Information Technology Strategic Plan

Questions: 1. Background of the company: Foodhub?2. Current technology and security aspects of Foodhub?3. Five information technology personnel / roles?4. SWOT analysis of McDonalds business venture?5. Five major goals for information technology strategic plan?6.Three positive organizational impacts of strategic plan? Answers: Introduction: The report describes the background and overall vision of the Foodhub (assumed food chain) from Miami, which is one of the famous restaurants chains in 115 countries with nearly 20,000 outlets. Moreover, the report also identifies five information technology roles that can help the company in the path of progress. The report discusses the dimensions of the SWOT analysis for the current business venture of the restaurant chain. With the help of new information strategy plan, the report also describes five primary goals for the information technology strategic plan for the company. After the implementation of the IT strategic plan, the report also covers the area of three positive organizational impacts of the strategic plan. 1. Background of the company: Foodhub Foodhubs is one of the famous restaurant chains of USA with several branches in different countries. This famous restaurant chain is one of the largest private employers of the USA with 0.5 million workers in the franchises. Apart from this, the company supports outsourcing for nearly 8 years. The company also tries to use innovative technology to attract its target customers. The main competition for this fast-food chain comes from other well-known fast food restaurants like KFC, Subway and Wendy's as well as some quick service restaurant like Starbucks, Yum Brands, Whitbread, etc. The other competitor includes fragmented market where different manufacturers and suppliers bring the goods to the user. Foodhubs with its famous slogan Love to deliver' has a vision of moving forward in the fields of marketing, advertisement as well as in customer interaction. The restaurant chain calls it a new journey and not a destination. The journey moves them from the billions delivered philosophy towards billions listen. The mission of this restaurant chain includes quality and variety of food, overcoming employee issues (employees issues include fear of threat, job loss, and counter attack towards employer) as well as dealing with social and environmental responsibilities for the waste product of the chain. The mission also includes different franchise issues like those that Strongsville Foodhub franchise is recently dealing with sewage disposal system. The mission covers the social responsibility of positive presence in the community as well as the objective to carry its brand image and food characteristic. 2. Current technology and security aspects of Foodhub Foodhub operational structure is based on the two types of franchises; conventional as well as affiliated. Foodhub often faces employee issues in its different regions as well as from its various franchises (Griffin Morgan, 2014). Foodhub is facing technical problems in the form of apps and site. According to a customer survey, the Foodhub apps are horribly written. The functional structure of the APP is not so good. The advertisement in the App does not meet the customer criteria. Customers often feel frustrated when they find that the app is not working in all places even if they are using Wi-Fi. Due to the bad reputation of the app, the customers are going to check another rival food chain. According to the Foodhub service, status history (Website), the site remains frequently down. There is either some network problem or the site is overloaded. Apart from this, the recent customer survey shows that Foodhub cannot bring any new product or interest for its customer. In the case of security, issue employees are not happy with the internal structure of the restaurant chain. The price of the food and product of the Foodhub remains same for a very long time. Due to the customer, the market condition, and other socio economic issue the company cannot raise its price for the food products. To attract the customers or the diners the company needs to focus on the extended menu. The company is in trouble due to its angry franchisee owners and this anger creates issues inside the company as well as in the relation between the brand owner and customers. The recent campaign on the local issues also creates a problem for this famous chain. The happy meal mascot as well as the recovery campaign was not good for name of the company. However, the company tried to recover from this problem using a lucid campaign but that has not cleared the current situation. However, the company tries to cover the current disadvantages using different attraction for the customer like self-s erver kiosks, tablets, free first trials as well as 3D printing for its target customers. However, in this digital era, the customers try to connect more with the sites as well as the mobile app. 3. Five information technology personnel / roles From the technical point of view, the company has many disadvantages. The customers often complain about the site as well as the Foodhub app. The server often remains down or due to some network problem; the client cannot reach the site (Monczka et al., 2014). The ping and other network related information, as well as other solution for an overloaded site, could not help the technical part of this global brand. Firstly, the company needs a good network administrator to identify the problem in the network as well as the solving the problem in the system (Bloom et al., 2012). Next, the company is in urgent need of a database administrator to check the overloading as well as other database related problems (performance, integrity etc). The customer complains about the Foodhub App service too. The App service requires a havoc change in its application. Therefore, the company needs right System analyst who can find the errors in the mobile application and solve it. Again, to design error free site as well as app company needs a System engineer for this. The company is divided into different regions of the world, and there are many franchises too. For the responsive websites in different areas of the world, the company needs System engineers too. 3.1 Network administrator Deals with giving operation support and controls the management activities for the organizations IT communication network. 3.2 Database administrator DBA or database administrator deals with designing, maintaining, and executing the different database operations and functions. Moreover, they make the basic standards and guidelines for the users concerning database access levels and availability. 3.3 Systems analyst System analyst mainly defines the requirements and specifications for the particular system and supervises the process of development and functioning of the IT operations. 3.4 System designer System designer would design the basic features and functions to be included in the system to be implemented by Foodhub. Designers also identify the major specifications for the system development process. 3.5 Systems engineer System engineers actually implement the system by defining the designing parameters and calculating the required performance metrics, user interface and integrity requirements. 4. SWOT analysis of McDonalds business venture Figure 1: SWOT Analysis of McDonalds (Source: Created by Author) Foodhub is a well-known company in its industrial segment. The company has provided employees in different countries through its franchises. Successfully dealing with various industrial rivals has given the company a brand name. Through the analysis, the business managers can identify the real aspect of used strategy as well as what additional dimensions are urgent. According to Foodhubs financial report, the franchise restaurants of Foodhub operate on either current franchise or developmental license. The company identifies itself as a Franchisor including the operation of independent franchises. The independent franchisees receive benefits from the management, operating system as well as the pricing decisions of the global brand (Ayub et al.,2013). The restaurant chain offers a uniform menu, however; geographical variation of food depends on the local consumer test and priorities. Apart from this, the brand brings changes in its global menu frequently. Besides wide variations, they also sell other products in limited time promotion. The brand targets all kind of customers (irrespective of the age group). Foodhubs has nearly 2.5 millionemployees worldwide. The strength of Foodhubs is evident in its brand name. Foodhubs invests close to a billion dollars in training its stuffs and the number is increasing every day. Another strength factor includes the distributed income streams. The source of income comes from various country, region as well as products. The socio-economical issues as well as the environmental changes do not affect this type of income stream. The weak factor of the SWOT analysis depends on the employee turnover issue recently. The factor also includes the failed test marketing of tacos as well as the fluctuation of collecting the net profit from different regions. They have not started marketing organic foods vastly like their rivals. This is another drawback in their marketing issue. This global brand still has some opportunities (Stevens,201 4). They can provide healthy hamburger for health conscious consumers. Their FDA rating in marketing and industrial, upscale restaurant settings are great opportunities to flourish. From 2008, the changing marketing strategy to take orders for breakfast, coffee and other categories can help them increase consumers. The threat regarding the organization reflects that the firm has a tendency to target children as consumers, and they are often criticized for their marketing of unhealthy food (inclusion of addictive additives). The USA also blames their food for the obesity epidemic (Harris et al., 2014). The contamination of food supply, as well as other rivals (KFC, Taco Bell), is vital threats too. 5. Five major goals for information technology strategic plan FoodHub needs a strategic plan to deal with its risk factors as well as the weak factors. The goals of the strategic plan will depend on some major factors. The first factor is involving people from inside as well as outside of the company. The outsider includes the consumers (job seeker in this case), company shareholders, etc. The strategic issue of the organization depends on the current situation as well as the weak points and threats. The restaurant chain should have priority on the customers. The firm relates to the idea of entertaining the customer. In a practical scenario, the employee issue is the main concern for this global brand. Therefore, the second step of this strategy will be the solution for its employee trouble. The plan or goal includes the idea of being the best employer. The operational excellence in the various part of the world irrespective of its geographical variations is another major goal for the strategy. The company also wants to extend its brand name as well as brand strength all over the world. Overcoming the technical troubles and creating a proper technical image is also another concern. Another important goal includes the idea of achieving profits in all sections of the company in the world. The strategic plan regarding Information Technology consists of four paradigm vision, audit, Gap-analysis, and feasibility study. 5.1. Vision The vision of the organization is to how to make the IT tools more efficient for achieving business objectives (Troost,2013). In addition, the vision also consists of the task of allocating budget through analyzing previous data and target market. The mission of the process strategic plan is to make the information technology capable of supporting fresh product introductions and enter in the new markets. It will be capable of handling rapid growth and turnaround. In addition, the system will high performance and value added. The organization will develop the system for managing the budget first as it comes under the weakness of the Foodhubs. Then it will focus on supporting fresh products. At last, the system will be able to handle all the sophisticated works regarding organizational objectives. 5.2 Audit Auditor assessments will refer to the components required for the development. For reaching the vision and mission of the Foodhubs , it will buy some powerful machines. The organization will also enhance their function by including cloud computing. Cloud will connect their all branches in the whole world so that the highest authorities can see all the information regarding their business processes being in a single location and with a single device (Brennan,2014). All the departments will be connected to each other and the departmental manager. 5.3. Gap Analysis The organization inventory uses the equipment like the freezer, high BTU fryer, ice maker soft service achiness, expresso machines, orange juice dispenser and coffee brewer grinder. The transaction process system catches and stores the name, address, invoice amount and quality of the product. DSS mainly examines the data for coming up with the decision regarding offering wireless service in their restaurant. MIS helps the manager to take decisions regarding performance and plans. Using OTLP the organization can access the historical data and estimate budget for business processes. For cloud, the organization will integrate the cloud of erp-FOCUS (Taylor Magazine ,2012). 5.4. Planning Documents The organization will allow six months of time for the project. The organization will also allocate a team of the IT for the development. The IT and Business Manager will work together in this process. The team will also consist of individual members of each department. Foodhubs will allocate 6.7 million dollars for the process. The individual members from the distinct departments can provide a relevant solution to the development team to make the system flexible for all the business processes (Barrows et al., 2016). The combination of IT and business manager will control the system development regarding technology and business. 5.5. Communication Internal and external stakeholders should follow a clear and solid mode of communication throughout the organization to effectively and efficiently communicate the plans and stay adequately on-board with the predefined goals and plans. Furthermore, it is important to enable smooth communication network that make it easier to implement real-time monitoring, feedback and evaluation mechanisms. Apart from that, it is important for Foodhub is to follow an operational as well as procedural approach for long-term planning and adequate information clarity. 6.Three positive organizational impacts of strategic plan The positive of impacts of the strategic plan on Foodhub are as follows. 6.1. Controlling future The strategic plan will make the organization proactive toward a change not reactive. It will assist the organization to win the fight against the odds and new problems and situational changes. 6.2.Establishing direction The organization will be more directives toward achieving the organizational objectives.Market conditions, product and customer segments will get more focus. It will result in more profit for the organization. The strategic plan will give the business of Foodhub more stable business. 6.3. Better decision making The better strategic plan will assist the managers to achieve better decision making. The strategic plan will allow the managers to examine the information regarding the decision-making. Conclusion The report discusses the security and technical aspects of the famous restaurant chain Foodhub (assumed food chain). Firstly, the report describes the background of this firm, which is a famous global name with several franchisee covering all over the world. The report also identifies the organizational mission as well as a vision of this global brand. The current situation of the company is given in details too. According to the current situation, the report discusses five technological roles or personnel that can boost up the company in its point of troubles. The report also analyzes in detail the SWOT and its four factors and what is the situation of the company depending on those four factors strength, weakness, opportunities as well as the threat. It also discusses the organizational strategy of the global brand and some positive impacts of this organizational strategy. Moreover, with some quality references, the report ends the topic on this famous global brand. References: Ayub, A., Razzaq, A., Aslam, M. S., Iftekhar, H. (2013). A conceptual framework for evaluating SWOT analysis as the mediator in strategic marketing planning through marketing intelligence. European Journal of Business and Social Sciences,2(1), 91-98. Barrows, C. 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