Free Essay Example - Future State Analysis

Folarin flower shop has not only been providing its residents with fresh flowers but also floral supplies for over ten years now. Recently, there has been an increase in demand for flowers due to the restriction of people not leaving their homes because of the global pandemic. With the increased demand, the shop will face some challenges labor shortage being the primary one.

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This research aims to identify how Folarin can achieve much return by upgrading to full automation. The business can earn a considerable profit by taking advantage of digitalization services and cooperation with other e-commerce companies.

Folarin shop also establishes relationships with funeral homes and churches that require online flower delivery services to expand their e-commerce avenue. During this particular time of the pandemic, Folarin is making the best effort to provide its customers with satisfying services. With the virus still around the globe, restriction continues to affect many families. People are shopping online for flowers and floral supplies for their loved ones at home in the hospitals and even the ones who have died from the virus.

Delivering flowers to customers in homes, hospitals, funeral homes, and cemeteries without infecting both the workers and customers have become a challenge. Several online businesses have been challenged to speed up digital technology development in unmanned, intelligent, and contactless process (Das et al 2015). Meanwhile, Folarin has a high chance of facing labor shortages because some of its staff cannot work because of the virus.

Folarin has an advantage in the long term; promoting digital transformation will decrease labor costs and, in turn, improve working efficiency. The shop will have more abilities to upgrade other sectors of its business to meet the customer's demand and needs. This analysis should help the management to focus on eradicating any relevant risk while deciding on the benefits. The output will be to foresee any expectations or maintain customers concerning Folarin flower shop adaptability and preparedness to similar unforeseen situations like the virus pandemic.

Goals for the Organization

Increase Local Sales By 15%

Automation leads to a reduction of human labor costs, which in the end, maximizes the profits. Now that the virus has caused many people to stay home, the shop saw it's over the phone orders go up by three times. If Folarin were still looking to offer the same level of customer experience, it would be essential for the business to eliminate any mistake in their internal process.

Build Deeper Relationships in Key Channels of Opportunity to Increase Referral Sales

The project will ensure that the management to ensure that Folarin maintains the customer experience at this critical time of the coronavirus uses the strategies outlined. Happy customers will give us referrals, increasing referrals sales.

Reduce Customer Service Wait Time By 50%

Because most customers stay at home, coming to the shop is minimized. Munising traffic in the shop means that the customer service waiting time is reduced by 50%. They wait for us to deliver to them at their doorsteps.

The Risks They Will Face

Time

For an automation process to be implemented, it will take an average of up to ten years. While the business plans to use the automation project for long, it is so unlikely that the project will be a success during this period when its customers need it most.

The ever-changing technology

The constantly changing technology is a challenge to the business; technology changes very first even if the company implements the project; chances are, by the time such a situation arises again, the changes will be outdated. Therefore, it is up to the management to decide which process to use extensively and how sustainable it will be.

The business cannot entirely rely on an automated process

Apart from incorporating other organizational changes, adaptability to changes in the working environment is another challenge. Robots can only use and follow their programming that is hardcoded into their system, unlike humans, who use critical thinking to suggest context-based solutions (Aaslt et al 2018).

Lack of artificial intelligence knowledge

Even though the business will conduct numerous training to ensure employees understand the new system, focusing on artificial intelligence in full to replace the old technology is not easy. Employees are used to traditional ways of doing their things.

Addressing the Risks

Lack of Artificial Intelligence Knowledge and Ever-Changing Technology

The business will need to include other expert companies in the artificial intelligence area to advise them about the system and its design and conduct numerous employees training (Brynjolfsson & Mcafee 2017).

Time and Relying On the Automated Process

The business will need to incorporate other changes to automate the whole company. And try to use the combination of both men and robots instead of replacement.

Smart Goal

• Specific: Increase the sale of flowers and floral supplies to take advantage of the coronavirus.
• Measurable: Sell 15% more flowers and flower supplies through online delivery to take advantage of the staying home situation.
• Attainable: We had already started receiving orders by calls, so it should be easy to achieve.
• Relevant: Because now people stay indoors more, because of government orders, delivery is essential.
• Time bounded: Reduce customer-waiting time by 50% and increase sales by 155 by the end of the year.

Risk register

Risk ID Risk Consequences Probability Impact Treatment

1 Risks of customers not confirming their delivery online The online delivery checkbox will remain unmarked, unchanging the cost and operation risk.

40% Will lead to a higher cost because customers will not enjoy a second delivery discount Mitigate by making it automatic for the workers or delivery person to check for customers.

References

Das, R., Madani, V., Aminifar, F., McDonald, J., Venkata, S.S., Novosel, D., Bose, A. and Shahidehpour, M., 2015. Distribution automation strategies: Evolution of technologies and the business case. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 6(4), pp.2166-2175.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7047929/Van der Aalst, W.M., Bichler, M. and Heinzl, A., 2018. Robotic process automation.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12599-018-0542-4Brynjolfsson, E. and Mcafee, A.N.D.R.E.W., 2017. The business of artificial intelligence. Harvard Business Review, pp.1-20.

https://starlab-alliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Business-of-Artificial-Intelligence.pdf