always trying to implement newer technologies in handling the operations within the organizations to make sure that it stays ahead of all the organizations in the industry. This forms a threat for the Primus Hotels as well.

Competitive Rivalry: Primus Hotels are one of the biggest accommodative hotels in Sydney and thus it has a certain level of expectations of the customers who are looking for an exquisite experience during their stay or the time of accommodating in the hotels (González-Benito, Venturini and González-Benito 2017). The hospitality industry has been gaining the upper hand as an industry as a whole in adopting the technological means for handling the operations within the organization.

Power of Suppliers: The Primus Hotels belongs to the hospitality industry which primarily follows a B2B or Business to Business strategy in the operations. The suppliers for the industry are mostly the other businesses that supply the equipments to the hotel so that they can provide the same to the customers of the Primus Hotels (San-Martín, Jiménez and López-Catalán 2016). Therefore, the relationship between the suppliers and the hotel needs to be absolutely strong so that the luxurious amenities provided by the Primus Hotels are kept intact.

Power of Customers: The customers are the major consumers in the hospitality industry and it is and unchangeable factor in the case of the Primus Hotels as well. All the enhancements that the hotel makes are only inclined in making the operations of the hotel much better so that they can serve their customers in a better way (Dalla Pozza, Goetz and Sahut 2018). The amenities and technologies are thus required to be at a state of constant improvement to make further better utilization of the amenities for the customers, thus making the relationship between the customers and the organization much stronger.

Threat of New Entrants: The competitors that already exist within the hospitality industry are at a constant stage of implementing technologically advanced strategies that would make sure that the organization is a profitable one.  The customers would be naturally attracted towards the hotel that would be more appealing as a value for money one providing all the advanced amenities (Bahri-Ammari and Soliman 2016). In the case of Primus Hotels, it has already been established long back and therefore, it needs to upgrade the systems with the changing time. Whereas, the new organizations in the industry has the opportunity to notice all the trials and errors performed by the other organizations and establish the organization by eradicating all the errors performed by the already existing ones. Therefore, there is a threat from the new entrants prevailing in the industry for the Primus Hotels.

SWOT and Porter's Five Forces Analysis

Threat of Substitutions: When an organization in a specific industry fails to live up to the expectations of the customers, there is naturally a threat from the other organizations in the industry that might be the threat in the form of a new entrant (Ogilvie and Rapp 2015). Therefore, the Primus Hotels always have to be at a constant level in upgrading so that they are not at a threat of being replaced by the other organization in the industry.

Problems in the Organization

Opportunities for the Organization

· The hotel does not have a specialized system dedicated to manage the customer relationships within the organization. · The system of operations from a technical point of view is quite outdates since it was found that most of the systems still work under the ancillary functions of the Opera Systems (Al-Azzam and Khasawneh 2017). The main functions that the system follows are the check in time and check out time which does not highlight the storage of the customer database and the management of relationship between the customers and the organization. · The sales activities are found to be recorded only by the sales person in a manual way. It has been found by the researches that this system results to numerous human related errors and the huge load of customer data makes it impossible to backtrack the errors to solve them. · Customer retention has been a major factor for the Primus Hotels but the researchers have found that this is a major problem that hospitality industry faces in trying to retain the old customers rather than trying to be more open to the new customers (Srivastava, Chandra and Srivastava 2019). The amount of profit that Primus Hotels could have made with the entry of new customers is much higher than the hotels are gaining by retaining the old ones. · The relationship management system within the organization is not clearly defined and it has been described that the nature of proper customer relationship management system is much lower than that of its customers. This is valid for all the departments, starting from the sales department to the operational management.

· It has been found that since the organization is regarded as a heritage site and has huge historical value, there is high customer demand found (Rahimi and Gunlu 2016). This gives an opportunity to the organization to increase the amount of sales and revenue by maintaining a good customer relationship to achieve the expectation of the customers. · The general trend also indicates that the business performances in the hotel has been using the technology system in the market are better than the ones that do not have.

Table 1: Problems and Opportunities in Primus Hotels

(Source: Created by Author)

The Systems Development Life Cycle or SDLC Model is developed to have a systematic approach in solving a problem that has arrived in the business through 7 stages of solutions for the information systems to complement the implementation process (Law et al. 2018). The Primus Hotels is in the need of a Customer Relationship Management or CRM System. It needs to be implemented in the sales and marketing department to maintain a good customer relationship for helping the business performance to improve in a much better way than it is now. Following would be the SDLC Models for implementing the CRM system in the sales and marketing department for the Primus Hotels:

• Planning Phase:In this stage, the available CRM systems that are available in the market are analysed. There are four major categories of CRM systems available in the market; namely, operational, collaborative, analytical and portal based (Hardjono and San 2017). There should be proper implementation of two main categories of the CRM systems that would feasibly handle the daily operations as well as analyse the customer information according to the data warehouse (Lipiäinen 2015).
• Analysis of Project Feasibility:This phase analyses the economic feasibility of the project that would be used to measure the expected savings in cost, increased revenue and profits and all the other benefits that would exceed the costs of designing, developing and operating a proposal system (Zouaoui, Triki and Ferchichi 2016). To launch a new information system, it is necessary to consider the economic feasibility so that the company can evaluate a cost benefit analysis for calculating the tangible and intangible costs and benefits. It would only be considered feasible if the CRM implementation increases the acquired benefits compared to the cost of implementation.
• Development of the design:This is the system design phase that would describe the ways by which the Primus Hotels have been planning to achieve its goals. It would also take into consideration about the risk that the internet security system and data confidentiality systems possess since the data that the organization would be dealing with are the intricate details of the customers. It should only be confined to the systems used within the organization, and any employee working in the Primus Hotels should be barred from using the same in their personal connecting devices (Hefner et al. 2017). Even, the personal devices of the employees should be prohibited to connect to the internet through the wireless internet used within the hotels. The system model developed as such would be a graphical model representing the system design that would include the GUI, data model and entity relationship diagrams. The design would finally be drafted including the Hardware, network, software, database, user permission specification, which would be approved by the executives in the sales department.
• Development:This would be the next step of implementation where the design of the system would be taken to develop the It infrastructure, database and programs. After the analysis of the opportunities and problems in the sales and marketing department for the Primus Hotels, it can be said that it is better to implement the ASP approach in the development of the CRM System (Hasan 2018). It is better that the development phase implements a trial version of the entire system so that the hotel employees can evaluate the system and changes can be made accordingly specified for the Primus Hotels.
• Testing:It is essentially necessary that the system goes through a phase of testing before the actual implementation of the system occurs. This would be done to eliminate the software problems before the system is actually put together to be implemented for handling the business operations of the Primus Hotels (Stanimirov, Zhechev and Stanimirova 2017). It would control the entire CRM system in maintaining quality of services of the organization and verify if the CRM system is effectively handling all the sales and marketing operations within the organization.
• Implementation: This phase converts all the project parts into and actual business operation system including the main business activities including the detailed user documentation, implementation method and the training of the end users, which in this case are the employees of the Primus Hotels (Barcelo et al. 2018).
• Maintenance Phase:The primary implementation involves the review after the process of implementation, developing an assistance guideline for the system users, correcting the problems identified in the testing phase and the provision of a supportive environment.

This would be the phase where the CRM system would be implemented within the operations of the Primus Hotels focusing on the sales and marketing department to establish a much improves customer relationship with the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques involved to meet the project requirements (Reid and Catterall 2015). This would begin with the following processes as below:

• Development of a project plan
• Identifying and managing the stakeholders
• Identifying the impact level of the project from the perspectives of the stakeholders
• Evaluating the responsibility of each stakeholder involved within the project

The processing of the new and improved CRM system with the organization focusing on the hospitality industry would include a strategy to be implemented as well for handling the changes through the new system (Girchenko, Ovsiannikova and Girchenko 2017).

• The first step in this strategy would involve change in the vision of the organization.
• Next it would be defining an optimum change strategy and leadership style.
• It would then include the workforces who would be fit for handling the technologically advanced CRM system after the existing employees have been trained.

Risks are an inevitable and unavoidable issue in the aggregation of company activities and implementation of the new CRM system in the Primus Hotels are also susceptible to the same risks (Almotairi 2016). All these risks are combined through the proactive and ongoing activities of the company and the management of all these risks should be accompanied by the identification, analysis, and response and monitoring done to control the risks (Reicher and Szeghegyi 2015). The probability of the risks should be identified as a part of the risk management plan and brain storming needs to be done to implement strategies to resolve the risks.

7-Step Model for Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Conclusion

Therefore, in conclusion it can be said that the processes that have been utilized as the implementation plan of the new CRM system in the Primus Hotels has been feasibly described as the above report. The implementation plan has been established through a 7-Step Model for Systems Development Life Cycle or SDLC to implement the Operational CRM. This entire implementation plan has further been developed through an overall background of the organization presented to find the feasibility of the entire system within the current state of the organization. Next, the proposal had a complete analysis of the external and the internal environment within the organization developed through various methodologies like the SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces Model respectively. This has helped in identifying the provision of the CRM system in the organization based on the current state of relationship between the customers of the organization and the organization itself. This has further been utilized to understand the correct method to implement the CRM system within the sales and marketing department of the Primus Hotels. The last and final leg of the proposal has the project management for the implementation of the project, the implementation of the new change included in the system and the assessment and management of the associated risk within the system implementation.

References

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Project Management and Implementation Plan

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