Case study analysis and findings

Avio Aerospace Case Study

The first thing to take into consideration is the fact that implementing a web project cannot be regarded as an expense, but as an investment. The investment can be considered as being directly proportional with the return on sales. The web project costs should be divided into marketing costs, it costs, and other project related costs. Web project costs may vary, as they differ in accordance with the complexity and subject of the business, the project's duration, or the quality of execution. Some costs of a web project include: start-up fee: $1,500; hosting and maintenance: $50 per month, or $500 per year; hosting for additional sites: $20 per month, or $200 per year.

Avio Aerospace, the former Steelwell Ltd., is trying to create a unified marketing activity by bringing together all its units under one roof, a virtual one respectively. The company is trying to merge all these separately functioning units so that a general, unified marketing strategy can be applied to all of them.

Avio Aerospace specialists have decided to implement such a strategy due to the many benefits it provides. Unified marketing strategy advantages include: different segments of existent customers would benefit from better service provided by the company, increasing the customer satisfaction level, therefore bringing benefits to both the company and its customers; by unifying all these operating units, the company can develop and apply common goals, contradictory objectives could be eliminated; consensus among the company could be created, and teams could grow stronger, increasing the company's general strength also; this operations centralization could also generate new company values, and improved processes; customer related issues could be solved faster and more efficiently; the Internet project could also stimulate service product development.

Through this Internet project, the company is mainly trying to increase customer satisfaction. As an alternative, this can be achieved also without creating a virtual, unified environment. However, due to the complexity of Avio business, it is imperative to centralize all operations, processes, and strategies into one general strategy, applicable to all units of the company. In order to do so, a centralization of the company must be performed.

Company centralization presents a series of advantages, like: reduction in number of systems required for performing the company's activity, reduction of infrastructure requirements due to it resources consolidation, significant cost savings, reduction in number of administrators, employee objectives can be more easily aligned with company objectives, simplified and more accurate reporting (Ellis & Mauldin, 2003). This strategy centralization requires central teams that supervise all units.

The general strategy designed for improving customer experience at Avio should focus on the following aspects: designing a clear customer experience strategy in the first place; selecting the most suitable people for designing, implementing, and monitoring this strategy; ensuring the continuous development of the people involved in this strategy; establishing effective service delivery processes; focusing on continuous improvement; ensuring that managers are the key change-agents (Nash, 2007).

However, company and strategy centralization present a series of risks as well. For example, local level control will decrease, as it is impossible for one central team to monitor effectively local units. In relation to this, local resources control is also diminished. Therefore, the solution lies in between these two variants. The company should build a centralized marketing strategy, applied at local level, successfully combining the two models.

3. Besides the Executive Team, that supervises the entire project, there are three important teams involved, the Marketing Team, the Working Team, and the it Team. The marketing Team is considered to be the most important one. It is considered that the entire project's success relies entirely on the Marketing Team. However, the Marketing Team's role in this project might be slightly over-appreciated. The Internet project's success is based on the full cooperation between these three teams. One cannot establish which is the most important team in this project, since all three teams have different objectives, different types of tasks, each of them is working on building one part of the project, and their combination will lead to the final state of the project. One team cannot function without the help of the other two. Therefore, understanding this aspects and the cooperation between the three teams will lead to the project's success.

Another aspect is in question: whether the company can make do with its internal human resources or it requires additional, external ones. Given the three decades of experience and the company's success so far, it is considered that the Marketing Team is up for the challenge of creating this Internet project. The company's past activity and strategies recommend this team for future strategies also. However, there is also room for improvements and given the changes produced in marketing strategies so often would require that new employees are recruited for the marketing activity. This will bring a breath of fresh air to the company and its activity. Also, the Work Team shows no signs it is unable to meet the challenges of this project. However, the it Team might require some additional, external expert advice, given the complexity of the project and its implications.

4. Outsourcing any kind of project and especially a web project brings a series of advantages and disadvantages. Generally, outsourcing is considered to provide higher quality at lower costs. The advantages include:

Outsourcing represents an effective way of stretching the budget. The main objective of outsourcing is reducing costs by 30% (Tesler, 2007).

Implementing innovations with small losses. It does not require retraining or hiring employees

Upgrading service quality and reducing costs, which leads to competitive advantage

Allowing the company to concentrate on its core activities

Capacity is supported by valuable expertise (Tesler, 2007).

However, outsourcing the web project to an outside company or group of experts has its share of disadvantages. These disadvantages include:

The company will lose control over the project or over the outsourced part only

Communication problems might emerge

The outsource service provider might be inexperienced, unqualified, or even incompetent in the area in cause

It is recommended that any company has some internal employees that are capable of performing such an activity. Internal resources are more reliable, since they have obviously made proof of their capabilities. This way, the company keeps the control over the project, by being able to monitor its employees.

Regarding Internet specifications, each of them has its level of importance. For example, without clearly establishing the web's objectives from the beginning, one cannot go further with the project, as everything must relate to the objectives and be in complete accordance with the objectives. Technical specifications are also vital for the project, the entire technical construction relying on them. Milestones and timetable are important for determining the timeframe of the project, to offer a clear perspective on its duration, since the duration is strongly related to financial aspects. Standards of performance must be established from the beginning, along with the objectives, in order to have a clear perspective on them. Promotion is a very important part of the project, since 94% of websites do not reach their objectives because of lack of promotion. A website that is not promoted is absolutely inefficient. Most specialists consider the following specifications to be of extreme importance: establishing objectives, conducting scenario analysis, producing wire frames and site architecture, producing sketches and composites, drafting the style guide, producing templates, writing the code, testing presentation and behavior, reconciling test results, and deployment (O'Brian, 2006).

5. Given the importance of the company's Internet project, it is absolutely vital for consensus to be created, as the web site's success and future well-functioning relies entirely on this. If the parties involved in the project disagree on certain related aspects, the project will no reach its objectives. Agreement should exist in all the project's phases: in the initial phase, when establishing objectives, in the actual execution stage, and in the final stage of implementation. If the objectives are not established with every party's agreement in the first place, the future development of the project will be a complete failure. Also, if the means of action and execution are not chosen with the same agreement from all the involved parties, the result will be also a negative one.

Another aspect related to the subject is the involvement of customers, vendors, or other internal groups of company employees when building the future web site. It is a very good idea to involve customers in this process, given the fact that the web site is addressed to serving their needs. As a consequence, it is very important to be aware of the customers' needs, desires, and expectations. The better these needs are known, the more success the web site will have.