Teleworking

Question & Detail for requirement
Your perspective should be that you are a newly appointed IT Director at Chrichton Garden and Plants with overall responsibility for both the retail and online (diggitin) systems. You may make reasonable additional assumptions about your role or the company’s situation if you wish, however, you must document any assumptions you make in your answer.

For an acceptable answer, you must demonstrate that you understand the general concepts involved and that you can apply them to the Chrichton/Diggitin scenario. Extra marks will be awarded for the inclusion of other supporting evidence or examples, such as industry data or relevant case studies.

Although the context of all the questions is the Chrichton case study, you must adopt a standard academic style in your answers, including careful referencing of high quality sources. There is no specific word limit, but the expectation is that 4000 words is sufficient and you should not grossly exceed this. Do not pad your answer with background material on Chrichton that you were given on the module
Question – Teleworking
You have been asked to review the feasibility of introducing teleworking/homeworking into the organisation, particularly for workers involved with IT related business functions. Define, clearly, what telework is and the benefits it can bring to the company. Explain how telework could be applied to Chrichton, justifying your recommendations.

paper probable structure – you can make it more detail.
 table of contents
 executive summary
 introduction
 define what telework is
 define what benefit it can bring to company
 give one successful organisation example using teleworking
 according to case study, analyze current operation – Chrichton ,
 explain how telework could be applied to Chrichton
 recommendations
 conclusion
 reference

Useful Teleworking resource website – good for reference
Andrew Bibby’s site includes some useful links (http://www.andrewbibby.com/telework.html)

“Teleworking Myth Exploded “. News article from the BBC which is (I think!) based on this paper by Susanne Tietze (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2327735.stm)

Home working ‘allows employees to clock up an extra couple of days of work a week’ (Telegraph)
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk /news/health/news/7803246/Home-working-allows-employees-to-clock-up-an- extra-couple-of-days-of-work-a-week.html)
How we solved the remote employee problem for less than $100 (and had a bit of fun)
http://blog.vmfarms.com/2011/10/how-we-solved-remote-employee-problem.html

Home working: Why can’t everyone telework? (BBC News report) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11879241 )

Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours (BBC News)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16314901
Background of the Case Study company
Chrichton Garden and Plants
Chrichton was founded as a family business in 1964, growing and selling plants in markets across the Midlands and south of England. The company developed a reputation for high quality at reasonable price and with knowledgeable family members manning the market stalls, the business grew rapidly. In early 1968, Chrichton opened their first permanent shop on a site near busy route just north of London. Through the 70s and 80s, Chrichton continued to expand, diversifying into garden accessories (such as garden furniture, children’s play equipment and barbecues) and garden design/planning. They relocated their head offices a number of times as the business grew, and are currently located near Southam, Warwickshire.
By 2008, Chrichton employed just over 150 full-time staff with a turnover of £12 million. The company had ten retail outlets, two nurseries and a warehouse north of Birmingham for non-perishable items. 26% of the plants sold (by value) were grown by their own nurseries, the rest sourced from a number of suppliers (mainly EU). Higher value items, such as barbecues and garden furniture were sourced from suppliers worldwide. Chrichton also offered garden maintenance services (such as planting and grass cutting) and well as garden planning and design services. Much of this work was subcontracted out.
Diggitin.com
Diggitin.com is an internet based retailer started by three friends. Jack Hanson was the business brains behind the venture who enrolled Mick Astley, a Computer Science student and Rebecca Gee who was working as a freelance gardener/landscaper. With startup capital secured by Jack, the three created Diggitin, an online store which sold small plants/seedlings across the UK. The venture was a success, partly because the website was well designed with a helpful user community (led by Gee) and much free advice to new gardeners. It was, in many ways, an early example of crowdsourcing, with enthusiastic (and unpaid) volunteers supporting the customer base. The site also offered more advanced features such as garden planning and design software which integrated well into the online ordering system; these systems were largely written by Astley with the help of various contract staff. By 2009 diggitin was turning over close to £1,800,000 pa.
The Take Over
In 2008, the decision was taken by the Chrichton family that they should move into internet based sales in addition to supplement the existing retail outlets. After lengthy negotiations, Chrichton brought the diggitin business, with Hanson becoming a member of the management board at Chrichton. Astely was retained to manage the web operation and associated garden design applications. Gee, who was frustrated with an increasingly desk-based role at diggitin, left to resume her gardening/landscape business. She remains active in the diggitin online forums, for which she is paid.
By 2012, four large new stores had been opened, Chrichton’s workforce had grown to nearly 300 and turnover was up to £22 million. However, the growth and acquisition has caused significant problems. Many of these are cultural; Chrichton remains a family business with Nancy Chrichton still exerting considerable control. Whilst happy with her acquisition of diggitin, she views them as rather laid-back and a little too informal. Diggitin has a much younger and more relaxed work environment and staff there have tended to view Chrichton as old, inflexible and out of touch.
Your role
You are a group of external consultants brought in to advise the combined business on its future IT direction. You have toured round many of the retail shops and met with the senior management team. You have observed:
IT staff are technically competent and hard-working, however the growth of the company has meant many are over-worked and unable to deal satisfactorily with the problems faced. The department is chaotic; there is little in the way of a clear IT organisational structure, with many staff working on a range of seemingly unrelated tasks.
One of the shops (near Exeter) has just suffered a flood which has knocked out the store’s server. The shop is small with a low turnover, so they are managing to operate using a mixture of paper records and an Excel spreadsheet of pricing information (which is being run on a laptop owned by an employee). This situation has been going on for two weeks and there is no sign of replacement IT systems being installed.
In your tours around the various shops you have noticed staff playing games on company computers during slack times. You also know that the company has illegal copies of software. You also encountered a games console in the staff coffee room at one store; the store manager said it was OK since staff only used it in their own time, but you did notice it was plugged into the company internet connection.
Staff at Diggitin (in St Albans) are highly skilled and remain committed to Diggitin; they are also well paid. However, they voiced their concern to you that as part of the takeover by Chrichton they will be required to move to the new Chrichton Head Office in Southam, Warwickshire. This would be extremely disruptive to many of them, and you believe that key Diggitin staff would leave rather than relocate.
There has been an increase in customer complaints on the online side of the business. A high profile blogger has complained vociferously about the poor service she received when a diggitin order was not delivered, you fear this has damaged the online brand.
The situation with stock and pricing within shops has become a major problem, with key lines out of stock and significant pricing errors.
 It is also creating tensions and even arguments amongst the employees.
Temporary/part time staff are abusing the trust put in them and are surfing the internet on company systems during slack periods. Nancy Chrichton received a letters of complaint from a number of customers who saw pornographic images displayed on a PC at a Chrichton outlet in Gloucestershire.
Payroll is a particular problem. Chrichton employs a wide range of staff with many temporary and part-time workers. Seasonal workers also add to the complexity. Diggitin’s payroll is separately run and the two organisations have different rules on overtime payments and bonuses. There have been payroll errors which have caused irritation.
Chrichton’s IT
IT has become a big issue within the company with a range of problems occurring which are directly impacting on profitability. The situation is complex and many of the problems are interrelated. Because of the way the company has grown, it seems nobody has a clear overview of the whole IT landscape. You will need to sort this out.
Head Office Systems
A central database (running on DB2) is the central repository of product lines, stock and pricing information within the company. Orders for stock from the shops are also processed here and passed through to the warehouse or purchasing systems as required.
Chrichton runs its own email system with an in-house Microsoft Exchange based system. When they started up, Diggitin used an outsourced provider (Hotmail) for all their email services, however since the two companies merged, all new Chrichton/Diggitin staff have been given email addresses on the in-house Exchange system.
Retail Systems
The in-store systems are controlled by ageing AS400 / eServer iSeries systems running proprietary software. All product is bar-coded with Point Of Sale terminals fitted with barcode readers and linked to the in-store database. This database controls pricing and reports on stock levels for the shop. The system will warn as stock levels on items drop, but the store manager has to manually reorder stock. There are automated scripts for common items but this is not a fully automated process.
Each shop has its own server and database located on the premises.
The in-store systems are updated overnight from Chrichton’s head office. When the system was first implemented in the early 90s, this was done on dial-up connections, but over the last few years all stores have been moved to broadband DSL connections. The in-store DSL is also used to provide staff email and other internet services, as well as public wi-fi access in restaurants/coffee shops.
These local retail databases are a known problem within the company; store managers can add their own product lines and change pricing for their own store as they wish, they can also optionally lock pricing on lines to prevent them being updated from the overnight feeds from head office. This was originally designed into the system to allow the store managers the autonomy to run one-off items or local special offers, but has descended into anarchy with stores frequently pricing items incorrectly, not stocking the full range of products and so on. The in-store database system is a legacy system that was implemented many years ago. There are two people in the company with the skills to maintain the code, but maintenance is an increasing concern.
Office Systems
A large number of general office systems have sprung up around the company; these range from standalone PC connected to the company network to small office networks. A recent company audit showed the following systems were in use, either at head office, at a shop or warehouse (NB, this excludes all diggitin’s systems).
• 68 client PCs, running a variety of versions of Windows.
• A variety of laptops (PC & Mac) used by senior management
• 9 Apple Macintosh (OSX, all networked)
• 8 PC based servers, running Novell, Linux or Windows Server
• An unknown number of mobile systems (tablets and smart phones) used by senior management and travelling staff. These are owned by the staff, but have been connected to the company network.
In some cases it was not immediately apparent what these systems were being used for, with even store managers unable to explain the presence of a number of computers within their own shops. It is believed that in at least two cases the PCs were not company owned, they had been brought in by staff.
Online Systems (diggitin)
The online (ex-diggitin) team are based in rented offices in St Albans and it is from here that all of diggitin’s systems development, fault fixing and other online work is coordinated. The web presence is hosted on a mix of in-house Dell servers (and associated back-up systems), which are sited at a small data centre at the St Albans base. As online orders are placed, details are sent either to a dedicated warehousing facility in nearby Hatfield, or (for certain items) are sent through to Chrichton’s central DB2 based system via a VPN link.
Stock and pricing are sent to diggitin on the overnight feeds via an update from the central database.
IT Staff
Chrichton employs 25 staff who are responsible for IT within the company. This includes:
• System and data administrators who run the DB2 system. They do a limited amount of improvements and enhancements to the system.
• The diggitin IT staff (9 in all)
• Teams who maintain the systems in the shops and warehouse
• Other miscellaneous staff. A number of the retail stores have their own unofficial ‘IT guru’, who maintains the systems in the shop, although this person is not employed specifically to do so. Other stores rely on the knowledge of weekend workers who are students.
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