Enterprise Architecture
Order Description
Part 1:
1. Introduction of the company

• Name: The company is called QPets, established at 2005, based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by three students, Kris Moore, Thomas Wilson and Mark White, who just graduated from Algonquin college. During 11 years, QPets has grown into one of the most reliable pet food and accessories company in Ontario.

• Logo: QPets displays company’s main principle and goal that will always provide best quality of products and services to customer. To keep space with the most advanced pet food enterprise, QPets use environment-protection material to produce products such as recyclable package and degradable packing box. That is also the reason why QPets chooe green as their representative color.

• Type: In the beginning, QPets was just a small warehouse located at south part of Ottawa. Now QPets has developed to a enterprise which has 50 stores and distribution center in total. Because Qpets’s headquarter based on the one location, it is a national corporation. In the future landscape, QPets will extend their business to other cities in Canada even America.

2. Operate Locations

• All of QPets stores, warehouse and manufacturing are based on Ontario, Canada. 40% of stores located in Ottawa. 30% of stores are in Toronto. Others are in the London, Kitchener and Windsor. Even through Qpets stores cover most city of Ontario, warehouse and factory are still based on Ottawa.

3. Target Market

• Market segmentation:

? Customer (segmented by age)
a. Married couples with adult children is the largest customer of QPets. They spend 30% of their income on pet’s products and also their customer loyalty is at the first place.
b. Married couples without children also has a strong customer’s purchasing power. They spend their nearly 20%of income on pets products which is the same with older householder aged over 65.
c. Older householder aged over 65
d. Single parents who live alone is important potential customer for QPets because most of them have stable income and do not have to invest o their family.
e. Younger householders aged under 35 with the condition of weak substantial wealth and economic capabilities, is hopeful become Qpets future customer when there are getting old.

• Market trends:

With the rapidly growth of the demand for pets food supplies, the pets’ products market has broad developing foreground.
4. Products and Services

• Products:
QPets uses only the freshest and highest quality raw materials. Real meat such as chicken, beef, lamb and fish, arrives fresh-frozen and, once processing has begun, is stored in only the most hygienic refrigerated conditions. Shipments arrive weekly to insure the freshness of the product. Cereal grains are never shipped in bulk, but bagged and date stamped. The company’s pharmaceutical ingredients follow strict lot tracking protocol. Dog and cat products have excellent flavor and value. All packages are coded with production and best before dates.

Products list:
a. Dog food consists of 3 size of product, 5lb, 15lb, 30lb, for puppy, adult and senior. Expert will make an unique formulation of ingredients nutrients and vitamins to meet the dog’s age requirements.
b. Cat Foodconsists of 3 size of product, 2lb, 5lb, 15lb, for puppy, adult and senior. Expert will make an unique recipe with different amount of ingredients nutrients and vitamins according to different age of cats’ requirements.
c. Accessories include items such as animal’s mini sofa, grooming equipment, dog bowls, cat bed, dog bed, toys and etc.
d. Special food product like organic pets food.

• Services:

a. Products just sale in QPets stores.
b. Develop online sales channel within one year.
c. Provide return and change service if there are any quality issue with QPets product.
d. Provide home delivery service when the purchasing over $150.
e. Provide membership card and gift card make it convenient for customer collecting points and giving gifts.
f. Dedicated staff will care about the diet situation of customers’ pets and check with them twice a month to get feedback.

5. Organization Structure
• Department Descriptions:

? Accounting and finance
a. Prepare financial statement and report it to CFO
b. Track revenue, accounts receivable and account payable
c. Ensure procedures are set up properly to manage process without errors through financial controls.
? Information technology services
a. All systems are strand alone and require nightly jobs and backups to share information.
b. Several stand-alone servers serving applications to FDs.
c. QPets IS strategy is to begin to invest more heavily in Information Systems and Technology.
? Purchasing
a. Maintain great relationship with supplies through keeping long-term cooperation.
b. Procure all necessary materials needed for production or daily operation.
c. Evaluating price to make sure the materials QPets received at the best possible price in order to maximize profitability.
? Manufacturing
a. Establish the quantity of raw material to meet production targets
b. Schedule production processes through planning the tasks to be completed along the production line and allocating the tasks to various production workers
? Sales and Marketing
a. Additional layoffs, some OT (as needed)
b. Reduced production to reduce inventories
c. Created a lean focused organization
d. Implementing some of the customer satisfaction survey suggestions
6. SWOT Analysis

Strengths

1. QPets has increased its sales continuously since it is founded

2. Marketing research shows QPets’ high reputation among its customers

3. QPets guarantees consumers that it will always use the freshest raw materials when producing pets food and customers will never find outdated products on shelf

4. Because QPets is still considered ‘new’ to the pet food industry, it pays higher attention on evaluating customer service in order to maintain and attract more regular customers

5. QPets is founded by 3 closed friends, in such a small board of directors, they all take and share responsibilities and they will have a regular meeting every week to evaluate the performance for the company
Evidence?

1. According the annual financial report for year 2015, QPets has increased its sales by approximately 350% and increased net income for 250% compare to 2005 when QPets was founded

2. QPets encourages customers to fill in on-line customer feedback sheets every time they purchased products. Those feedbacks show QPets has a higher customer reputation and customers tend to have more intentions of purchasing QPets products next time compare to other companies in the same market

3. Procurement managers are given the authority to change vendor if the raw material is tested as ‘below-average’ (standard is set by QPets and higher than the market average line); and inventory managers have to make sure all the products on shelf are still fresh for at least 1 month and all the outdated products must be eliminated from the shelf completely

4. Customer service is a critical part for QPets, it will record the inquiries from customers and the customer service representatives have to come up with follow-up plans

5. Director meetings are held every Monday morning to review performance for the week before and go through missions for this week.
Response

1. Continuously finding ways to increase sales while reducing unnecessary expenses throughout supply chain

2. Remain sustaining relationship with customers and encourage loyal customers to bring in new customers

3. Maintain high quality of raw materials and build up tier relationship with vendors in order to negotiate a better price and discount based on large order quantity

4. Follow up with customer considerations and fulfill customer needs to make better products compare to competitors

5. Directors take full control and share responsibilities, decisions are made by all directors

Challenges / Weaknesses
1. QPets is founded by 3 persons, so it doesn’t have a strong enough investment compare to other pets’ food companies since the beginning.

2. With the rapid expansion of QPets, the old information system is no longer able to track all customer info in an efficient speed

3. Not many employees are fully trained before they get into the filed, most of them are learning during the process and have limited knowledge in solving specific cases
4. Existing database is running out of room when recording all purchasing, maintaining, financing, and other departments’ data Evidence?
1. QPets wants to expand to outside Ontario and develop new products but doesn’t get the enough investment from investors

2. When customers giving membership number, the system will take longer time than before to tract the records. Customers don’t want to spend too much time while checking out

3. Most employees are not studying programs related to nutrition or animal medicine, so they cannot answer filed-specific questions for customers. When implementing new system, employees don’t see the value of new technology

4. One department cannot share real-time data with other departments, they have to wait for the paper reports in order to share data
Response
1. Writing advanced business proposals for more investors to attract investments

2. Put more time and investments on Information Technology department and update new recording systems

3. Provide pre-work trainings for employees and offer extra training for people required extra help. Record frequently-asked and field-specific questions and provide additional training into it

4. Continuously update computer systems and build cross-department information sharing board

Opportunities

1. Demand for pets’ food is still growing in the market

2. QPets has potential market outside Ontario or even outside Canada

3. If implementing new technology for QPets, it will eliminate most of unnecessary expenses on many departments (e.g. administration)
4. Some investors already show interests on QPets company based on its reputation and growing size
Evidence?

1. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (2012), sales for all pets’ food are increasing smoothly from 2006 to 2015

2. QPets has only participated in the market within Ontario since day 1. With the experience learned, the directors believe they can operation in a larger market with enough pre-studies in Canada
3. QPets now spends large amount of money on tracking data and info sharing. Some employees are paid for data entering and adjusting only

4. According to the financial reports, QPets is new-growing company in the industry. Many investors see the opportunity for QPets to grow into a nation-wide company and showed their interest in investments
Response

1. Maintain current customer relationships and looking for new customers in order to increase sales

2. Being well-prepared is essential when doing business in different areas. QPets has to do enough marketing researches and analyzes potential profit/loss before entering a new location

3. Invest more time and money on IT department

4. QPets has already received some money from investors and will keep building relationships for future investments

Threats

1. Many new competitors are joining the market

2. Not many benchmarking can be done in the industry since it is fairly new

3. People are tending to be more interested shopping on-line compared to 10 years ago
Evidence

1. People see the growing demand of high-quality pets’ food, so an increasing number of new companies are trying to enter the same market as QPets

2. Pet’s food industry is considered ‘new’ compared to other traditional industry, directors cannot find many similar studies when they are running the company

3. People can avoid traffic, save time and find better deal by online shopping
Response

1. Maintain high-quality of all the products and develop unbeatable products which can attract and keep customers

2. Learn from the daily operation and do studies for competitors. Learn good things from other companies in the market while trying to eliminate its own shortcomings

3. Open online shopping channel besides the retail stores
Part 2:
1. Organizational Partitioning: There are six main partitions for QPets, which are Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Sales and Marketing, Information System Management, Human Resource Management, and Financial Management.
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:

• Supply Chain Management Partition:

• Sales & Marketing:

• Human Resource Management Partition:

• Financial Partition:

• Information System Management:

2. Strategic Partition
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:
? The successful implementation of CRM not only can increase the loyalty of profitable customer but also can improve cost efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. In other aspect, a complete CRM can reduce customer attrition by tailoring prices, offers, or product components to specific types of customers.
? A CRM partition is created because it is important for us to know the customer value and anticipating relationship needs. We have to consolidate and make available all customer interaction information from all channels.
? As a result, we hope develop a customer centric infrastructure that can consistently support the customized treatment of each customer and assign dedicated people, process and technology resources to achieve profitable goals.
• Supply Chain Management Partition:
? A perfect SCM will help industry reduce the cost of carrying excessive inventory and the cost of goods sold to customer. The SCM partition is necessary for Qpets because it is helpful for increasing the transaction processing speed by exchanging data in real-time and increasing the sales by implementing customer requirements more efficiently.
? A SCM partition can clearly intrastate the whole information flow from the supplier to manufacturer to the retailer and finally to the customer.
• Sales and Marketing Partition:
? Sales and Marketing partition is essential area for our company making the easier access for customer knowing about us. Through this partition, we will know an accurate target market, what are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
? Also, we can create a lean focused organization to reduce production to reduce inventories. It provides important information about company cleaning up, expenses cutting, margins increasing, and poor clients dropping.
• Human Resource Management Partition:
? Besides the regular hiring functions for the HR department, QPets values for the Employee Relationship Management as well. We see employees as the biggest value for the company, as a result, HR department offers the competitive salary, benefits, compensations and extra help for all kinds of employees.
? In order to support the daily business, regular trainings and meetings are arranged by HR department. All kinds of issues related to employees and employers will resulted in a document in human resource and the help desk is available on regular business hours every day.
• Financial Partition:
? Financial reports are critical to value a company’s performance. The financial department is required to gather regular reports on both sales and expense related activities in order to enlarge the profit margin.
? Finance is also a part of the Vendor Relationship Management.
• Information System Management Partition:
? Effective information sharing board will eliminate most of the unnecessary and misunderstand on data within the company. Although investment on information technology might not have a obvious return on the financial report, it will reduce a huge amount on expense.
? IT department also has the control over system updates and maintenance. It can require and offer employee trainings when needed

3. Segments
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:
? Analysis and Report, Campaign Management, Customer Sales and Service, and Customer Feedback.
• Supply Chain Management Partition:
? ERP, Warehouse Management, Inventory Management, and After Sales.
• Sales and Marketing Partition:
? Contact Management, Direct Market Management, Channel Management, and Sales Management.
• Human resource Management Partition:
? Employee Relationship Management, Open Position, and paid Education/ Meeting/ Training.
• Financial Partition:
? Assets Management and Accounting.
• Information System Management Partition:
? Research Department, Networking/Information Center, and Technology.
4. Capabilities
? Analysis and Report Capabilities:
a. Reporting the information about customer needs and pro-actively engage customer.
b. Identifying the customer’s behavior including habits and desires.
? Campaign Management Capabilities
a. Customizing portfolio and product life cycle to make sure enough stock for selling.
? Customer Sales and Service Capabilities
a. Managing profits by collecting sales information.
? Customer Feedback Capabilities
a. Collecting customer satisfactions
b. Improving product’s quality and design.
? ERP Capabilities:
a. Accommodating a variety of business activities, like sales, marketing, delivery, billing, production, inventory management, quality management, and human resource management.
? Warehouse Management Capabilities:
a. Providing the planning and execution capabilities
b. Better managing distribution center workflow
c. Providing upfront visibility into inventories, help manage and process orders at a faster rate
d. Integrating transportation planning and execution by leveraging dock door delivery models.
? Inventory Management Capabilities:
a. Purchasing and inventory raw materials.
b. Keeping a reliable corporate relationship Supplier portal deal with communication and coordination with suppliers.
c. Processing order and producing products using MPS/MRP to make sure enough stock on the shelf.
d. Providing advanced, real-time inventory transaction and visibility functionality for SCM.
e. Making sure process, such as reverse logistics, transactional support and finished goods, raw materials, and work in process components tracking run smoothly.
? After Sales Capabilities:
a. Managing information, processes, and decisions about products.
b. Recording all information required by an SCM and extend design and supply chain to conceptualize, design, source, build, sell, service and dispose of products.
? Contact Management Capabilities:
a. Reducing costs by improved process efficiency and the use of media-based communication channels.
b. Maintaining or increasing service quality by realizing shorter cycle times.
c. Collection of customer data for efficient customer support.
d. Providing a single view on customers at all customer contact points by IT support.
? Direct Market Management Capabilities
a. Identifying market strategy and making effective market plan.
b. Improving brand awareness and defining potential customers.
c. Developing a position strategy to specific market.
? Channel Management Capabilities
a. Building multi-channel to attract customers and extend sales areas.
? Sales Management Capabilities
a. Reasonable using network to communicate with clients to improve sales.
b. Better knowing customers’ preferences.
? Employee Relationship Management Capabilities
a. Employee supportive desk is available during the regular business hours every day. Employees can always ask for help related to personal, work, and family issues.
b. Managerial should report if there is an issue between employees and actively follow up and try to solve the problem
? Open Position Capabilities
a. Provide co-op opportunities for students who is interested in the filed
b. Ability to offer extra help for employees needed
c. Outsource during the high-sales season
? Paid Education/ Meeting/ Training Capabilities
a. Responsible for providing job-related trainings.
b. Arrange regular meeting to value the performance during certain period of time.
c. Support employee educations in many different ways, e.g. scholarship program.
? Research Department Capabilities
a. Marketing research and benchmarking reports.
b. Analysis must be done monthly in order to maintain competitiveness in the market.
? Networking/Information CenterCapabilities
a. It should be able to maintain information sharing board within the company and stores.
b. Database update and maintenance are done by the IT department.
c. It helps to decrease the overall downtime when an issue occurs.
Part 3:
1. Core and Non-Core Capabilities
Core Non-Core
Customer Sales and Service Capabilities
(Knowing the weakness of company, important for long-term development, differentiate from competitors) Analysis and Report Capabilities
ERP Capabilities
(Directly effect the operation of organization) Campaign Management Capabilities
Warehouse Management Capabilities
(Forecast production, save investment , increase the profit) Customer Feedback Capabilities
Inventory Management Capabilities
(Essentially for production process to maintain the operation run correctly) After Sales Capabilities
Direct Market Management Capabilities
(Direct value to the organization’s target market and customers) Contact Management Capabilities
Sales Management Capabilities
(Obviously, direct impact on the revenue stream) Channel Management Capabilities
Employee Relationship Management Capabilities
(work performance effect organizational work process and the process of achieving goals ) Open Position Capabilities
Research Department Capabilities
(Make sure the product development is right for the market demand to gain profit) Paid Education/ Meeting/ Training Capabilities
Networking/Information Center Capabilities
2. Organization Capability Maturity Assessment

(Level 1: Initial, Level 2: Repeatable, Level 3: Defined, Level 4: Managed, Level 5: Optimizing)

Capability People Level 1-5 Process Level 1-5 Technology Level 1-5 Measurement Level 1-5
Customer Sales and Service Specific sales team and after sales team take care of receiving suggestion and collect customer’s needs and report it to market managers.
Level 5 QPets sales persons are responsible for managing their customers’ relationship and reporting their work and issues to manager.
Level 4 Customer relationship management, data collection, create geographic marketing campaigns.
Gap analysis.
Level 4 Manage work performance to improve employee work passion, beneficial for increasing sales and profit.
Level 4
ERP 5 SAP ERP experts in QPets, they will provide regular training to employees, but might not be available at all the time

Level 3 ERP has shorten the processing time for data, however, employees are not familiar with the new system, it takes a long time to wait for the help from desk if there is an issue with the system.

Level
3 QPets currently using the ERP system which is widely used in the market.
However, we are just on the starting stage, not quite familiar with the system running.

Level 3 Shorten the time on data entering and storing.
Fasten the process of solving ERP system related issues.

Level 2
Warehouse Management Warehouse manager and supervisor manage the whole department and will be responsible for operating and communicating with suppliers.

Level 4 Make sure process such as receiving, real-time put-away, cycle counting, order picking, packing, inside of warehouse run as smoothly as possible

Level
4 SAP extended warehouse management
Technology is changing a lot, for running good warehouse management system QPets will catch the step of trend and doing the innovation.

Level
3 Improve QPets warehouse throughput.
Reduce or contain warehouse labor costs.

Level 4
Inventory Management Inventory manager is the top manager of inventory department in QPtes, who takes care for evaluating suppliers, preparing documentation, purchasing new inventory and cooperating with other employee and departments.
Level 4 Efficiently and effetely oversee the constant flow of units into and out of an exiting inventory.
Level 4 Inventory tracking system, warehouse data, SAP inventory management.
Level 4 Measure performance against the inventory plan.
Ensure continuous improvement.
Level 3
Direct Market Marketing department is the most complex department in QPets. It has three managers with their own team, separately responsible for marketing plan, target and execution.
Level 4 Forecast demand and sales for production.
Make sales analysis and track product performance for improve product quality.
Level 3 Consumer market research.Incorporate market needs in the product
Level 3 Focus on some goals and stay in the same position will be easy for organization to manage department.
Level 2
Sakes Management sales are working separately in different stores, there is not info sharing platform among stores.

Level 5 sales are trained during work and not responsible for after-sales service.

Level
4

KPI

Level 2 building sales team, finding and hiring talent; use key performance indicators.

Level 3

Employee Relationship Management Managers are responsible on managing employee relationship.
Employee supporting groups are available during the regular business hours every day.

Level 4 Managers have to follow up all the issues and suggestions mentioned by the employees.
Usually the responses will get back to them within a week.

Level 4 Employee relationship management database

Level 3 Employee will be asked to filling the research paper on annual basis.
On-line feedback

Level 3
Research Department Research group is responsible for all research-related programs.
It works with marketing to gather data and IT to analyze data.

Level 4 Acquire inquiries from management level and conduct researches on the filed.

Level 3 There is not a separate system for research group to acquire data in QPtes.

Level 4 Research group is not fast enough to meet the company needs so far.

Level 4
References:
1. Consumer Trends – Pet Food in Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2016, from
http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/industry-markets-and-trade/statistics-and-market-information/by-region/canada/consumer-trends-pet-food-in-canada/?id=1410083148461
2. Kalex, U. (n.d.). Business Capability Management: Your Key to the Business Board Room. Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.opengroup.org/johannesburg2011/Ulrich%20Kalex%20-%20Business%20Capability%20Management.pdf
3. CRM Architecture for Enterprise Relationship Marketing in the New Millennium. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://h20338.www2.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/CRMArchitecture_Whitepaper_HPC.pdf
4. Paradkar, S.S. (July, 2011). Supply Chain Management – A Practical Solution Approach.Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/07-05-2011-ART-Supply%20Chain%20Management-A%20Practical%20Solution-Paradkar%2005July2011.pdf
5. Koren, D. (January 24, 2008). Marketing and Public Relations. Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/ek_public/documents/pdf/aiab028660.pdf

Enterprise Architecture
Order Description
Part 1:
1. Introduction of the company

• Name: The company is called QPets, established at 2005, based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada by three students, Kris Moore, Thomas Wilson and Mark White, who just graduated from Algonquin college. During 11 years, QPets has grown into one of the most reliable pet food and accessories company in Ontario.

• Logo: QPets displays company’s main principle and goal that will always provide best quality of products and services to customer. To keep space with the most advanced pet food enterprise, QPets use environment-protection material to produce products such as recyclable package and degradable packing box. That is also the reason why QPets chooe green as their representative color.

• Type: In the beginning, QPets was just a small warehouse located at south part of Ottawa. Now QPets has developed to a enterprise which has 50 stores and distribution center in total. Because Qpets’s headquarter based on the one location, it is a national corporation. In the future landscape, QPets will extend their business to other cities in Canada even America.

2. Operate Locations

• All of QPets stores, warehouse and manufacturing are based on Ontario, Canada. 40% of stores located in Ottawa. 30% of stores are in Toronto. Others are in the London, Kitchener and Windsor. Even through Qpets stores cover most city of Ontario, warehouse and factory are still based on Ottawa.

3. Target Market

• Market segmentation:

? Customer (segmented by age)
a. Married couples with adult children is the largest customer of QPets. They spend 30% of their income on pet’s products and also their customer loyalty is at the first place.
b. Married couples without children also has a strong customer’s purchasing power. They spend their nearly 20%of income on pets products which is the same with older householder aged over 65.
c. Older householder aged over 65
d. Single parents who live alone is important potential customer for QPets because most of them have stable income and do not have to invest o their family.
e. Younger householders aged under 35 with the condition of weak substantial wealth and economic capabilities, is hopeful become Qpets future customer when there are getting old.

• Market trends:

With the rapidly growth of the demand for pets food supplies, the pets’ products market has broad developing foreground.
4. Products and Services

• Products:
QPets uses only the freshest and highest quality raw materials. Real meat such as chicken, beef, lamb and fish, arrives fresh-frozen and, once processing has begun, is stored in only the most hygienic refrigerated conditions. Shipments arrive weekly to insure the freshness of the product. Cereal grains are never shipped in bulk, but bagged and date stamped. The company’s pharmaceutical ingredients follow strict lot tracking protocol. Dog and cat products have excellent flavor and value. All packages are coded with production and best before dates.

Products list:
a. Dog food consists of 3 size of product, 5lb, 15lb, 30lb, for puppy, adult and senior. Expert will make an unique formulation of ingredients nutrients and vitamins to meet the dog’s age requirements.
b. Cat Foodconsists of 3 size of product, 2lb, 5lb, 15lb, for puppy, adult and senior. Expert will make an unique recipe with different amount of ingredients nutrients and vitamins according to different age of cats’ requirements.
c. Accessories include items such as animal’s mini sofa, grooming equipment, dog bowls, cat bed, dog bed, toys and etc.
d. Special food product like organic pets food.

• Services:

a. Products just sale in QPets stores.
b. Develop online sales channel within one year.
c. Provide return and change service if there are any quality issue with QPets product.
d. Provide home delivery service when the purchasing over $150.
e. Provide membership card and gift card make it convenient for customer collecting points and giving gifts.
f. Dedicated staff will care about the diet situation of customers’ pets and check with them twice a month to get feedback.

5. Organization Structure
• Department Descriptions:

? Accounting and finance
a. Prepare financial statement and report it to CFO
b. Track revenue, accounts receivable and account payable
c. Ensure procedures are set up properly to manage process without errors through financial controls.
? Information technology services
a. All systems are strand alone and require nightly jobs and backups to share information.
b. Several stand-alone servers serving applications to FDs.
c. QPets IS strategy is to begin to invest more heavily in Information Systems and Technology.
? Purchasing
a. Maintain great relationship with supplies through keeping long-term cooperation.
b. Procure all necessary materials needed for production or daily operation.
c. Evaluating price to make sure the materials QPets received at the best possible price in order to maximize profitability.
? Manufacturing
a. Establish the quantity of raw material to meet production targets
b. Schedule production processes through planning the tasks to be completed along the production line and allocating the tasks to various production workers
? Sales and Marketing
a. Additional layoffs, some OT (as needed)
b. Reduced production to reduce inventories
c. Created a lean focused organization
d. Implementing some of the customer satisfaction survey suggestions
6. SWOT Analysis

Strengths

1. QPets has increased its sales continuously since it is founded

2. Marketing research shows QPets’ high reputation among its customers

3. QPets guarantees consumers that it will always use the freshest raw materials when producing pets food and customers will never find outdated products on shelf

4. Because QPets is still considered ‘new’ to the pet food industry, it pays higher attention on evaluating customer service in order to maintain and attract more regular customers

5. QPets is founded by 3 closed friends, in such a small board of directors, they all take and share responsibilities and they will have a regular meeting every week to evaluate the performance for the company
Evidence?

1. According the annual financial report for year 2015, QPets has increased its sales by approximately 350% and increased net income for 250% compare to 2005 when QPets was founded

2. QPets encourages customers to fill in on-line customer feedback sheets every time they purchased products. Those feedbacks show QPets has a higher customer reputation and customers tend to have more intentions of purchasing QPets products next time compare to other companies in the same market

3. Procurement managers are given the authority to change vendor if the raw material is tested as ‘below-average’ (standard is set by QPets and higher than the market average line); and inventory managers have to make sure all the products on shelf are still fresh for at least 1 month and all the outdated products must be eliminated from the shelf completely

4. Customer service is a critical part for QPets, it will record the inquiries from customers and the customer service representatives have to come up with follow-up plans

5. Director meetings are held every Monday morning to review performance for the week before and go through missions for this week.
Response

1. Continuously finding ways to increase sales while reducing unnecessary expenses throughout supply chain

2. Remain sustaining relationship with customers and encourage loyal customers to bring in new customers

3. Maintain high quality of raw materials and build up tier relationship with vendors in order to negotiate a better price and discount based on large order quantity

4. Follow up with customer considerations and fulfill customer needs to make better products compare to competitors

5. Directors take full control and share responsibilities, decisions are made by all directors

Challenges / Weaknesses
1. QPets is founded by 3 persons, so it doesn’t have a strong enough investment compare to other pets’ food companies since the beginning.

2. With the rapid expansion of QPets, the old information system is no longer able to track all customer info in an efficient speed

3. Not many employees are fully trained before they get into the filed, most of them are learning during the process and have limited knowledge in solving specific cases
4. Existing database is running out of room when recording all purchasing, maintaining, financing, and other departments’ data Evidence?
1. QPets wants to expand to outside Ontario and develop new products but doesn’t get the enough investment from investors

2. When customers giving membership number, the system will take longer time than before to tract the records. Customers don’t want to spend too much time while checking out

3. Most employees are not studying programs related to nutrition or animal medicine, so they cannot answer filed-specific questions for customers. When implementing new system, employees don’t see the value of new technology

4. One department cannot share real-time data with other departments, they have to wait for the paper reports in order to share data
Response
1. Writing advanced business proposals for more investors to attract investments

2. Put more time and investments on Information Technology department and update new recording systems

3. Provide pre-work trainings for employees and offer extra training for people required extra help. Record frequently-asked and field-specific questions and provide additional training into it

4. Continuously update computer systems and build cross-department information sharing board

Opportunities

1. Demand for pets’ food is still growing in the market

2. QPets has potential market outside Ontario or even outside Canada

3. If implementing new technology for QPets, it will eliminate most of unnecessary expenses on many departments (e.g. administration)
4. Some investors already show interests on QPets company based on its reputation and growing size
Evidence?

1. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (2012), sales for all pets’ food are increasing smoothly from 2006 to 2015

2. QPets has only participated in the market within Ontario since day 1. With the experience learned, the directors believe they can operation in a larger market with enough pre-studies in Canada
3. QPets now spends large amount of money on tracking data and info sharing. Some employees are paid for data entering and adjusting only

4. According to the financial reports, QPets is new-growing company in the industry. Many investors see the opportunity for QPets to grow into a nation-wide company and showed their interest in investments
Response

1. Maintain current customer relationships and looking for new customers in order to increase sales

2. Being well-prepared is essential when doing business in different areas. QPets has to do enough marketing researches and analyzes potential profit/loss before entering a new location

3. Invest more time and money on IT department

4. QPets has already received some money from investors and will keep building relationships for future investments

Threats

1. Many new competitors are joining the market

2. Not many benchmarking can be done in the industry since it is fairly new

3. People are tending to be more interested shopping on-line compared to 10 years ago
Evidence

1. People see the growing demand of high-quality pets’ food, so an increasing number of new companies are trying to enter the same market as QPets

2. Pet’s food industry is considered ‘new’ compared to other traditional industry, directors cannot find many similar studies when they are running the company

3. People can avoid traffic, save time and find better deal by online shopping
Response

1. Maintain high-quality of all the products and develop unbeatable products which can attract and keep customers

2. Learn from the daily operation and do studies for competitors. Learn good things from other companies in the market while trying to eliminate its own shortcomings

3. Open online shopping channel besides the retail stores
Part 2:
1. Organizational Partitioning: There are six main partitions for QPets, which are Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Sales and Marketing, Information System Management, Human Resource Management, and Financial Management.
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:

• Supply Chain Management Partition:

• Sales & Marketing:

• Human Resource Management Partition:

• Financial Partition:

• Information System Management:

2. Strategic Partition
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:
? The successful implementation of CRM not only can increase the loyalty of profitable customer but also can improve cost efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. In other aspect, a complete CRM can reduce customer attrition by tailoring prices, offers, or product components to specific types of customers.
? A CRM partition is created because it is important for us to know the customer value and anticipating relationship needs. We have to consolidate and make available all customer interaction information from all channels.
? As a result, we hope develop a customer centric infrastructure that can consistently support the customized treatment of each customer and assign dedicated people, process and technology resources to achieve profitable goals.
• Supply Chain Management Partition:
? A perfect SCM will help industry reduce the cost of carrying excessive inventory and the cost of goods sold to customer. The SCM partition is necessary for Qpets because it is helpful for increasing the transaction processing speed by exchanging data in real-time and increasing the sales by implementing customer requirements more efficiently.
? A SCM partition can clearly intrastate the whole information flow from the supplier to manufacturer to the retailer and finally to the customer.
• Sales and Marketing Partition:
? Sales and Marketing partition is essential area for our company making the easier access for customer knowing about us. Through this partition, we will know an accurate target market, what are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
? Also, we can create a lean focused organization to reduce production to reduce inventories. It provides important information about company cleaning up, expenses cutting, margins increasing, and poor clients dropping.
• Human Resource Management Partition:
? Besides the regular hiring functions for the HR department, QPets values for the Employee Relationship Management as well. We see employees as the biggest value for the company, as a result, HR department offers the competitive salary, benefits, compensations and extra help for all kinds of employees.
? In order to support the daily business, regular trainings and meetings are arranged by HR department. All kinds of issues related to employees and employers will resulted in a document in human resource and the help desk is available on regular business hours every day.
• Financial Partition:
? Financial reports are critical to value a company’s performance. The financial department is required to gather regular reports on both sales and expense related activities in order to enlarge the profit margin.
? Finance is also a part of the Vendor Relationship Management.
• Information System Management Partition:
? Effective information sharing board will eliminate most of the unnecessary and misunderstand on data within the company. Although investment on information technology might not have a obvious return on the financial report, it will reduce a huge amount on expense.
? IT department also has the control over system updates and maintenance. It can require and offer employee trainings when needed

3. Segments
• Customer Relationship Management Partition:
? Analysis and Report, Campaign Management, Customer Sales and Service, and Customer Feedback.
• Supply Chain Management Partition:
? ERP, Warehouse Management, Inventory Management, and After Sales.
• Sales and Marketing Partition:
? Contact Management, Direct Market Management, Channel Management, and Sales Management.
• Human resource Management Partition:
? Employee Relationship Management, Open Position, and paid Education/ Meeting/ Training.
• Financial Partition:
? Assets Management and Accounting.
• Information System Management Partition:
? Research Department, Networking/Information Center, and Technology.
4. Capabilities
? Analysis and Report Capabilities:
a. Reporting the information about customer needs and pro-actively engage customer.
b. Identifying the customer’s behavior including habits and desires.
? Campaign Management Capabilities
a. Customizing portfolio and product life cycle to make sure enough stock for selling.
? Customer Sales and Service Capabilities
a. Managing profits by collecting sales information.
? Customer Feedback Capabilities
a. Collecting customer satisfactions
b. Improving product’s quality and design.
? ERP Capabilities:
a. Accommodating a variety of business activities, like sales, marketing, delivery, billing, production, inventory management, quality management, and human resource management.
? Warehouse Management Capabilities:
a. Providing the planning and execution capabilities
b. Better managing distribution center workflow
c. Providing upfront visibility into inventories, help manage and process orders at a faster rate
d. Integrating transportation planning and execution by leveraging dock door delivery models.
? Inventory Management Capabilities:
a. Purchasing and inventory raw materials.
b. Keeping a reliable corporate relationship Supplier portal deal with communication and coordination with suppliers.
c. Processing order and producing products using MPS/MRP to make sure enough stock on the shelf.
d. Providing advanced, real-time inventory transaction and visibility functionality for SCM.
e. Making sure process, such as reverse logistics, transactional support and finished goods, raw materials, and work in process components tracking run smoothly.
? After Sales Capabilities:
a. Managing information, processes, and decisions about products.
b. Recording all information required by an SCM and extend design and supply chain to conceptualize, design, source, build, sell, service and dispose of products.
? Contact Management Capabilities:
a. Reducing costs by improved process efficiency and the use of media-based communication channels.
b. Maintaining or increasing service quality by realizing shorter cycle times.
c. Collection of customer data for efficient customer support.
d. Providing a single view on customers at all customer contact points by IT support.
? Direct Market Management Capabilities
a. Identifying market strategy and making effective market plan.
b. Improving brand awareness and defining potential customers.
c. Developing a position strategy to specific market.
? Channel Management Capabilities
a. Building multi-channel to attract customers and extend sales areas.
? Sales Management Capabilities
a. Reasonable using network to communicate with clients to improve sales.
b. Better knowing customers’ preferences.
? Employee Relationship Management Capabilities
a. Employee supportive desk is available during the regular business hours every day. Employees can always ask for help related to personal, work, and family issues.
b. Managerial should report if there is an issue between employees and actively follow up and try to solve the problem
? Open Position Capabilities
a. Provide co-op opportunities for students who is interested in the filed
b. Ability to offer extra help for employees needed
c. Outsource during the high-sales season
? Paid Education/ Meeting/ Training Capabilities
a. Responsible for providing job-related trainings.
b. Arrange regular meeting to value the performance during certain period of time.
c. Support employee educations in many different ways, e.g. scholarship program.
? Research Department Capabilities
a. Marketing research and benchmarking reports.
b. Analysis must be done monthly in order to maintain competitiveness in the market.
? Networking/Information CenterCapabilities
a. It should be able to maintain information sharing board within the company and stores.
b. Database update and maintenance are done by the IT department.
c. It helps to decrease the overall downtime when an issue occurs.
Part 3:
1. Core and Non-Core Capabilities
Core Non-Core
Customer Sales and Service Capabilities
(Knowing the weakness of company, important for long-term development, differentiate from competitors) Analysis and Report Capabilities
ERP Capabilities
(Directly effect the operation of organization) Campaign Management Capabilities
Warehouse Management Capabilities
(Forecast production, save investment , increase the profit) Customer Feedback Capabilities
Inventory Management Capabilities
(Essentially for production process to maintain the operation run correctly) After Sales Capabilities
Direct Market Management Capabilities
(Direct value to the organization’s target market and customers) Contact Management Capabilities
Sales Management Capabilities
(Obviously, direct impact on the revenue stream) Channel Management Capabilities
Employee Relationship Management Capabilities
(work performance effect organizational work process and the process of achieving goals ) Open Position Capabilities
Research Department Capabilities
(Make sure the product development is right for the market demand to gain profit) Paid Education/ Meeting/ Training Capabilities
Networking/Information Center Capabilities
2. Organization Capability Maturity Assessment

(Level 1: Initial, Level 2: Repeatable, Level 3: Defined, Level 4: Managed, Level 5: Optimizing)

Capability People Level 1-5 Process Level 1-5 Technology Level 1-5 Measurement Level 1-5
Customer Sales and Service Specific sales team and after sales team take care of receiving suggestion and collect customer’s needs and report it to market managers.
Level 5 QPets sales persons are responsible for managing their customers’ relationship and reporting their work and issues to manager.
Level 4 Customer relationship management, data collection, create geographic marketing campaigns.
Gap analysis.
Level 4 Manage work performance to improve employee work passion, beneficial for increasing sales and profit.
Level 4
ERP 5 SAP ERP experts in QPets, they will provide regular training to employees, but might not be available at all the time

Level 3 ERP has shorten the processing time for data, however, employees are not familiar with the new system, it takes a long time to wait for the help from desk if there is an issue with the system.

Level
3 QPets currently using the ERP system which is widely used in the market.
However, we are just on the starting stage, not quite familiar with the system running.

Level 3 Shorten the time on data entering and storing.
Fasten the process of solving ERP system related issues.

Level 2
Warehouse Management Warehouse manager and supervisor manage the whole department and will be responsible for operating and communicating with suppliers.

Level 4 Make sure process such as receiving, real-time put-away, cycle counting, order picking, packing, inside of warehouse run as smoothly as possible

Level
4 SAP extended warehouse management
Technology is changing a lot, for running good warehouse management system QPets will catch the step of trend and doing the innovation.

Level
3 Improve QPets warehouse throughput.
Reduce or contain warehouse labor costs.

Level 4
Inventory Management Inventory manager is the top manager of inventory department in QPtes, who takes care for evaluating suppliers, preparing documentation, purchasing new inventory and cooperating with other employee and departments.
Level 4 Efficiently and effetely oversee the constant flow of units into and out of an exiting inventory.
Level 4 Inventory tracking system, warehouse data, SAP inventory management.
Level 4 Measure performance against the inventory plan.
Ensure continuous improvement.
Level 3
Direct Market Marketing department is the most complex department in QPets. It has three managers with their own team, separately responsible for marketing plan, target and execution.
Level 4 Forecast demand and sales for production.
Make sales analysis and track product performance for improve product quality.
Level 3 Consumer market research.Incorporate market needs in the product
Level 3 Focus on some goals and stay in the same position will be easy for organization to manage department.
Level 2
Sakes Management sales are working separately in different stores, there is not info sharing platform among stores.

Level 5 sales are trained during work and not responsible for after-sales service.

Level
4

KPI

Level 2 building sales team, finding and hiring talent; use key performance indicators.

Level 3

Employee Relationship Management Managers are responsible on managing employee relationship.
Employee supporting groups are available during the regular business hours every day.

Level 4 Managers have to follow up all the issues and suggestions mentioned by the employees.
Usually the responses will get back to them within a week.

Level 4 Employee relationship management database

Level 3 Employee will be asked to filling the research paper on annual basis.
On-line feedback

Level 3
Research Department Research group is responsible for all research-related programs.
It works with marketing to gather data and IT to analyze data.

Level 4 Acquire inquiries from management level and conduct researches on the filed.

Level 3 There is not a separate system for research group to acquire data in QPtes.

Level 4 Research group is not fast enough to meet the company needs so far.

Level 4
References:
1. Consumer Trends – Pet Food in Canada. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2016, from
http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/industry-markets-and-trade/statistics-and-market-information/by-region/canada/consumer-trends-pet-food-in-canada/?id=1410083148461
2. Kalex, U. (n.d.). Business Capability Management: Your Key to the Business Board Room. Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.opengroup.org/johannesburg2011/Ulrich%20Kalex%20-%20Business%20Capability%20Management.pdf
3. CRM Architecture for Enterprise Relationship Marketing in the New Millennium. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://h20338.www2.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/CRMArchitecture_Whitepaper_HPC.pdf
4. Paradkar, S.S. (July, 2011). Supply Chain Management – A Practical Solution Approach.Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.bptrends.com/publicationfiles/07-05-2011-ART-Supply%20Chain%20Management-A%20Practical%20Solution-Paradkar%2005July2011.pdf
5. Koren, D. (January 24, 2008). Marketing and Public Relations. Retrieved February 08, 2016, from http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/ek_public/documents/pdf/aiab028660.pdf