Management Chapter 11 One For Example Is Develop Plan Meet

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Case: The Creative Design Group

Part 1

The Creative Design Group (CDG) designs brochures for companies, trade groups, and

associations. Their emphasis on customer service is based on speed, quality, creativity, and

value. They want each brochure to “wow” the customer in its design, meet or exceed the

preparation deadline, and be of superior quality at a reasonable price. Value is emphasized over

To carry out their objectives, the small company has four designers, a customer

service/estimator (CSE), and Trendy, who is the creative director and strategic visionary. The

work environment, in a converted garage behind Trendy’s house, features modern (though not

always state-of-the-art) computer hardware and software, excellent lighting, and modern

communications for sending design documents to clients and printers. Designers generally work

independently of each other, consulting with the CSE about requests for status updates or client–

initiated changes. They also consult with Trendy, who signs off on the creative design, after

Assignment: Develop an affinity diagram that captures the major organizational features and

issues. How could this diagram help Trendy develop a three- to five-year strategic plan for

CDG?

Part 2

Given the situation in Part 1, Trendy determined several long-range objectives, among which are

outdistancing the competition so as to grow the business by 10 percent per year for each of the

next five years (a 61 percent compound growth rate), and adding a new designer every two years.

These factors should be the key ingredients for her goal of increasing her profitability by 10

percent per year. To accomplish her objectives, she must deal with the two major issues of the

increasing competition and employee recruitment and retention in order to develop effective

action plans to support her long-range plan.

Part 3

Using the results of Parts 1 and 2 of the case, Trendy Art decided that, along with improving her

recruiting processes for new and replacement hiring, it was time to replace the computer system

with state-of-the-art hardware and software. Knowing that no one at CDG had the expertise to

design the type of system that they needed, Trendy looked around, analyzed three competing

firms’ proposals, and finally settled on Creative Computer Group (CCG) to act as consultants

and system integrators. Before signing the contract, Trendy decided to ask Hy and Green Ishied

(the CSE) to meet with her and the CEO of CCG to clarify the system design requirements and

the wording of the contract.

Trendy, Hy, and Green all agreed that the system needed to be completely integrated,

with the capability to gather cost and scheduling data directly from the designers, and to produce

Assignment:

1. Given the following information, perform a matrix data analysis to determine why (or if)

CCG should get the contract to install the computer system. Justify your analysis. What

questions would you suggest that Trendy, Hy, and Green get back to Charlie on?

2. Construct a process decision program chart, but closely reflecting CCG’s training needs.

What special considerations would need to be included in training graphic designers with

little business knowledge and business-oriented people (such as Hy and Green) with little

artistic design knowledge, about each other’s areas of work in order to use an integrated

system?