JUNK-VAN REFLECTION

To: Board of Directors C-Level

From: Ronald A Rojas

Date: June 26^th, 2013

Sub.:  Recommendation

Dear Board of Directors C-Level,

I would like to start by expressing my sincerest apologies for not being able to participate in our meeting tomorrow.  Tomorrow our company will be making a major decision that is crucial to the profitability and continuity of our company’s goals and objectives. I would like to contribute with the decision taken tomorrow by providing a core analysis based on our previous meeting with our IT consultants.

The IT consultants have given their recommendation for using Google Docs as the best alternative for our business technological implementation. To my knowledge the IT consultants have not fully addressed certain major issues that can negatively impact our business’ future. This year Google has opted to discontinue Google Reader due to a decline in Google Reader’s usage. This action from Google has raised many questions and concerns in attempting to consider Google Docs as an option/alternative. What if Google decided to discontinue Google Docs after a decline in sales/usage? The IT consultants have provided a vague answer addressing the question of Google Docs’ future in terms of security and reliability for our company.

                 My recommendation to the board of directors strictly attempts to fix the unsolved issues from Google Docs such as the reliability on current product and security awareness. For this reason I have opted to restructure the IT consultant’s chart by adding a new technological tool that can certainly add value, security and reliability to our company. The chart below shows the requirements that IT consultants have brought to our attention followed by the alternatives. In addition, I have added Microsoft Office 365 which certainly addresses all of our requirements and improve every criterion in our chart. The importance column is measured within a range from 1 to 5. The number five represents the highest level of importance for our company’s objectives; meanwhile a grade of zero will not meet our requirements.  The following chart has been graded based upon my own perception after our meeting with the IT consultants.

Google Docs offers almost all of the required features but does not fully satisfy our business needs. I have graded MS office 365 for vendor support with a five and Google Docs with a 2. MS office 365 offer vendor supports in addition to new features such as “direct billing” and invoice complimentary services. Google Docs offers only this type of service by blogs and forums. (See Ref.table)

                MS offices 365 in comparison to Google Docs has been on the market for many years and their business office products have not been discontinued. MS office products have gained a lot of reputation over the years and acquired most of the businesses usage; office is the most reliable product in the market. Office 365 brings new features that certainly helps our technological futuristic vision for our company; providing cloud storage, integrated communication with employees and customers among other features. Microsoft Office 365 is completely secured and offers automatic updates, anti-malware, anti-spam protection, and a 99.9% guarantee. (See ref. table) Google Docs is limited to attempt these issues based on the lack of certainty in terms of security and reliability.

Our company is facing a critical decision; our main competitor 1-800-GOT-JUNK has benefited from investments in technological advances, resulting in $32 million of return from a $700 investment. For this reason, I am committed to provide you with the most updated technological information in the market. I believe MS office 360 will satisfy all of our requirements adding more value in securing sensitive information and reliability on a product that has less risk for discontinuation.  

Sincerely,

Ronald A Rojas

P.S. Please see MS Office 365 video below

Reference Table:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-midsize-business-productivity-software-FX103037683.aspx 

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/casestudies/a/1800gotjunk.htm 

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/

http://www.crn.com/news/applications-os/240149498/microsoft-office-365-open-lets-vars-control-billing-revenue.htm

What should we expect from our meeting this Tuesday? (Junk-Vanpreparation)

Dear team members,

We are approaching our meeting with our IT consultants this coming Tuesday. This is an essential meeting that portrays our company’s future in which 1-800-JUNK-VAN is about to make a decision on.

                1-888-JUNK-VAN is rapidly expanding, and ambitious to open more franchises in the coming years. The rapid expansion of the company has resulted in operational mistakes due to the lack of an accurate IT system not contributing to the company’s virtual business model.

                Kingo has considered five targeted options that we would like to analyze and discuss in our meeting with the IT consultants this Tuesday. The following Visio Flow chart below provides us with a better understanding of the five options that will be discussed.

             

In addition we will explore the pros and cons of each segment of the chart in the chart.  Kingo’s solution is to find a central database that provides internal information avoiding functions of emails. The best solution will provide remote access to all workers, automatic emails by the system avoiding delays for customer’s experience while keeping an easy system to use for staff members that are not highly skilled.

                Google Docs is certainly what best fits for Kingo’s business needs. Google, in comparison to the other options, offers online applications that can be quickly shared with employees. In addition to the shared data base, this technology offers three different types of access that can be used with our employees and our customers: Google docs offer full, editing and reading access. There are certain concerns that we certainly would like to discuss with the consultants.

                This pre-meeting investigation will helps us target Kingo’s preliminary options that will define our company’s path of success.

Sincerely,

Ronald A Rojas

Swimlane Diagram

Should we use Visio for our business?

Dear Mr. Garner, 

As requested after our last discussion, I did some research on the program created by Microsoft which is titled Visio.  This is a very innovative program which allows a person to create flowcharts, organizational charts, and networking plans that would make any presentation stand out.  After reviewing this product this product would be a splurge i would not be likely to spend $589 for this system. 

After a careful review of your concern in considering using MS Visio for our company; I am to advise on rejecting such a proposal for the following reasons. 

 This software is obsolete and irrelevant for our daily data process. Although, MS Visio offers a distinct and unique way of creating flow charts our company does not need those tech tools.  It would be an unnecessary expense. We can use other alternatives such as: Google Drawings (free) compared to MS Visio $ 589 per download. MS office offers Power Point which could be used as an alternative to create flow charts and other designs.  Last year our IT department created software that allows investors to see their P&L month to date and year to date. This home software can be still better used by adding more reports to our investors that can allow them to create flow charts and other designs as per their request. Our investor relations department has recently launched a new site that allows investors to log-in and download their files while it creates charts for them and breakdowns on any reports they need.

For a program that solely makes charts it is far too expensive.  It would help to have a program that can help our company because we have a very intricate order of operations. The investors relations department gets the customers contact information and they are in charge of the communication between the investors.  From there, they communicate with on and off shore investors.  The shore subscriptions get into the master funds which are handled by brokers.  And finally everything gets analyzed and reconciled by the Operations department.  While the system would help organize in a strategic way, the system is not worth it. 

There are many sites that you can create the same charts.  It is possible to create the charts on Google, and many other MS office programs that we already have as a company, such as MS word and Power point.  It would be a waste of money to buy another program, when we have it in so many other  programs that are capable of completing the same task. I strongly am against in investing in this program.  Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Ronald A Rojas

How efficient would be blogs for our business?

Mr garner,

Our company should have a strong presence in the social media network.  In particular it would be beneficial to our company to begin a blog.  Becoming part of the online community would bring us closer to our customers.  We would acquire new clientele as we would have the opportunity to expand our brand name. We do not only get the opportunity to introduce ourselves and explain what we do, but we also explain why we do it. 

A blog is a great tool of communication to give company updates. We would be able to provide statistics and figures of how much risk has been assessed.  We would be able to provide more updates to our customers.  Our customers would become engaged by the brand.  It is our opportunity to have a real connection when our customers can post comments and we can react with them in real time.  When it becomes more personal the brand seems almost humanized. Because our blog would be updated regularly, we would know in the moment of a person's frustration as well as appraisal, and we would react appropriately to the post.  This would allow us to gain company perception in that moment.  

Pros:

Introduce your company:  Tell prospective customers who you are, what you do, and why you do it. 

answer any questions from customers to avoid them searching outside sources when they can find it on the companies blog.

Post current information about any relevant topic of discussion or even post related articles.

Increase online presence.  

Can be linked to main website as well as post other social media networking sites.

Strengthen brand loyalty 

Personal connection with clients

Gain feedback in real time

increased credibility among your customers which may include board of directors, stakeholders as well as business partners. 

Cons:

It needs to be updated constantly. 

A schedule needs to be set for when things get posted. 

Have to make time to answer all blog comments

There is a lot of negativity that will be exposed

CEO's are stepping outside of their role by exposing themselves to the social media spotlight.  

This blog would allow us to expand on all key industry points.  As a company we would become more credible for having a greater social media presence as well as have more brand exposure. With our frequent blog entries we would have an increased amount of loyal customers that followed us online.  The entries could be as simple as one sentence leading to a link that takes them to a related article or an entry on how to invest your money.  The blog would be written in the voice of an executive and reflect all viewpoints that come from the CEO himself.  In summary, I think that it would be to our company's advantage to enter the blogging community so we could have greater brand exposure as well as increased credibility and we can continue to grow as a company.  

Sincerely,

Ronald A. Rojas

Reflection on Google docs

Mr. Garner,

Our company manages more than  two hundred and fifty Hedge Funds. We are required to evaluate their portfolio and manage risk by staying in contact with brokers and other financial institutions. In addition, all of our brokers require us to have Microsoft Excel. Most of our client’s sensitive information which includes SWAPS, bonds, Collateral exposure, valuations and pricing are sent via excel spreadsheets. Our company uses macros and SQL files to import all of our MS Excel spreadsheets sent by our broker counter-parties such as Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs, etc. 

  

This action of switching to google docs will not only affect us by having to re-train our staff of 175 employees, but will also create a negative impact to our brokers and clients by failing on delivering timely efficient reports. Our brokers and Hedge Funds demand us for specific time-deadlines during the day for certain reports. Google docs will not be as efficient as Microsoft Excel causing delays in submitting our reports to our clients.

Sincerely,

Ronald A Rojas

Google Docs Recommendation

Mr. Garner

After an intense investigation on a complete research on the software that the company uses on a daily basis, I came to the conclusion that switching to google docs will be more costly than the $35,000 expense in MS office for all 175 employees in the office. Here are the reasons why:

Our Hedge Funds need our daily reconciliations, most of our counter parties such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch send us their pricing and daily activity movements on SWAPS and collateral calls that are saved in our drives protecting our clients sensitive information.  

Any Google certified employee with the right credentials can access any type of document putting in risk our confidentiality of our clients and hedge funds. This action could potentially cause the loss of millions of dollars in privacy events against their private investment funds. 

The $35,000 expense in MS office will be an investment for our employees. Employees using MS office, in comparison to google docs, are accessible of using multiple excel spreadsheets and are able to create macros and import them to SQL. 

In addition, upgrading/acquiring the latest MS office software will avoid any possible expense in new training for using google docs. 

By acquiring google docs we will NOT be able to:

Transfer/import spreadsheets to SQL easily.

Create macros and multi-task with multiple screens

Obtain all of our FX translation, floating rate bonds and Equity updates through Bloomberg into excel spreadsheets data base.

Using google docs will cause a $50,000 increase in expense the first month in addition to the $45,000 monthly labor expense created from this action. This action will affect our local and foreign offices.

New Staff training: $5,000 

Labor Hours increase due to incompatibility of data base and bloomberg: $45,000/monthly

Increase in management Risk by using an internet based data file while exposing our client's information for possible inside trading. (Millions of dollars lost)

For all those reasons, I believe that the $35,000 expense should be considered as an investment instead of an expense. 

Sincerely,

Ronald A Rojas