Implementation Plan, Strategic Controls, and Contingency Plan Analysis

Cloudbiznet Solutions Implementation Plan

[Instructor’s Name]

[Institution]

[Author’s Note]

Introduction

Cloudbiznet Solutions is a start up company aiming to serve the customer to its level best through provision of cloud computing services. These services include virtual machines, dedicated servers, storage, backups, VoIP, replication, mirroring, streaming services, web-hosting, email services among others. Being a new company, we need to plan ourselves well to be able to acquire customers. Cloud computing is being embraced by many businesses today. There are well-establishes companies providing the same services and we need of think of a good plan that will make us fit in the market and start operating in competitive world.

Objectives

The company aims to serve the customers to its level best. An objective is a state a company desires to realize in the future. Objectives have to be specific, realistic and measurable (Archana, 2014). The start of Cloudbiznet was motivated by how customers server because they do not receive the necessary support from their current providers. By providing better customer services, we will be able to capture a bigger market share because of the trust we will have gained from the customers. We also aim to increase our profit margins every year. The company targets that by the first seven years of operation, it will have doubled its profits. The employees will have doubled their earnings as well. We also plan to improve employee training to ensure that we are always up with the new trends in technology so that we can excellently provide the best services.

Functional Tactics

We have put in place the activities that must be undertaken by various functional units for us to realize our objectives. Since we are a start up company, there are already well-established cloud services providing companies. Our major tactic is to give special attention and support to the customer, something that is lacking with the established providers.

Training the employees on new technological changes, standards and practices within the organization

Understanding employee needs and challenges so that we can provide the necessary services and also to enable us implement new strategies in line with their needs.

Establishing a 24 hour support customer support to ensure at any given time, they can reach an employee for a services

Conducting customer and market research to understand market needs and be able to meet customer requirements.

Ensuring that every set activity is performed diligently within the stated time.

Action Items

Cloudbiznet Solutions has aligned the items that will enable us to implement our goals. One of the actions is to set targets for the sales and marketing department. This will set the involved individuals on feet to ensure that they do their best to on-board the set number of customers. The support and infrastructure team will also be mandated to come up with a project every month which will be evaluated and supported if viable. Such projects will be meant to functionality of the business in terms of service provisioning. We will also establish good communication tactics between all the employees and between the employees and the customers. This will ensure that everyone is updated with what is happening and also improve fairness, trustworthiness and good relationships for smooth operations.

Milestones and Deadlines

Cloudbiznet Solutions has set up the events that needs to have accomplished as they move towards their goals. The milestones are the observable achievements during the project process while deadlines are events that are set to be accomplished within a set time.

Milestones

Acquire not less that 300 customers at the end of each year

To have done most of the employee training and that they will be able to accurately provision the necessary services to the customers.

To do a quarterly employee assessment on skills and knowledge acquired and also a yearly salary review

Deadlines

Acquire the necessary equipment and build a fully functional infrastructure by the end of the first one year

Acquire and train a team of expertise within the first one year who will be able to serve the customers diligently

Our website should be up and running by the end of the first year, with the necessary information for the customer to know about our business, an interactive site to ask questions and get every help they need.

Tasks, task Ownership and Resource Allocation.

Resource allocation entails distribution and utilization of available resources within the system and since resource availability is usually scarce and expensive, it is important to find optimal solutions for the same (Ganesh K. et all, 2015). Being a start up company, the CEO will be responsible team building, overall management, visionary activities as well as being the decision maker. The marketing department will be responsible for acquiring the customers. They will on-board them on the appropriate service that the customer requires. The finance and billing department will sent out the quotation to the customers. Once the customer agrees to take up a service, the infrastructure team provision the service for the customer.

Support team will be responsible for training the customers on how to use the service and support them whenever time they need assistance. Each employee must always have a computer, pen and a notebook. The sales guys will be allocated fueled company vehicles whenever they are going to meet a client. IP phones will always be available to everyone for communication with the customers. The infrastructure will be allocated the money they may require to purchase the equipment required to accomplish customer needs.

Cloudbiznet Change Management Strategies

To ensure that Cloudbiznet Solutions’ operations progress well after any change, the following strategies are put in place:

Clear, transparent and effective communication of the change to all the stakeholders.

The management should show their full support of the change

Carrying out effective education and training to all the employees as far as the change is concerned

Change implementation within the stated time.

Monitoring the change to ensure it is bringing the necessary outcomes into the business.

Success Factors, Budget and Forecasted Financials

Success Factors.

These are almost like milestones and they enable an organization to track its progress in working towards a certain goal but unlike milestones success factors need to actually be achieved for a project to be considered progressing well. The major success factor for Cloudbiznet Solutions is whether it will able to make profits at the end of each operational year. Another factor is if we will be able to not acquire new customers continuously and maintain them. The target is to on-board not less that 300 customers and ensure to maintain them through provision of excellent services to them. The keys to success are excellent customer service and competitive pricing (Business Expert Plan, 2014).

Budget and Financial forecasting and Break-Even Chart

Budget is the estimation of funds that a company is seeing itself spending in order to achieve its objectives. To achieve a balanced scorecard, the primary elements to consider are strategic objectives, performance measures, execution targets and strategic initiatives (William R. 2011). Being a start up company, Cloudbiznet Solutions need to look into its budget as many things are required to make the business operational. It will enable us to know how much money we need have the business start off, and therefore, plan well on where we are going to get the money. It will also enable us to keep in track all our expenses. For us to offer reliable scalable cloud services, we require quite expensive equipment. The table below represents the estimated budget to start off.

Having done this budget, we will have to extend it into the future in order to forecast how much money we will be able to save once we start operating. Here, we will be able to calculate returns from customers at the end of each year and compare it with our yearly expenditure. This will greatly help us in our long term planning and guide us in business operations.

Break-Even Chart

This is a graph representing Cloudbiznet costs at various levels of operations on the same chart as income variation with same variation in activity.

Breakpoint- point where neither profit nor loss is made (costs equals income)

OA- Variation of income at various production level.

OB- Total fixed costs in the business

The company will break through after the third year of operation. If the company does not make any profits, it will lose 225,000 USD. We will strive to acquire and maintain as many customers as possible every year and the actual incomes may even higher that the estimates above.

Risk Management Plan and Contingency Plan

Risk management entails many concerns and systems need to be put in place to adequately reflect those concerns (Watter, 2010). Cloud computing business relies on Internet. One of the risks expected is Internet outage resulting in service downtime. Another one is data security, whereby hackers can find a way to tamper with client information. Another risk could be breakdown of sensitive equipment which will also affect service delivery.

To avoid these particular risks, we are setting aside money to build a redundant site that will ensure continued operations and delivery of services. This means that the data all operations are replicated on another same setting and automatic fail-over enabled so that customers do not experience downtime. We will also ensure to implement tight security measures to hacking as much as possible. Some money will also kept aside for replacement of malfunctioning equipment or if it requires someone to be paid to fix it.

References

Archana D. (2014). Strategic Management. Smashwords Edition

Ganesh K., Malairajan R., Sanjay M., Punniyamoorthy M. (2015). Resource Allocation Problems in Supply Chain. Emirald Group Publishing Limited

Business Plan Expert (2014). Security Company Business Plan Template. Lizar Publishing

William R. (2011). Handbook of Budgeting. 6th Edition. Wiley

Watter V. (2010). Risk Management. Wiley