Harrison-Keyes Inc. Case Study

Running head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: HARRISON-KEYES INC.

Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.

University of Phoenix

Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.

Since 1997, more and more people have used the World Wide Web to shop for products. In 1997, only 2 percent of adults actually purchased items from online stores and in 2003 nearly it was 47 percent (Computer and Internet Use in the United States: 2003, 2005). With more shoppers moving from the traditional brick and mortar stores to online retailers, Harrison-Keyes must capitalize on this rapid growing trend. In recent years, sales for Harrison-Keyes and the industry has been suffering with lower sales and profits. The move to e-book selling is a great strategy for Harrison-Keyes to increase revenue and profits (U. of Phoenix, 2006). The 9-step problem solving method will be applied to the scenario of Harrison-Keyes’ plan to implement an e-book commerce to help increase profits and revenue.

Describe the Situation

Issues and Opportunities Identification

Before a solution can be developed, the issues and opportunities for Harrison-Keyes need to be identified. Base on the scenario, the table below was completed to identify these issues and opportunities for Harrison-Keyes to address in its goal to improve revenue and market share.

Table 1: Issues and Opportunities Identification

Issues

Opportunities

Reference to Specific

Course Concept

Harrison-Keyes did not include participants from all level within the organization, including key authors.

The opportunity for Meg and her management team is to reengage the key authors and address their inputs and concerns. Based on the information gathered, Harrison-Keyes can incorporate the authors’ interests and concerns to the revise E-book strategy.

Chapter 2: Implement Strategies through Projects: There was a lack in communication to the authors and as a result there is disagreement between management and the authors about compensation and royalty payments. Involving participants from all level can help reduce infighting and avoid obstacles.

(Gray & Larson, 2006)

Harrison-Keyes’ current project did not have specific short-term objectives to indicate the progress and performance of the project reaching the end-state goal. Meg and her management team needs to revise the e-book strategy to include several short-term objectives in each function to allow each team to reach realistic goals and identify area(s) that needs additional focus. In addition, to incorporate short-term objectives to revised project, it can implement Doran’s SMART device. It can be used as part of the short term objectives to measure performance and the overall progress of the strategy. Chapter 9: Short-term objectives: In general, short-term objectives can help implement strategy in three ways. First, it “operationalize” long-term objectives and it helps raises issues and potential conflicts within the organization. Finally, it assists the implementation of the strategy and place measurable outcomes which can be used to evaluate the strategy.

(Pearce and Robinson, 2004)

Another issue is that there is a lack of leadership and involvement in the implementation of the strategy. Meg needs to get more involve with each function management and identify the areas that need focusing and to empower her team to make critical decisions without her involvement. However, they should still communicate to her of there decisions to avoid any disconnect with upper management. Chapter 10: Organizational Leadership: Organizational leadership has two functions. First, the role of a leader is to guide the organization to deal with constant change. Second, is providing management skills to cope with the constant changing environment. In the case of Harrison-Keyes, Meg did not get involve with her functional managers to address technical and working relationship issues early on in the process of implementing her E-book initiative.

(Pearce and Robinson, 2004)

The third issue is Meg and her management team did not take into account the organizational culture and cultural issue with outsourcing. The work ethics of other countries especially those in Asia are quite different then those in the United States (Vogel,