Homework 1 – Business Case

The Organization is a clothing retailer who wishes to take its business international. Their specality is niche retro clothing. They currently have 30 office around the US. Their company and IT philosophy is to leverage regional data to disern demand and and tightly link statistics, supply chain logic and other proprietary methodologies to stock stores. The internaional push requires closer communication between regional and HQ to cordinate supply over longer distances. Their current IT team is 200 with a overall company size of approx 10,000 and growing.

While the company’s goal is to grow internationally they do not want managers to lose their regional connections by adopting a purly monolith system. Also each office keeps track of clothing trends, and over time different methods have emerged for determining demand. Also, different regions have varying tax, payroll and accounting responsibilities that must be taken into account. Departmental issue arise in gathering data for their specific clothing line. The results of that data are rolled up to regional offices. Operations (HR, Suppliers, Logicistic etc.) must be flexible enough to account for local environments while being accountable to HQ’s overarching goals.

SOA can directly address the issue of empowering the regional and local offices to adapt to local constratints. By having HQ require a set list of critera that can be standardized across the firm. The details of how that data is developed can be left to regional offices while the HQ collects the data it needs for their needs. The SOA solution will also allow for a method for standardization where it is needed (Core services like payroll, HR etc.) and the ability to share data gathering techniques among regions by sharing its technologies. This solution will not be affected by distance which will allow for international communication without single point disruptions.

The key influencers of the development of the system are C-level staff, and regional managers.

CEO – This will enable the company’s IT expansion while adhering to the company’s philosophies, of leveraging  regional data trends. This will also facilitate any future changes that the company may undertake. as well as lower IT cost for future projects.

CIO – The SOA solution will enable them to standardize technology and data without heavily infringing on regional autonomy. This solution will also enable them to disseminate applications across the company quicker and easier.

CFO – This solution will provide a decrease in IT costs, and help establish standarized ways of collecting financial info across geographies while facilitating fiscal transparency throughout the company.

COO – This solution will allow for better operational management across the firm by creating some company wide services and processes.

Regional Managers – SOA will maintain your current level of autonomy while possibly be able to share information across regions to better fine tune your local methodologies.