Cango Wk 4 Swot

Performing a SWOT analysis technique would be very beneficial at this point and will serve as the baseline to elaborate on a strategic plan for the organization. CG consultants have been monitoring CanGo’s processes for quite sometime, and we have developed the following preliminary SWOT analysis: Strength: ?Purchasing an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) would help to improve the warehouse, by purchasing an automated storage and retrieval system it is a great solution for CanGo’s handling inventory in a more effective and efficient manner. ?CanGo has had tremendous growth over the past couple of years. CanGo has also been recognized for as one of the fastest growing small business in the Hudson Valley. CanGo is continually looking to venture out into other areas, in an effort of improving the overall organization. Weaknesses: ?One of the biggest issues is the fact that CanGo does not have a Vision and Mission Statement. Without a vision and mission the organization does not have a clear direction of the organization. ?CanGo is also missing a Strategic plan, without a strategic plan there is no roadmap for growth and prosperity. Strategic planning will help you foresee and react quickly to market changes and opportunities. CanGo should conduct these strategic plans routinely, by doing so it helps you to see opportunities earlier and set up contingency plans so threats are minimized. ?Lack of a system analysis and programmer is also a weakness for CanGo, in general a system analyst would ensure that the requirements set forth by the business are captured and documented correctly before the solution is developed and implemented. Currently this is not happening for CanGo, so this is an area that needs to be addressed, without it CanGo would not have the knowledge of understanding how present and future business needs will impact the olutions and the implementation process. Opportunities: ?Investing in an in-house database that incorporates into an automated storage and retrieval system ASRS. Fully automated and integrated storage systems are the ultimate in warehouse management and efficiency. They allow for complete integration of the company’s ERP software with warehouse retrieval storage system. Order picking is optimized and controlled. ?CanGo would also benefit from updating their website to reinforce corporate and brand identity, this would help their existing investment in marketing go further. This would allow for CanGo to advertise services and products, build customer relations through personalized services, they could also benefit by conducting market research through their website. The internet is a great opportunity for your business to compete on a much more level playing field with much larger businesses. Threats ?CanGo faces losing business from their website to other websites due to their web search taking too long, where the competition’s website is optimized and produces the results quicker Recommendations Issue 1: Marketing to the right customers and consumers is vital to every business. A company needs to know how to market to a certain target to attract their customers so they can sell their goods and create a profit from their inventory. CanGo built their success onluck and they never bothered to get into the details of how their company became successful. They are lacking important and vital information to keep their company successful. Since there is no marketing department in CanGo, I would suggest for them to hire an outside company to conduct their marketing research; I believe that they would benefit from this. The upper management of CanGo should research the company that would best fit the job; perhaps choosing a company that specializes in the same industry as CanGo. There are many advantages to hiring an outside research company; they would be able to determine who the target customers are, where these customers are located, how to reach the target customers and exactly what type of product or services they are looking for. Once the marketing research company determines all of these issues, CanGo would be more effective in marketing their product. Issue 2: The fact that no one is tracking where the work is and who is supposed to be working on what can lead to many problems. Some employees may be doing more work than others because they are efficient and everything seems to land on their desk while others may be receiving credit for work they are not doing. In the video we saw that Nick was tasked out with creating a process flow chart, but he passed it on to someone else, and that some one pass it down to two more people. I believe in fair and equal work between team members so they should break down the work prior to initiating any task. There is nothing wrong with helping your teammates but not do the work for them. Passing work like that can also lead to it getting misplaced. They should use a flow chart to track where the work is. A Gantt chart or a document flow chart seem like a perfect fit for this occasion. The document flow chart will trace the process flow chart document through the system to avoid it getting lost. Losing information can also lead to the loss of secret or personal information. It can be very costly and time consuming to redo all the work that was lost. No one wants to redo what he or she already did. Issue 3: CanGo has been experiencing issues where customers are browsing the website and even selection items to purchase and placing them in their check-out cart; however the customers are leaving the website without making their purchases. It appears that the customers are experiencing issues regarding making purchases from the website. CG consultants have a number of recommendations to enhance the shop experience on CanGo’s website. One of the reasons may be due to trust. With internet connection, people want instant gratification. If your sale process is not hassle-free, many customers will go elsewhere. In order to keep customers coming back and to making purchases, CanGo needs to make sure that it is easy to navigate throughout the website, such as making sure that when a customer click on an item it loads up in a timely fashion, time counts, when shopping on websites. Other things that could enhance the website are having a clean and professional design; your home page has a huge impact on visitors. I would also include a search box that is user friendly, this way customers can locate items that they are interested in quickly. Online customer service is another feature that would enhance business, if customers wanted to chat about checkout problems, this could prevent cart abandonment. Not only can live support help customers figure out your site, locate products or ask questions, live chat can be reactive, where the system triggers a chat invitation based on user behavior. Last but not least there should be links to social networks, such as (Facebook, Twitter, etc. , all of these functionalities would enhance the customers visit to your website more inviting and pleasurable. Issue 4: At CanGo, there is an increase in customer complaints and returns, and before they bring in a new ASRS system and spend more money, they need to correct the customer issues beforehand. If customers are not satisfied with CanGo products or the way they are handling the ordering process, then complai ning is a good way for CanGo to realize they are doing something wrong, so they can fix it. In order to keep loyal CanGo customers as well as gain more, the company needs to address where the customers complaints are coming from. This could be from the website not being user-friendly or the customer is not getting enough feedback and going through with the purchase. If the customer does go through with the purchase, then CanGo seems to be getting more returns of the merchandise bought through the website. What CanGo needs to do is to start at the beginning to to look at the company through the eyes of the customer, and they need to figure out the best way to have the customer feel great and good about their purchases from step one of the buying process to the final purchasing stage of the process. Issue 5: Website optimization is very important to online businesses, when a customer makes a search on the website they do not want to have to wait long periods for the results. To improve the issue with the long search times they need to optimize their website and use website compression, this will allow the website to run much faster and produce the quicker results that the customers are wanting. Issue 6: To solve is issue with where the employees that are pickers will go once the ASRS system is implemented is simple, they can look at areas that have performance and possibly quality issues and they can place these employees there as opposed to terminating them. By placing these employees in these â€Å"problem† areas, this can increase the productivity of these areas increasing more work flow. Reference Monique. (2012, January 23). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://upandrunning. bplans. com/2012/01/23/the-benefit-of-market-research/ Best practices for speeding up your web site. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http://developer. yahoo. com/performance/rules. html CanGo Video Week 34. (2012, November 11). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Harris, D. (n. d. ). Types of Flow Charts. Retrieved November 20, 2012, from eHow: www. ehow. com/about_5061018_types-flowcharts. html CanGo Videos Weeks 34. 2012, November 19). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Center for simplified Strategic Planning. (2011, November). Simplified strategic planning. Retrieved November 2012, from The best ways to reward employees: www. cssp. com/http:;www. entrepreneur. com/article/753340 CanGo Videos Weeks 34. (2012, November 19). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Top 10 Things Customers Expect from Your Online Store. (2012, 11 20). GetEelastic. Retrieved fro m http://www. getelastic. com/customer-expectations/ Cango Wk 4 Swot Performing a SWOT analysis technique would be very beneficial at this point and will serve as the baseline to elaborate on a strategic plan for the organization. CG consultants have been monitoring CanGo’s processes for quite sometime, and we have developed the following preliminary SWOT analysis: Strength: ?Purchasing an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) would help to improve the warehouse, by purchasing an automated storage and retrieval system it is a great solution for CanGo’s handling inventory in a more effective and efficient manner. ?CanGo has had tremendous growth over the past couple of years. CanGo has also been recognized for as one of the fastest growing small business in the Hudson Valley. CanGo is continually looking to venture out into other areas, in an effort of improving the overall organization. Weaknesses: ?One of the biggest issues is the fact that CanGo does not have a Vision and Mission Statement. Without a vision and mission the organization does not have a clear direction of the organization. ?CanGo is also missing a Strategic plan, without a strategic plan there is no roadmap for growth and prosperity. Strategic planning will help you foresee and react quickly to market changes and opportunities. CanGo should conduct these strategic plans routinely, by doing so it helps you to see opportunities earlier and set up contingency plans so threats are minimized. ?Lack of a system analysis and programmer is also a weakness for CanGo, in general a system analyst would ensure that the requirements set forth by the business are captured and documented correctly before the solution is developed and implemented. Currently this is not happening for CanGo, so this is an area that needs to be addressed, without it CanGo would not have the knowledge of understanding how present and future business needs will impact the olutions and the implementation process. Opportunities: ?Investing in an in-house database that incorporates into an automated storage and retrieval system ASRS. Fully automated and integrated storage systems are the ultimate in warehouse management and efficiency. They allow for complete integration of the company’s ERP software with warehouse retrieval storage system. Order picking is optimized and controlled. ?CanGo would also benefit from updating their website to reinforce corporate and brand identity, this would help their existing investment in marketing go further. This would allow for CanGo to advertise services and products, build customer relations through personalized services, they could also benefit by conducting market research through their website. The internet is a great opportunity for your business to compete on a much more level playing field with much larger businesses. Threats ?CanGo faces losing business from their website to other websites due to their web search taking too long, where the competition’s website is optimized and produces the results quicker Recommendations Issue 1: Marketing to the right customers and consumers is vital to every business. A company needs to know how to market to a certain target to attract their customers so they can sell their goods and create a profit from their inventory. CanGo built their success onluck and they never bothered to get into the details of how their company became successful. They are lacking important and vital information to keep their company successful. Since there is no marketing department in CanGo, I would suggest for them to hire an outside company to conduct their marketing research; I believe that they would benefit from this. The upper management of CanGo should research the company that would best fit the job; perhaps choosing a company that specializes in the same industry as CanGo. There are many advantages to hiring an outside research company; they would be able to determine who the target customers are, where these customers are located, how to reach the target customers and exactly what type of product or services they are looking for. Once the marketing research company determines all of these issues, CanGo would be more effective in marketing their product. Issue 2: The fact that no one is tracking where the work is and who is supposed to be working on what can lead to many problems. Some employees may be doing more work than others because they are efficient and everything seems to land on their desk while others may be receiving credit for work they are not doing. In the video we saw that Nick was tasked out with creating a process flow chart, but he passed it on to someone else, and that some one pass it down to two more people. I believe in fair and equal work between team members so they should break down the work prior to initiating any task. There is nothing wrong with helping your teammates but not do the work for them. Passing work like that can also lead to it getting misplaced. They should use a flow chart to track where the work is. A Gantt chart or a document flow chart seem like a perfect fit for this occasion. The document flow chart will trace the process flow chart document through the system to avoid it getting lost. Losing information can also lead to the loss of secret or personal information. It can be very costly and time consuming to redo all the work that was lost. No one wants to redo what he or she already did. Issue 3: CanGo has been experiencing issues where customers are browsing the website and even selection items to purchase and placing them in their check-out cart; however the customers are leaving the website without making their purchases. It appears that the customers are experiencing issues regarding making purchases from the website. CG consultants have a number of recommendations to enhance the shop experience on CanGo’s website. One of the reasons may be due to trust. With internet connection, people want instant gratification. If your sale process is not hassle-free, many customers will go elsewhere. In order to keep customers coming back and to making purchases, CanGo needs to make sure that it is easy to navigate throughout the website, such as making sure that when a customer click on an item it loads up in a timely fashion, time counts, when shopping on websites. Other things that could enhance the website are having a clean and professional design; your home page has a huge impact on visitors. I would also include a search box that is user friendly, this way customers can locate items that they are interested in quickly. Online customer service is another feature that would enhance business, if customers wanted to chat about checkout problems, this could prevent cart abandonment. Not only can live support help customers figure out your site, locate products or ask questions, live chat can be reactive, where the system triggers a chat invitation based on user behavior. Last but not least there should be links to social networks, such as (Facebook, Twitter, etc. , all of these functionalities would enhance the customers visit to your website more inviting and pleasurable. Issue 4: At CanGo, there is an increase in customer complaints and returns, and before they bring in a new ASRS system and spend more money, they need to correct the customer issues beforehand. If customers are not satisfied with CanGo products or the way they are handling the ordering process, then complai ning is a good way for CanGo to realize they are doing something wrong, so they can fix it. In order to keep loyal CanGo customers as well as gain more, the company needs to address where the customers complaints are coming from. This could be from the website not being user-friendly or the customer is not getting enough feedback and going through with the purchase. If the customer does go through with the purchase, then CanGo seems to be getting more returns of the merchandise bought through the website. What CanGo needs to do is to start at the beginning to to look at the company through the eyes of the customer, and they need to figure out the best way to have the customer feel great and good about their purchases from step one of the buying process to the final purchasing stage of the process. Issue 5: Website optimization is very important to online businesses, when a customer makes a search on the website they do not want to have to wait long periods for the results. To improve the issue with the long search times they need to optimize their website and use website compression, this will allow the website to run much faster and produce the quicker results that the customers are wanting. Issue 6: To solve is issue with where the employees that are pickers will go once the ASRS system is implemented is simple, they can look at areas that have performance and possibly quality issues and they can place these employees there as opposed to terminating them. By placing these employees in these â€Å"problem† areas, this can increase the productivity of these areas increasing more work flow. Reference Monique. (2012, January 23). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://upandrunning. bplans. com/2012/01/23/the-benefit-of-market-research/ Best practices for speeding up your web site. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http://developer. yahoo. com/performance/rules. html CanGo Video Week 34. (2012, November 11). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Harris, D. (n. d. ). Types of Flow Charts. Retrieved November 20, 2012, from eHow: www. ehow. com/about_5061018_types-flowcharts. html CanGo Videos Weeks 34. 2012, November 19). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Center for simplified Strategic Planning. (2011, November). Simplified strategic planning. Retrieved November 2012, from The best ways to reward employees: www. cssp. com/http:;www. entrepreneur. com/article/753340 CanGo Videos Weeks 34. (2012, November 19). Retrieved from DeVry University: www. devryu. net Top 10 Things Customers Expect from Your Online Store. (2012, 11 20). GetEelastic. Retrieved fro m http://www. getelastic. com/customer-expectations/