Case Study Yachts Australia

Yachts Australia is a small size company owned and operated by a family, and offering charter yacht services in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef; this is an easily navigable area, implying a reduced need for specialized skills.

Yachts Australia is currently being run by Alice and Paul, and it has been passed on by Paul's parents, who retired. After taking over the business, the young couple expanded its operations to complete more trips, to deliver more services -- such as catering while on the boat trip -- and they also increased the size of the YA fleet. Today, this is formed from 6 sailing yachts, 4 catamarans and 6 skippered touring boats.

In order to capitalize on the success the company was registering, Alice and Paul engaged in franchise operations, through which similar products are offered by partners along the coast. While the business model implemented generates positive results, several challenges remain for Yachts Australia. These would be addressed throughout the following section.

3.1. Current problems

Some of the more notable problems currently encountered by Paul and Alice include the following:

Increased operational complexity

Insufficiency of the record keeping system

Double bookings and other mistakes generate customer dissatisfactions

Increasing competition within the industry.

3.2. Minimum system requirements

The complexity of the problems encountered at Yachts Australia generates the need for a new system to be created and implemented. This new system would have multipurpose usages and its main feature would be that of centralizing information about the company and the industry, and as such, supporting the decision making process at the organization (Murphy and Willmott, 2010).

The new system would be constructed in a manner to serve four distinctive features, namely booking, information storing, security issues and industry benchmarking. The lines below explain these minimum system requirements in more detail:

Bookings are currently completed rather ad-hoc, on pre-printed paper, on master calendars and with hand made calculations. The new system would have to provide a computerized and integrated manner to completing these operations; it would have to check the correctness of the booking and booking related information, and it would be expected to ease and increase the efficiency of the overall process.

Within the current context, Alice is the one possessing most of the information, and the employees' access to the data is rather restricted. The new system would store all information and would make it easily accessible to the staffs.

Security issues are raised especially in relationship to the temporary staffs hired to help out in the peak seasons. The new system would as such ensure higher degrees of information safety and security.

Last, the new system would allow the company to compare itself with the industry by revealing the industry growth rates and the company growth rates, as well as the opportunities in the industry; furthermore, this feature of the system would allow the company to conduct analyses based on several potential scenarios.

4. Feasibility analysis

4.1. Technical feasibility

The current system is technically unfeasible. It relies extensively on the human brain, with its sparks, but also its limitations. The information is mostly possessed by Alice and it is not easily accessible to the YA employees. Calculations and bookings are made on paper, which might easily be lost. The result of this technical unfeasibility is the high number of double booking, as well as other mistakes, which generate customer dissatisfactions.

4.2. Economic feasibility

The current system is economically feasible for Yachts Australia since it is easy to support. In other words, it does not require large investments to be operated, but it virtually runs on minimum investments. Still, this feasibility is only available within the short-term. In the long-term, the economics of the current system would materialize in decreased financial results, as a result of customer dissatisfactions. In other words, however it would generate additional resource consumption, the new system is necessary to be implemented.

4.3. Organizational feasibility

At the level of the organizational feasibility of the system, this is noted as fairly increased. Specifically, the company has grown and developed since it has been taken over by Alice and Paul, and it now requires more investments in order to sustain the positive results it has generated so far. In this order of ideas, it is necessary for the company to develop and implement the new system as a means of:

Improving the quality and efficiency of its operations

Increasing the cost efficiency of its processes

Increasing the quality of the service to generate higher customer satisfaction

Identifying the competitive strategies and adapting to them

Overall then, the organizational feasibility of the current system is decreased, whereas the feasibility of the new system is increased. The new system would function as an important decision making tool by providing a quick and easy access to information, as well as by enhancing the analysis skills of the firm.

4.4. Schedule feasibility

At the level of the schedule feasibility, it is important to note that the current system is already outdated and insufficient. This virtually means that the new system has to be developed in a quick manner, in order to prevent the generation of additional mistakes through the usage of the current system. In specific regard to the new mechanisms, the schedule feasibility is influenced by the financial component primarily, and the schedule is influenced by the company's ability to quickly pay for the acquisition and implementation of the system. Given that the financial results of YA are positive, this means that the schedule feasibility of the new system is also positive.

4.5. Resource feasibility

Last, at the level of the resource feasibility, this is mostly applicable at the level of the new system. The development, purchase and implementation of the new system are linked to the company's possession and access to three specific resources -- capital, labor and technology (Boyes and Melvin, 2011).