Phoenix Fine Electronics

Phoenix Fine Electronics (PFE) is a medium or mid-sized company, but it is growing rapidly each year. It sells technology products to retail consumers with an annual revenue of $15 million in sales. PFE started with 1 store but has grown to 25 stores and has expanded into a second state.

PFE has 1 store in a town with a population of 100,000 and 3 stores in towns with populations exceeding 200,000. The goal of the company is to continue expansion into an additional 3 neighboring states within the next 5 years. PFE wants to utilize the same population numbers to determine the number of stores it should open. It would also like a marketing firm to do an analysis of each town that meets the population criteria to determine the best cities in which to open new stores.

Each store employs a store manager and an IT manager who both directly report to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

The current IT plan for each store is to utilize technology to support the store, increase sales, track inventory, secure store customer data, perform payroll, and report all sales, inventory, and payroll data to the main office. The IT manager is responsible for managing the IT systems, making decisions on what technology and software are needed, and implementing the systems, while ensuring accurate reporting to the main office. The store manager is responsible for all staffing, inventory, and sales functions within the store.

With expansion and the acquisition of smaller independent stores, the CEO is worried about how department and customer data can be aggregated to allow the company to make better, timely business decisions. Even with such a wide footprint, the company must ensure unique, outstanding customer service and provide value to the consumer base. The CEO lacks IT experience and has been hesitant to adopt the suggestions of the store and IT managers, which is to give the company an online presence and advance the company into national competition with other consumer electronics stores.

The CEO hired a chief financial officer (CFO) and chief information officer/chief technology officer (CIO/CTO). The CFO will oversee the company finances for the expansion. The CIO/CTO will oversee the consolidation of the disparate systems and technologies that exist between the stores, streamline the information gathering and reporting to the main office, and develop an online presence that will catapult the company into a competitive position on a national level.

Your job is to help the new CIO/CTO move PFE toward the future.

Sourcing Plan

The strategic sourcing plan is a plan for how you will do business going forward. The sourcing plan can address how to supply resources to staff, your current and future systems, and how you will purchase raw materials or new IT systems.

Develop a high-level IT sourcing plan to guide Phoenix Fine Electronics to adopting enterprise solutions rather than multiple stand-alone systems. As a guideline, your sourcing plan should be a 3- to 4-page outline or summary.

Your sourcing plan should do the following:

• List the current technologies being utilized
• Describe major issues with that technology
• Recommend new technologies to implement as replacements for current technologies
• Discuss how the new technologies address the current issues
• List additional advantages or value added from the new technologies
• Estimate the approximate time frame to implement the technology
• Describe any dependencies that the company does not currently have in order to implement