Executive Summary Indagine Surveyors (IND) serves to provide homeowners and builders with exceptional surveying expertise in providing application permits for building projects in Victoria, Australia. Similarly, the primary objective of IND is to be a competitive player in the construction market and intends to improve their online sales and information documentation systems to enable the company to realize substantial sales growth in order to achieve future financial objectives. However, IND is facing crippling issues that would affect the company’s growth in the industry, among the issues faced were the efficiency of approving permits which would be subjected to multiple rejections and would result in delays spanning over six weeks. Moreover, frustrating issues such as the loss of important documentation, minimal online exposure, outdated processing and lack of customer service had prevented IND to reach its maximum potential in company growth. Therefore, IND has decided to implement an overall update on all aspects of the business by implementing a new and improved documentation system to enhance the company forecasting, upgrading the company website to increase its online traffic by making it friendly to mobile devices as well as constantly updating its content. Similarly, the company would seek to improve its security to avoid compromising important data. Finally, IND has decided to improve efficiency 1
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Executive Summary
Indagine Surveyors (IND) serves to provide homeowners and builders with
exceptional surveying expertise in providing application permits for building projects in
Victoria, Australia.
Similarly, the primary objective of IND is to be a competitive player in the
construction market and intends to improve their online sales and information documentation
systems to enable the company to realize substantial sales growth in order to achieve future
financial objectives.
However, IND is facing crippling issues that would affect the company’s growth in
the industry, among the issues faced were the efficiency of approving permits which would
be subjected to multiple rejections and would result in delays spanning over six weeks.
Moreover, frustrating issues such as the loss of important documentation, minimal online
exposure, outdated processing and lack of customer service had prevented IND to reach its
maximum potential in company growth.
Therefore, IND has decided to implement an overall update on all aspects of the
business by implementing a new and improved documentation system to enhance the
company forecasting, upgrading the company website to increase its online traffic by making
it friendly to mobile devices as well as constantly updating its content. Similarly, the
company would seek to improve its security to avoid compromising important data. Finally,
IND has decided to improve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage in the industry by
implementing a newly improved Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that would
enable staff to tailor new programs according to their needs with the expertise of system
programmers. With all changes in effect, IND would prove itself to achieve all financial
objectives in mind while providing through its new customer-oriented mission.
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(I) Table of ContentsNo. Contents Page
(I) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1
(II) TABLE OF CONTENTS 2
1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
INTRODUCTION
Purpose
Method
Assumptions
Background
3
2.0
2.0
2.2
2.3
BODY
PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL
Analysis of Buyer Power
Risk Analysis
4 – 5
3.0
3.1
3.2
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI)
The importance of knowledge management and the purpose of BI
Inflation and Growth Forecast
6 – 8
4.0
4.1.1
4.1.2
4.2.1
4.2.2
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Barriers IND may encounter when trying to use websites for marketing their
services and receiving payment.
Difficulties IND is facing with its current website
Web traffic and Website Success
Recommendation on IND website Improvement
8 – 9
5.0
5.1
5.1.1
5.1.2
5.2
5.2.1
5.2.2
SECURITY AND MOBILITY
Internal and External Threats to Security
Internal Threats
External Threats
Recommendation for IND to Secure Data from Threats
Recommendation for Internal Threat Security Solution
Recommendation for External Threat Security Solution
10
6.0
6.1
6.2
6.3
SYSTEM CUSTOMISATION
In House Time and Attendance System Advantages
Off-The-Shelf Time and Attendance Application and Outsourcing Custom
Development Advantages
Recommendation
11
7.0 CONCLUSION 12
8.0 REFERENCE LIST 13 – 14
9.0 APPENDIX 15 – 18
2
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Purpose
The purpose of this report was to forecast growth, decline, improve application permit
processing and operational information documentation in Indagine Surveyors (IND).
1.2 Method
The information obtained in the report was collected by referring to the fee inflation and
application growth percentages of the country and forecasting future outcomes through
Microsoft Excel.
1.3 Assumptions
It is assumed that a pivot table and pivot chart is required to display information to non-
technical users and clients. Therefore, the Microsoft Office software would be installed in
company computers to ensure training staff have access to Microsoft Excel. This would
empower staff to utilize Microsoft Excel for forecasting future projections and solve
complicated calculations.
Furthermore, the implementation of a new permit application process system would improve
productivity, reduce delays for the company and its clients.
1.4 Background
The Indagine Surveyors (IND) company is responsible for issuing building permits, sewerage
and waste disposal permits, and road access permits for building projects in Victoria,
Australia.
Currently, Indagine Surveyors (IND) is suffering from a processing issue which had affected
its ability to satisfy permit application approval demands and the reviewing process needs to
be refurbished to avoid delays. Due to the heavy demands and internal issues, IND general
manager, Mr. Martin Krowski is given the task of making strategic decisions based on future
projections.
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2.0 BODY
2.0 PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL
Figure 1: ‘Porter’s Competitive Five Forces Model
2.1 Analysis of Buyer Power
Based on Porter’s competitive five forces model, Jim Wilkinson of “The Strategic
CFO” suggests that buyer power refers to the pressure consumers can exert on businesses to
attain higher quality products, lower prices and better customer service. Similarly, the
analysis of bargaining power of buyer would be in perspective of the seller.
Based on these circumstances, Indagine Surveyors (IND) are responsible in
improving their customer service as the company lacks the efficiency in providing applicant
permits within a reasonable time. Consequently, there is an evidence in the pivot that buyer
purchases vary upon volume where purchases of building applications are higher than those
that are of the health and road purchases but overall volume of purchase is low. Additionally,
there is also evidence that buyer purchases comprises of small portion of seller offerings such
as a total purchase of only 48 applications, this would mean that buyer power is rather low
considering the low volume of purchase.
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In addition, it is also noticeable that there are limited substitutes in the market that
would satisfy the demand of building application permits and therefore there is a small threat
of substitution in the market. Hence, buyer power would also be weak based on this criterion.
Furthermore, there is evidence that buyers are not price sensitive about the products as there
is a high purchase of building permit applications in spite of the fact that it would cost from
$1,100 - $2,300 per application. Therefore, evidence from the revenue chart suggests that
buyer power is low due to the lack of substitution, lack of price sensitivity, low volume
purchase and differentiated product (Wilkinson 2013).
Figure 2: 2015 Revenue by Applicant Chart
2.2 Risk Analysis
The analysis of buyer power and the case study shows that Indagine Surveyors (IND) would
potentially lose customers if they maintain their current inefficiency on its permit processing.
Moreover, the unnecessary delays which span for six weeks would upset customers and
would reduce the competitive edge of the company. Furthermore, IND would need to
improve their website interface and marketing as well as displaying queries made by
customers through forum pages or Q&A communities as their traditional method of word of
mouth would deem their company as obsolete and customers would have sought after other
means in the long run.
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3.0 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI)
3.1 The importance of knowledge management and the purpose of BI.
The systematic process of knowledge management (KM) is to capture, select, store
and allocate information to the entire organization in order to increase productivity, reduce
duplication and create more unique and creative products and services to meet various
consumers’ taste and preference (Mohsen, Ali & Jalal 2011, p. 130). Furthermore, it will help
the organization to improve their strategic planning, problem solving skills and decision-
making (Herschel & Jones 2005, p. 45).
Nevertheless, the significant factors that drives KM are organizational continuation or
endurance, competitive advantage and distinction, globalization effects and aging labour
pool. Undeniable, KM is important to cope up with consumers’ demands and increase
competitive advantage from its competitors. It is significant to improve organization’s
performance, productivity and product differentiation from the competitors (Omotayo 2015,
p. 11).
On the other hand, Business Information (BI) carries the same purpose with different
precedent point, as BI is utilized as better decision-making choice through utilizing data
warehousing and online analytical processing system (OLAP). Relevant information will be
collected in data warehousing into a depository to organize and certify data for achieving
objectives. Then, the most relevant data will be extracted, transform and loaded through data
warehouse’s transferable system. The most important process in BI is data cleansing
differences in data arrangement and values from dissimilar transferable system will be
concluded. Thus, through BI with enormous data warehouses us capable to hold tens of
terabytes of data. While problem-specific and lower data frequently only hold up to ten to a
hundred gigabytes (Herschel & Jones 2005, p. 46).
Based on the case study, there seems to be an issue regarding Business Information
(BI) in the company where required operational information is not documented due to
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cancellation of reviews and would cause required work results from earlier reviews to be lost.
As a result, key information would only be known to only several senior employees rather
than the company as a whole and would affect the organizations performance.
3.2 Inflation and Growth Forecast
Figure 3: Department Revenue Projections spanning from 2015 – 2017 under new Inflation