Case Study

You have been working for some time at UMUC Pizza, a pizza restaurant located near the UMUC campus.  The owner, Bill, is very interested in expanding his successful business.  He has just bought Priority Pizza, a pizza shop in a good location across town, and has hired a store manager.  He has decided to name the new business (at both locations) UMUC Pizza.  Bill’s research shows that there are many other local stores that sell pizza:  outlets for major pizza chains in malls and other locations, small outlets and specialty shops, and larger restaurants.  While Bill has been keeping all his records of orders, sales and inventory on paper, the records at Priority Pizza are located on the manager’s PC in Excel files.  Bill realizes that he must treat the two stores as a single business, with one set of accounts, one billing system, etc.  He thinks this is also a good time to stop using paper records for his orders, sales and inventory.  Bill really hopes to continue to expand his business by buying other pizza outlets, but he will need good information about his current businesses to know when he should make his next acquisition.  He has asked you to help him develop the business strategy and IT Plan to accomplish his goals.  You know that there are methodologies for analyzing the business environment and that there are multiple ways to expand the business.  You also recognize that IT is an important component for achieving Bill’s goals.   

 1.     Explain Porter’s Five Forces Model and how Bill can use it to analyze his current business and his expansion.  Be sure to address each of the 5 forces and explain to Bill what they mean for his UMUC Pizza business.

 2.     Based on your analysis in question #1, select one of the five forces and explain how Bill can incorporate his analysis of that force into his Strategic Business Plan (SBP). 

 3.     List three business areas and/or processes used in the UMUC Pizza shops that could be supported by an IT solution.

4.     List and describe (in two or three sentences each) three IT projects that should be a part of Bill’s IT Plan – one project to support each area and/or process identified in question #3 above.

5.     Explain how each IT project listed above specifically improves and/or supports Bill’s UMUC Pizza business.

6.      If Bill decides to enter the world of eCommerce, which of the eCommerce models (business-to-business, customer-to-business, business-to-customer, or customer-to-customer) would you recommend to him as a best fit for his business and how would it benefit his business? 

7.     Describe for Bill what a Supply Chain Management (SCM) solution would look like for his UMUC Pizza business and how his business could benefit from implementing an SCM solution.

 8.     Describe for Bill what an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution would look like for his UMUC Pizza business and how his business could benefit from implementing an ERP solution.

 9.     What benefits would Bill get for his business from implementing a relational database?  Your response must be tied directly to Bill’s pizza stores.

10.  Make a list of five ways that Bill could protect the data and systems that he is going to put in place.  Consider the type of data and systems that would be relevant to Bill’s pizza stores.