Xenotec Incorporated (B) (1/00)

XenoTec Incorporated (B) (1/00)

Background

The marketing group at XenoTec Incorporated had just inherited a major project designed to equip the company’s sales representatives with laptop computers. Originally, this $1 million project had been part of the company’s overall information systems plan, but because of other obligations on the part of the IT staff and limited resources, the project had been spun off to the marketing group as a pilot with a reduced budget. A one-year budget of $300,000 had been allocated for a pilot test of the project. If the pilot proved highly successful and demonstrated sufficient benefits, consideration would be given to approving spending additional funds to roll the application out throughout the sales force.

Tom Anderson, Senior VP of Marketing had just announced to Mike Duffy, VP of Sales that he was being put in charge of the project. Duffy would have his staff to assist with the pilot. Duffy had been a champion of the project and now was being given the responsibility for the pilot project and doing everything possible to ensure a favorable outcome in order to build a case for completing the entire system, called the Professional Services Systems Project (PSS). A decision had already been made regarding the laptop computing hardware and basic software (See XenoTec Incorporated (A)) to be utilized for the application. A fully configured Dell Inspriron computer had been selected and the Microsoft Office- 97 suite of personal productivity products were chosen to serve as the core software. Specific marketing applications were specified, but would have to be developed.

The Initial Step

In mid-February, 1997, Duffy took his first steps in moving ahead on the project by engaging a consulting firm to help with the planning and execution of the project. Without conducting a time intensive search, Duffy selected Delta Systems Integrators, a small firm co-located with XenoTec in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina. Delta Systems had experience with project management, systems integration and, most importantly, successful systems projects over the past several years. Duffy was familiar with their work through interactions with professionals in the local area.

One of Delta Systems’ principals, Steve Carter, took on the XenoTec project. He began by talking with Tom Anderson (SVP Marketing), Les Wanninger (CEO), Paul Johnson (CIO), Mike Duffy (VP Sales), and with sales representatives located nearby. Following the interviews (conducted individually), Carter had several working sessions with Duffy and his staff. By mid-March, 1997, a 2 meeting was scheduled between Carter, Duffy, and Tom Anderson to discuss Carter’s recommended approach.

Carter began the meeting by saying the following:

“ XenoTec is planning on spending upwards of $1 million on the PSS project. My objective is to do everything possible to ensure that our approach in the pilot stage will lead to its success and, ultimately, the success of the complete system. For this reason, I’m going to try to do everything properly and by the book to work on building a good base by having a successful pilot. In my recommendations, I’m emphasizing getting things right and I’m trying to accommodate the special circumstances with the XenoTec sales force. By this, I mean working with sales representatives who are pretty well set in their ways and, for the most part, are far from leading-edge users of computers and technology.

Some of what I’m proposing, you’ll probably find somewhat unusual and ‘expensive’ in terms of the time and effort. I am, however, keeping in mind the overall budget for the pilot subtracting, of course, what you’re paying my company. You’ll note that the approach and detail I’m proposing is heavily managerial, and what you would probably call, behavioral in nature. But, keep in mind that if we don’t succeed in the pilot, we are unlikely to go any further. Therefore, we need to do everything it takes to make the pilot a success. Any questions or comments?”

Anderson: “I’ll reserve final judgment, but it sounds to me like you’re on the right track. We’ve already stressed the importance of having a successful pilot.”

Duffy: “Remember, I have the advantage of having been involved with Steve in all this planning so I have a good idea of what’s coming so, I’m naturally on board so far.”

Carter: “Ok, here it is. The first thing we have to do is to select the size and composition of the people to be involved in the pilot. I suggest, to keep costs in line and to get the level of involvement we need, that the size of the pilot be kept small, say five but not more than seven sales reps. We can decide on the actual number based on later detail, but let’s say for right now that we plan on six. Now, the real key is- - who are the six? I recommend that we carefully select the participants according to these criteria:

1. Pilot participants are well-respected individuals who are very well regarded by their peers that is other sales representatives. We want influence leaders.”

Anderson: “But, for a pilot, wouldn’t it be better to select based on getting a representative group of typical sales reps.” 3

Carter: “In other cases, I’d agree, but here as I said, we want to focus on success and transferring this success to others. We will do some learning and maybe we would learn more from a general or typical group, but my goal is to get influential people on our side and use this situation to our advantage later on. I realize, of course, that this is a double-edged sword in that, if things don’t go well this approach could be dangerous, but I strongly urge we do things right by minimizing that risk but working with key people. One thing I think we ought to do is to get a couple of the experienced PC users in the pilot group. These people can work with us on an advanced level and can help the others. We will have to structure things so the advanced users are not bored initially and don’t intimidate those not so advanced. We will probably want to take a team approach and put an advanced user with a couple of beginners. With our pilot group size this means we will have two teams and need two advanced users in the pilot.”

Anderson: “Ok for now, go on with your other criteria.”

Carter: “All right—

2. Participants should be selected who, when informed of the project, are positive and would like to get involved. In other words, they have a leaning toward technology even if they aren’t using it right now.”

Duffy: “Steve, we’re asking the people participating in the pilot to put in a fair amount of time and take time away from their primary responsibilities. We’d better let Tom in on our ideas for dealing with this touchy issue.”

Carter: “Well, Tom, we’re asking you to fully support this effort. We’ve come up with a formula that will allow the pilot participants to be compensated just a little bit more than they would receive in commissions if they were spending a similar amount of time with their customers. At our working number of six participants and amount of their time we’ll project later, the total amount comes to approximately $30,000.”

Duffy: “We can take this out of the project budget, but Steve thinks it would be a real good message to all the sales reps if you could commit these funds from the general marketing budget. Steve’s reasoning is that by doing this the sales reps will see that there is a lot of management support for the project. This would go well beyond the allocation of the pilot budget and show that marketing is really serious about the PSS.”

Carter: “And, if I may add this in, we would use the quarterly marketing newsletter to inform the entire sales force of the pilot, the participants (who we hope will be an impressive group), and of marketing’s strong support of the project through its additional financial support for the project. Further, it will be an important incentive for the people we select for the pilot to accept our 4 invitation. We want to let everyone know that these participants are special and important. Putting this money behind the statement will go a long way to get everyone’s attention focused on the fact that marketing management is solidly behind the project.”

Anderson: “Oh, boy, what have I walked into. I really do support the project, but it seems that this support seems to be getting more expensive by the minute. Let me look at our budget and see what I might do. Right now I can’t say yes, but I won’t say no either. Go on, but, stay out of my wallet.”

Carter: “Following the selection and recruitment of the pilot participants, the next step is to bring them in for basic training on their laptops and the basic software such as Windows, email using MS Outlook, and simple word processing. We have spoken with the people at Technical Decisions who are a local PC software training firm. They have an excellent reputation and have given us a very attractive price for a week of training in their first-rate facilities right here in the Research Triangle.

In addition to the PC training they will receive, we plan to work with the pilot people for about two hours a day on Monday through Thursday in group sessions to help on the basic design and priorities for the PSS applications that we will be introducing.

We have a preliminary proposal from Strategic Software for their involvement in creating these applications. Recall that in the original proposal for the PSS software development was budgeted for $320,000. That, of course, was an estimate for the development of all the applications. Here, we are only talking one or two applications based on the priorities established through working with the pilot participants. So, scaling back, we have no problem with spending what will probably be slightly more than $100,000 with Strategic Software. Two analyst programmers, and in fact people I have worked with before, will work with me, Mike and his staff, and the pilot participants in these what are called JAD sessions. JAD stands for Joint Application Development and is a great way for determining overall application systems design, setting priorities, and getting ready to develop applications that truly meet user requirements.”

Duffy: “Now, Steve’s going to have to get just a bit technical because the way the applications will be developed are considerably different than what Paul Johnson’s central IT group was proposing, that is before they backed out of the project.”

Carter: “Tom, we intend to use what is called a prototyping approach to build the applications. This means that Strategic Software will be using a database language and a high level development language to create the applications software. Specifically, they will use MS Access and Visual Basic. Under prototyping, the prototype or model becomes the final system. Prototyping is a 5 very different method of developing software than is traditionally employed. By using the high level software, the analyst/programmers can create versions of the system very quickly starting at a very basic level and moving on to add complexity. The great thing is that the user can “touch and feel” the application and work with it from the very beginning. Using the kind of software that Strategic Solutions will employ will allow a new version of a prototype to be created in just a few days. This way, our pilot sales reps can be very involved in building the systems right from the beginning. In addition, they can experience the software and suggest modifications for anything that needs improvement to be added, etc. It is a very fast way to create software and one that, because of its interactive, trial and error, approach has a high probability of meeting user needs.”

Anderson: “How many versions does a prototype involve?”

Carter: “There’s no one answer, but I’ve taken this approach several times now and my experience is that from a simple beginning involving input and output screens to a complex complete version goes through something like 15 iterations. “

Anderson: “And this takes how long for a system?”

Carter: “It the users are available, it probably takes about two months. Of course, our pilot participants will come from all over and it will take a bit longer, but we have an approach for dealing with this situation.”

Anderson: “How so?”

Carter: “Well, back to the plan. After the first session devoted to basic laptop training and the JAD, we will let the pilot sales reps go for about a month. There will be lots of email during this time to get them involved. Then we will have them back for another software training session to go into more advanced features, spreadsheets, presentation software, etc. More importantly, during this second week, the pilot sales reps will see the initial prototype of the applications and work intensively with the analyst/programmers to, hopefully, advance two or three more versions. What follows is, we think, really creative.”

Anderson: “What’s this?”

Carter: “Strategic Software says that the future versions of the prototype can be developed remotely. Versions will be electronically downloaded to the user machines, worked with, and modifications fed back via email to the analyst/programmers. After the face-to-face start and the experience it will bring, they see no problem in developing the final system remotely. This way travel costs are minimized (we still may have to bring in one or two sales reps for local testing and intensive involvement) and we still get heavy user involvement.” 6

Anderson: “Ok, where are we now?”

Carter: “Let me summarize. First, we bring the pilot participants in for the basic software training and they participate with us and the Strategic Software folks in the JAD sessions while they’re here. A month later we bring everyone back for additional laptop training and work on the prototyping. Then we go to the remote prototype development.”

Duffy: “It’s important to remember that one of our early applications will be a heavy use of email. I intend to have lots of interaction with the pilot participants and create situations where they will interact with one another. We will develop situations in which they will use word processing and simple spreadsheets to submit reports. In addition, based on Steve’s recommendation, I plan on having another form of email interaction. I will use Mark Walton from my staff to run almost a daily email-based project reporting system and sales analysis system. I think it’s vitally important to try to measure the tangible benefits from the system to sell the rollout to all the sales reps and justify the complete project. So, Mark will do a chatty form of communication about how the participants use the system, tips, and sales reports. We may even get a little competition going among the participants.”

Carter: “One other thing. It’s our plan that, if the pilot is successful and we get the go ahead with the full system, all or some of the pilot participants will be used to train new sales reps coming on to the system. Here, of course, I mean on the applications, not the basic laptop software. If they do a good job, we will stick with technical decisions for this type of training.”

Anderson: “Do you have a timeline?”

Carter: “Sure.. Here’s the plan as it now stands:

Selection and recruitment of pilot participants April 5

First training Class and JAD sessions April 15

Second training class May 15

First application developed and ready for test July 15

Second application developed and ready for test August 15

Formal system evaluation September/November

Proposal preparation for full-scale rollout December/January (98) 7

Proposal delivery to management February (98)

Anderson: “So, at the end of one year, we’ll have 5 to 7 of our reps as advanced users of general PC software and two of our special marketing applications developed and tested in the field. Is this right?”

Duffy: “Yes, that’s correct. However, we’ll be in a position to train the rest of the sales force on basic PC software and the two marketing applications that will be well tested by that time. And, we’ll be set to begin the development of the rest of the application. Everything forward of this schedule, of course, assumes that we can build the case for the for management’s approval of the full blown project.”

Anderson: “Ok, you have my approval and I’ll see what I can do for you on the $30,000 you’re after out of my budget.”