CASE SUDY: SMITH & SONS ATTORNEYS

All the questions are based on this case study.

Smith & Sons attorneys is a Law firm based in Durban. It has 200 employees and has the following departments: Human Resources, Finance and Operations departments, and a small ICT department with a staff complement of 30 employees. Smith & Sons run the following systems: PeopleSoft for Human Resource (Off-the-shelf package, which runs on SQL database), Oracle (Finance applications, which runs on Oracle database), and Operations Management (In-house developed, uses SQL databases), Documents and Records Management System (in-house developed) and MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel for end-user computing. The IT infrastructure is managed in-house/on premise, except for the electronic messaging service where employees have been using personal emails for work purposes. In terms of backup of corporate data, it is done on an ad-hoc basis using local servers. Some employees have backed up their work information on the cloud using their privately owned cloud storage services, i.e., Dropbox/Google drive. The firm has not made investments over the years to ensure that backup and restore services are managed regularly. It is a more significant challenge when employees resign or retire as some information leaves with them.

There is also a static company website that is outdated and is due for a refresh. There have been talks about upgrading the existing website into an e-commerce platform, allowing for the online purchasing of standard contractual agreements, but this has not taken off.

Due to high staff turnover within the ICT department, Smith & Sons attorneys are considering the digital transformation of their ICT Department. As an information and knowledge management specialist, you have been consulted to advise the Chief Information Officer of S&S Attorneys on how they can digitally transform their ICT Department and offer stable, efficient, resilient state of the art technology for the firm.

Question 1 [35 marks]

As part of your recommendations, you need to give guidance on whether, from an application system perspective, they should maintain the status quo of having a mixture of in-house and off-the-shelf systems or they should consider other alternatives. Your recommendations must consider the type of application systems and infrastructural requirements and their functions, financial implications, proposed enterprise architecture changes (if any), change management, best conversion plans and resources considerations

What thoughtful response would you say to this?
El Amor Fashion Review Report
El Amor Fashion hed reviews on two different sites Google Reviews and Facebook Reviews. They were shown as a business that had the capability of being reviewed on Yelp and TheKnot.com but did not have any reviews on these sites.

Google Reviews:

An overall average of 4.2 out of 5 stars which is a good look at a quick glance. Of the 17 reviews, 3 were negative with only one or two stars mainly complaining about rudeness. 12 had five stars with 6 of the 5 star revies having a comment to accompany the review. 2 reviews had a 4 out of 5 stars with no comments to support the decision (perhaps a review given for proper service and sale without going the extra mile).

Facebook Reviews:

Facebook reviews look to be mostly in Spanish but with 13 reviews all with 5 out of 5 stars awarded. These people are recommending the business to others on Facebook and potentially sharing the business through earned media.

Out of a total of 30 reviews 25 have awarded 5 stars, 2 have awarded 4 stars, and 3 have awarded 1 or 2 stars.

2. El Amor Fashion did not respond to any of their reviews whether or not they be negative or positive reviews. El Amor Fashion needs to respond to these reviews to build their brand and online presence. As being described as a “mom and pop” dress store there are times the owners or small amount of employees may not get along or be able to deal with a customer correctly. These customers complaining about rudeness is almost on brand or normalized for images of stores in this industry. Although it may not be a comfortable shopping experience customers subjected to this will most likely not recommend the buisness to others or come back.

The only negative reviews for El Amor Fashion online were not well grounded and did not provide any supporting evidence of the said rudeness or the customers side of the conflict. El Amor Fashion can respond in a manner to not escalate the conflict and invite the customer to return and resolve the conlfict.

“Hi [Name] I’m very sorry to hear about the experience you had with our shop. We would love to hear more about the conflict and make this right. Please give us a call at XXX-XXX-XXXX or email us at [email].

3. El Amor Fashion can promote positive content by displaying the reviews on their website, perhaps towards the bottom to not distract from the rest of the content on the pages. They can also promote the positive reviews and content by responding with praise, building on the positive aspects mentions, and asking the customer to come back and further recommend their business to others. While responding, certain keywords can be used to build brand identity and allow the positive reviews to be easily viewed upon searches of these keywords on Google and Bing searches.
What thoughtful response would you say to this?