Club_It

Club IT, Part Three In the short time I have been a part of Club IT, I have seen tremendous potential. If the right style of information technology is used, there is no reason this company cannot grow and expand to other locations. There is a great staff on hand that works hard to make sure everything is perfect for the customers. They are very dedicated to making sure that each customer has a great time at Club IT. There is just the right number of employees for the company and the security personnel there make everyone feel safe before and after they enter the club. Club IT is a great place to gather with friends and coworkers. It offers live music, food, drinks, and dancing. Club IT wants their customers to feel at home and to relax after a hard day at work. They want to create a community gathering place for all to enjoy. Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada are the owners of Club IT. Their dream was to open a nightclub that would allow all types of music where customers can dance and relax. Club IT’s customer base varies from college students who want to party after class, to the more mature crowd who just wants to unwind after a hard day at work. The owners at Club IT have remodeled their building to allow a larger seating arrangement with plenty of space for dancing. The remodeling has helped create a better visual experience for the customers, but it is also important to revamp other aspects of the business. The software and hardware needs to be upgraded so employees can handle the business transaction with ease and keep on top of the finances. The short-term goals of Club IT would be to expand their client base and bring in more live talent to play at nights. Another short-term goal would be to become one of the best restaurants in town. This will entail hiring an experienced chef that can create a variety of different foods that will appeal to the older crowd, while still offering the “everyday” type of food that will appeal to the college crowd. The long-term goal would be to expand their business to several different locations. One of the fastest ways to grow our client base would be to revamp the website. The website should be setup to take online orders for merchandise as well as allowing customers to log on and buy tickets for upcoming shows. We also need to set up a page for customers to view upcoming artists with links to their websites. Hopefully, this will create interest for music outside the customer’s normal mode and will increase business in that area. We will need to push advertising hard and make sure we advertise with flyers and e-mails encouraging people to view the new website and see all the wonderful new changes we have made. We could also use a database for all live talent to have contact information, type of music and when they will be available to play. This should increase interest with customers who keep track of certain bands in the area. An eye-catching website will make a difference and attract attention to all we have to offer here at Club IT. An attractive interactive website will increase business after customers see all the information available to them. After the website has been upgraded, we need to purchase new computers, preferably laptops, setup for all employees who need them and make sure we have all the computers networked and working at a higher capacity. There should be a good system in place to make sure that backups are done on a regular schedule and anti-virus software is loaded. One of the best investments we can make would be to install new computers with top of the line software so we can see everything simultaneously throughout the company. All office personal should have a home computer setup that will allow them to log on from home if necessary to complete any work or check on something if a question comes up that needs answering after hours. Installing QuickBooks software will keep the records straight and make it easy for the Accountant to get information at any time. It will allow us to see inventory at all times. Installing QuickBooks will make writing payroll much easier and it will allow us to pay bills faster and keep up with the information we need to see on a day-to-day basis. QuickBooks will also allow us to produce different reports to quickly view our profit and loss statements and any other information we might want to view at a moment’s notice. We will hire a consultant who is proficient in QuickBooks to train the employees. Depending on an employee’s schedule, their training will be during the regular shift and will be done in stages so all positions can be covered during training. For the QuickBooks software, we should only train the office personnel and maybe one or two of the other employees. It is very important to cross-train the employees so if someone is out sick or we become short-handed because of vacations, we are able to cover all positions and shifts as needed. The phone and credit card systems need to be upgraded so they will be compatible with the new computer system. We will train the employees on the new systems the same as we do with QuickBooks, although for the credit card system as well as the phone system we will need to train every employee because this will be part of their day to day duties. The current technology here at Club IT is very outdated. We need a total upgrade across the board to help meet our goal of expansion as well as the revamp of the website. For the website upgrade, the estimated time would be around two weeks. Because the website is already in place and just needs to be upgraded, it should not take as long to put everything in place and make the needed changes. For the phone systems, credit card systems the estimated time should be around four weeks. This will give us time to research the systems that will work best for your needs, and still give us the necessary time to install the equipment and get a consultant to come into Club IT and train everyone. Due to the great year we have had so far at Club IT, we have around $30,000 to use for our upgrades and new systems. This should give us plenty of room to work with and even have some left over when we are finished. The computer upgrades will cost around $3500.00 for the equipment and $1,000.00 for the software and around $1,000.00 for training. The phone system will cost roughly $8,500.00 for equipment and installation. This new system will allow the employees to have “blue tooth” headsets so they can answer the phones from where ever they may be within the club. We should budget another $500.00 for cell phones for any employees who will be traveling trying to recruit new help in the restaurant side of the business as well as checking out new talent for the club side of the business. We need to budget $4,000.00 for advertising after all the upgrades are in place and the website has been revamped. We need to make sure we get the news out that Club IT is the place to be. Flyers and advertising on the radio and TV need to be in place so we can saturate Club IT in public eye. I would also look into one of the employees, like the hostess, set up advertising on all the social networking sites with a link to the company’s website. This will be a great tool that is free , but will get out to a lot of different people. This could be something the hostess works on during slow times so we aren’t paying an extra salary, and you would be utilizing an asset that we already have. Once everything is in place and upgraded, the office personnel as well as the owners can start monitoring the flow of business to see how we are progressing. Ruben and Lisa can compare the level of business Club IT had before all of the upgrades against how much business we are doing after the upgrades. One of the great features of QuickBooks is the reports you can create. It will take a little time to enter all the previous information for the past year into the system, but after that we will be able to create different reports that will allow us to see the progress we have made since the upgrades have taken place. The evaluation should happen at least six months after everything has been upgraded. This will give the business time to advertise and promote all the new changes that have taken place and will give us a starting point for gauging how long it will take to start the expansion into other areas. At the present time, there are only two computers in the office. Both are very outdated and the software hasn’t been upgraded in three years. The version of MS Office is the 2003 version and there is only one printer that prints black with no color. The phone system is also extremely outdated. There are four phones with only two lines on them and no conference or intercom access. The dial up connection for the Internet is extremely slow and needs to be upgraded to DSL after the new computers arrive. The phone system needs to be setup with intercom access so all employees are easily accessible and having blue tooth access will make it much easier for employees to move around the floor assisting customers as well as keeping an eye on everything. After the remodeling of the building, I am sure it might seem risky to start a new internal remodel, but to make sure that the company stays up-to-date with the changing technology, all telecommunication equipment and computer systems should be upgraded to keep business flowing. With a DSL connection, access to the Internet will be faster, therefore saving time and money. Having an upgraded phone system will enable employees to move around while still answering the phone and handling the needs of our customers. Even though the company’s outgo will be a little more in the upcoming months, the business gained will make all the difference in the world, and we will be able to take Club IT to the next level.