Case Study:  Books
Books is a comic magazine seller in Utah City, USA, with a 40-years life spam competing with mega sellers such as Dreamland Comics, Forbidden Planet, and Metropolis Comics. The company extended their market along North America and Mexico and plans to build-up a digital presence to approach the European market through multi-interface e-commerce and social media groups in order to promote their products to the new markets.
This growth strategy has led to an accelerating volume of sales. Accordingly, the company had to process customer orders in batches and recruit qualified store manager and IT specialist to develop a digital strategy consistent with their business strategy.
Once he was appointed, the IT manager outsourced the digital strategy to an independent IT consultant who decided to set-up two technological tools for the internal and external processes. Internally, a weighing machine was brought to the store to help checking the right order through weight check. An electronic mapping machine was also attached to this weighing machine in the store area to link the customers’ order from the digital interface with the store management and help locate the relevant items. Externally, the IT consultant has developed a CRM  cloud-based interface to help both customer and employees conduct transactions and electronic payment online.
Within a year of outsourcing the digital strategy, CB has failed and lost 90% of their customers in addition to making 60% of their staff redundant. Clearly, there was a misalignment between the business strategy and the IT strategy.
Peter Craven, the owner of this company, needs your help as a professional information management consultant. He wants to define the areas of misalignments and explore different possibilities of developing a more relevant IT portfolio. These possibilities might include CRM, ERP, and Open Source Software to save the business and fix the fragmentation in his business processes. Therefore, you are required to submit a professional report that can be read and understood by Craven and his fellow team.

Your Task
You are an OIM consultant who has been employed to advise Craven Books on the effective implementation of these strategic changes. You are required to produce the following:
Part A: Analysis – Business Process Models and strategy analysisIn this section you should develop 1. A series of Business Process Models, which capture the existing and proposed business processes. The models should follow the BPMN notation shown in the lecture slides. You can use Microsoft Visio to create the models although you may if you prefer use Word, PowerPoint or appropriate alternatives.2. Strategic analysis for Craven Books: You should use a recognised analysis technique such as SWOT, PESTLE etc

Part B: Open Source Software Comparison TableIn this section you should conduct research into a suitable software solution for Books. You should decide on the set of characteristics which you will use to evaluate the software and your research should consider 4-5 alternatives in detail. This section should be presented as a table.

Part C: Report

In this section you should write a report which provides an overview of the current situation together with a roadmap outlining how the proposed changes to the business can be achieved to the benefit of the business. This should draw on your analysis in Part A, include your recommendation for software, and provide recommendations for ensuring that the strategy is effectively implemented, including consideration of the challenges ahead.