International Business Strategy

Question: Write an essay on the Holiday.Inc. Answer: Project Description: Holiday.Inc is one of the most important and a growing airline company in the world that provides various services to its wide range of customers. The project here is about Holiday.Inc Airline Company, or rather about the case study of the Holiday.Inc Airline Company, and about the detail information of the services that is being provided by this particular airline company. The number of customers and the visitor of the particular airlines is increasing day by day along with it the airline too, is improving them and increasing the services that is being provided by them to the customers. The new features that the airline wants to implement to increase the production include various features such as implementing a new information system and at the same time implementing a new flight reservation system for the customers. Along with it, the company wants to come up with new human resource management and sales and marketing systems, to support the day-to-day operations in the company. Ap art from all these system, the financial system of the company would be helpful for the growth and the development of the company and at the same time, it would help in the daily operational activity as well. The airline system is going to come up with new information system and the new information system, is helpful for the frequent flyers of the airline. The airline customers can be divided into ordinary and the frequent flyers and the frequent flyers would especially be helpful from this new information system. Identifying Scope and Boundaries Every project has certain scope as well as boundaries and the boundaries make sure that the daily operations are followed within those boundaries. The boundaries are created with the help of certain set of rules and regulation and the people in the project make sure that the rules and the regulations are followed properly and there should not be any breaching of these set of boundaries. The project scope contains a boundary statement and this particular boundary statement is applicable only to those areas that are there within the project scope. Since every project have certain amount of boundary therefore, this particular project too is not an exception and this particular project has a boundary at the same time, and the division between the two kinds of customers forms one kind of boundary. The Holiday.Inc Airline has two kinds of customers the ordinary and the frequent flyer, therefore, the customer of this airline company could be divided into these two main types, and along with it, there are two types of reservation system, one the ordinary flyer and the other the frequent flyer. The ordinary flyers are those, who do not travel by air on a regular basis and thus, they could not make their payments through cheque or cash and if they have to make their payment, they would have to use the credit card option only. Moreover, the ordinary flyers are not offered any kinds of discounts, as it is being offered to the frequent flyers, and at the same time, the ordinary flyers could not easily cancel their reservation as well. Identifying Stakeholders The stakeholders that are required for the new information system of the airline are the following people: CEO of the company is the most important person in the company since the company is a startup company. Therefore, it is important that the CEO of the company carries out all the responsibilities effectively and at the same time should assist the managers in the daily operations. Finance Manage ensures the maximum return on investment and at the same time, the finance manager ensures minimum risk that is being incurred for the company. The fianc manager also ensures that there is adequate control structure for the purpose of transfer and investment of funds. Account Manager makes sure that the staffs are receiving their payments in time and at the same time; the account manger ensures that the incentive that the staff receives due regular appraisal is being transferred on time. It is the job of the account manager to look after the progress stakeholders and the quarterly internal and external initiatives at the same time. Apart from these few people there are other people as well, who could be identified as the important stakeholder, which include the General and the Assistant manager, the frequent flyers, the human resource manager, the complaint and the security officer. Along with it, there is the marketing officer and the ordinary flyer and most importantly, the general staff forms the important stakeholders of the airline company. Conducting Stakeholder Analysis- Objective and Business Requirement The policies or the new information system that would be implemented in the organization would affect the stakeholders and at the same time, it may affect them as well. The CEO of the company is the most important part of the company therefore; CEO should identify the need for implementing the new information system in the company (Chevalier 2016). The finance manager of the company is responsible for sponsoring the project, without sufficient sponsor, it would not be possible for the company to implement the new information system in the company, which would beneficial for the customers of the company (XUE, SU and SHI 2015). The new information system implementation requires well-trained and sound employees in the organization and it is the job of the human resource manager to carry on the recruitment of such employees (Lienert, Schnetzer and Ingold 2013). Along with recruiting well-trained and skilled employees it is important that the existing employees are given pro[per training and thus there should be an implementation of the training and the knowledge program in the company, so that the general staff of the company do not find any problem in using this new interface (Buchanan 2014). The human resource manager here plays an important role in carrying on the training and development program for the staff, those who are there in the organization (Martin, Evans, Rice, Lodhia and Gibbons 2016). The new information system or the interface could create problem for the customers and they find it difficult in case of using it, thus the complaint officer is responsible for handling all these problems and providing a perfect solution to all these problems (Elgin. and Weible, 2013). The marketing manager is responsible for providing this particular input in the annual marketing plan of the airline schemes. The ordinary and the frequent flyers are the target group who would be benefitted from this particular implementation of a new interface or the information system (Maguire, Potts and Fletcher 2012). Stake Holder Key Interest Importance to Project Influence on Project Participation CEO Providing Customer Satisfaction High, since the CEO is the implementer. (Lim, Damian, Ishikawa and Finkelstein 2013.) High, since he is the one who will initiate the project Participate at all levels, to support every people engaged in different operations. Finance Manager Ensuring Maximum Return and Minimum Risk High, since he is going to finance the project, or rather provide sponsor to it. High, since he/she would ensure adequate control, transfer and investment. Engage in the initial level of financing the project. HR Manager Responsible for managing the staff of the organization. Medium, since the HR manager recruits the well-trained staff and at the same time, provides training to the staff. High, since the HR manager is responsible for providing those staffs who would lead to the successful implementation of the project. Engage in the recruitment and the training level. Complaint Officer Handling all the complaints Low, since the complaint officer is responsible only for eliminating the complaint, if at all there is any. Low Get engaged after the project has been implemented. Flyer Receiving the service Low, as they are at the receivers end. High, since they are the target group. Get engaged after the implementation of the project. (Figure 1: The Stakeholder Analysis Plans for quality assurance testing: Quality assurance testing is an important aspect in order to implement any system into the business processes. Hence, Holidays Inc. will have to implement quality assurance testing so that the proposed systems can successfully implement in business environment. Types of QA testing will have to performed by Holidays Inc. According to Galliers and Leidner (2014) quality assurance plan is an umbrella that encompasses all the testing required for implementing a particular project successfully. Hence, test plan of Holidays Inc proposed information system would have to consider many factors, which will help the organization to fulfill the purpose. Holidays Incs quality assurance planning will include: Process QA plan: this will allow the organization to meet the compliance and quality standard that is required to handle the customers of the organization. Application test plan: This will allow Holidays Inc to identify the kind of technical requirements it had to implement this information system QA plan also have to include development efforts: Unit test plan: This will allow to evaluate all the proposed system effectively Integrated system testing plan: This testing will include end-to-end testing regarding the functionality of all the system application Since, implementation of new information system in the business environment is a high risk investment, QA testing will also include the following: Regression testing: It will help Holidays Inc to identify the necessary changes that had to be made on the proposed system in order to make it functions effective for the proposed company. Conversion integration application testing: This will help to analyze the performance of the proposed system at the initial implementation period. This is extremely important, as it will provide an idea about the kind of impact it can have in future in the businesses processes of Holidays Inc. Proof of concept: This test will allow Holidays Inc. to be sure that the propose system will allow the company to handle its processes in an effective way. Alpha testing: This test will allow Holidays Inc. to identify the places or areas where the proposed system will have major impacts. It will also allow identifying the kind of bugs or viruses can have impact on the proposed system (Kerzner 2013). This is very important, as it will allow Holidays Inc. to take precautionary actions much more effectively, which will have positive impact on the operational process of the Holidays Inc. Pilot testing: this testing will help Holidays Inc. to improve the day-to-day business processes of the company. Particularly, as the organizations is focusing on to the implementation of combinations of system, this testing will allow the company to limit the impact of the variables that can have negative impact on the operational processes of Holidays Inc. Parallel testing: This testing is extremely effective when an organization is planning to implement several systems simultaneously (Willcocks 2013). Since, it allows organizations to identify whether each and every system is working according to its specification or not. Thus, Holidays Inc. also will have to perform this test smoothen the operational process of the organization. Stress testing: This testing will allow Holidays Inc. to identify the effectiveness of the proposed system during peak time. Thus, it will allow Holidays Inc. to test whether or not the proposed system has the capability to handle all the customers of the organization effectively. Required number of individuals From the above mentioned number of testing, it can be evaluate that Holidays Testing is looking to implement an in-depth analysis on the proposed system to make sure that it works according to its expectation. Thus Holidays Inc. will have to implement three teams and each will have five members so that QA test can be completed within the timeframe. Required time As Holidays Inc is facing trouble in handling its daily processes, QA testing will have to complete within the shortest period of time. As a result, five days considered for Quality assurance testing. Plan for change management: Change management is a process that required planning from the organization. Otherwise, it might create huge amount of negative impact on the operational process of the company. Hence, Holidays Inc will have to follow sequence of steps that is described as follows: Figure 1: Change management process Step 1: To manage the changes, Holidays Inc first has to identify the areas or the factors that has the higher probability to affect by the proposed implementation of the information system (Wu et al. 2013). This identification is a very important, as it will help Holidays Inc to develop a counter strategy for the change that is happening in the Holidays Inc. Otherwise, it will be very hard for Holidays Inc to handle the changes much more effectively. Step 2: Next step of change management will have to focus on the reasons for which the identified are affecting at the most (Schwalbe 2015). This will allow Holidays Inc to develop strategies, which will help to counter the negative impact of the implemented systems. As new system introduction required specific skills from the employees as well in order to handle the new system in a much more effective way. Step 3: This step will have to focus about the particular of change. In this case, Holidays Inc is looking to implement a combination of systems so that it can able to manage its operational process much more effectively (Haux et al. 2013). Hence, Holidays Inc will have to evaluate the cost relating to the change or implementation of new system. So that it can able to invest in the proposed information system process in a much more effective way. Step 4: This step of change manage will have to consider about the risk management strategies of Holidays Inc. Since, implementation of combinations of information system does demand a huge amount of investment from the company (Van De Walle et al. 2014). Hence, the change is associated with a certain amount of risk. Change management will allow minimizing the investment risk of the company to a great extent. Step 5: This step involves the communication of the changes to all the stakeholders of Holidays Inc. Since, implementation of system will completely changes the operational process of the company. it can have major impact on the businesses of the company. Hence, communication to the stakeholders is necessary so that they can able to adjust with the new operational process of the company. Step 6: Communication with the stakeholders will allow Holidays Inc to provide training and other facilities to the internal stakeholders of the company so that they can able to adjust with the new system much more effectively. Since, implementation of new system demands specific skills from the employees. Therefore, it will help the organization to handle the changes in much more effective way. In addition, employees will also can cope up with the new system challenges. Step 7: Lastly, implementation of new system will also create new roles for every employee to handle. As a result, Holidays Inc. will have to segregate all roles of the organizations so that they can able to manage new challenges arises because of the change in a effective manner. Role segregation is change management will also allow Holidays Inc. to minimize the chances of arising confusion in the workplace. These are the proposed steps for Holidays Inc that the organization will have to perform in order to manage the changes in a best possible way. References: Buchanan, M.A., 2014. CSR and the Social Contract: New Lenses for Stakeholder Analysis and Strategic Management. Chevalier, J.M., 2016. Stakeholder analysis and natural resource management. Elgin, D.J. and Weible, C.M., 2013. A stakeholder analysis of Colorado climate and energy issues using policy analytical capacity and the advocacy coalition framework.Review of Policy Research,30(1), pp.114-133. 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