Petries Electronic
CASE: PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Determining Systems Requirements
Although the customer loyalty project at Petrie’s Electronics had gone slowly at first, the past few weeks had been fast paced and busy, Jim Watanabe, the project manager, thought to himself. He had spent much of his time planning and conducting interviews with key stakeholders inside the company. He had also worked with the marketing group to put together some focus groups made up of loyal customers, to get some ideas about what they would value in a customer loyalty program. Jim had also spent some time studying customer loyalty programs at other big retail chains and those in other industries as well, such as the airlines, known for their extensive customer loyalty programs. As project manager, he had also supervised the efforts of his team members. Together, they had collected a great deal of data. Jim had just finished creating a high-level summary of the information into a table he could send to his team members (PE Table 5-1).
PE TABLE 5-1: Requirements and Constraints for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Requirements
• Effective customer incentives—System should be able to effectively store customer activity and convert to rewards and other incentives
• Easy for customers to use—Interface should be intuitive for customer use
• Proven performance—System as proposed should have been used successfully by other clients
• Easy to implement—Implementation should not require outside consultants or extraordinary skills on the part of our staff or require specialized hardware
• Scalable—System should be easily expandable as the number of participating customers grows
• Vendor support—Vendor should have proven track record of reliable support and infrastructure in place to provide it
Constraints
• Cost to buy—Licenses for one year should be under $500,000
• Cost to operate—Total operating costs should be no more than $1 million per year
• Time to implement—Duration of implementation should
Determining Systems Requirements
Although the customer loyalty project at Petrie’s Electronics had gone slowly at first, the past few weeks had been fast paced and busy, Jim Watanabe, the project manager, thought to himself. He had spent much of his time planning and conducting interviews with key stakeholders inside the company. He had also worked with the marketing group to put together some focus groups made up of loyal customers, to get some ideas about what they would value in a customer loyalty program. Jim had also spent some time studying customer loyalty programs at other big retail chains and those in other industries as well, such as the airlines, known for their extensive customer loyalty programs. As project manager, he had also supervised the efforts of his team members. Together, they had collected a great deal of data. Jim had just finished creating a high-level summary of the information into a table he could send to his team members (PE Table 5-1).
PE TABLE 5-1: Requirements and Constraints for Petrie’s Customer Loyalty Project
Requirements
• Effective customer incentives—System should be able to effectively store customer activity and convert to rewards and other incentives
• Easy for customers to use—Interface should be intuitive for customer use
• Proven performance—System as proposed should have been used successfully by other clients
• Easy to implement—Implementation should not require outside consultants or extraordinary skills on the part of our staff or require specialized hardware
• Scalable—System should be easily expandable as the number of participating customers grows
• Vendor support—Vendor should have proven track record of reliable support and infrastructure in place to provide it
Constraints
• Cost to buy—Licenses for one year should be under $500,000
• Cost to operate—Total operating costs should be no more than $1 million per year
• Time to implement—Duration of implementation should