Operation and Project management

Introduction

In order to run the business sustainability, it is the corporate responsibility of the leaders and managers to manage their data base and gather market information, and this further provides a scope to gain high competitive advantage over other competitive organisations in the market (Czischke, 2018). The multinational corporation aim at maintaining the efficacy of data handling and handling the digital data base management system in the organisational workplace, for supporting the staff members with adequate information and valid data to enhance their performance and productivity in long run (Abdul-Aziz et al., 2017). This operation and project management focuses on analysing the data silos and the database management system at the company. The study also aims to identify the communication process in the workplace and in this regard the organisation Luton Town Residences (LTR) is considered for analysing the internal process of communication and interactions. After analysing the internal communication and working practice, the study provides a scope to develop alternative strategy for enhancing internal communication, so that the staffs members can handle their performance and meet own job role and responsibility to contribute efficiently in the organisation. Through operation and project management tools, it is hereby possible to analyse the existing workplace activities of LTR and develop alternative innovative strategy for managing the organisational data base and enhancing communication at LTR through developing the risk management practice, project planning and budget.

Luton Town Residences

Luton Town Residences (LTR) is a reputed housing association, operating in Luton, where it operates from a central office, located in the Luton Town Centre and there are four housing blocks across Luton with individual management team. The mission of the organisation LTR is to deliver high quality housing to the local community members with the aim of giving assistance and support especially to the vulnerable people in the society. As per the organisational structure, customer’s service team, finance team and facilities maintenance team are the major departments where the employees are efficient to handle their activities for the benefits of the organisation and the ultimate users of their services. The different housings systems in LTR are such as two hostels for the young mothers aged between 16 and 25 years, emergency hostels for the single young people aged from 16 to 25 years and also there is transitional flats from 16 to 18 years old leaving care. All the departments are efficient to manage their job role and develop partnership working practice to meet the customer’s expectations. The staff members at LTR are also productive and innovative to handle the organisational operational efficacy and satisfy the clients in long run by delivering good quality housing and other facilities. As per the organisational employees base, the customer service team has 15 staff, and on the other hand, there are supported housing personal coach with 15 efficient staff members, general administrative department with 8 staff and senior management team with 10 staff members. Additionally, the finance team is managed by 10 staff and 8 employees are experienced to handle the faculty maintenance team. Hence, the working culture and partnership working practice are effective at LTR to manage their clients by ensuring quality housing with additional facilities to the individuals.

Data Sharing and Digital Collaboration in LTR

Database management system

Data sharing and digital database management system is important for the organisations in the recent era of globalisation for managing customer database as well as other database such as finance, maintenance, marketing and others, which further provide a scope to the firm to run their business activities efficiently to meet the mission of the company. Data silos in this regard are the set of relevant of data and information in the organisational workplace, in which the business leader tries to keep the data safe and secured through managing the organisational data base. Organisational leader and management team try to keep data safety and security for protecting the personal information and internal data of the organisation by implementing the Data Protection Act 1998 and General Data Protection guidelines, 2018 (Puķīte and Geipele, 2017). There are diverse ranges of data and information stored in the company database, such as the employee performance data human resource data, financial data, company information including profitability and sales volume, operational data and personal information which support the team members to develop crucial strategies for the business in order to run their operations and meet he company mission. Data silos at the workplace are hereby mandatory to be maintained well for better performance of the staff by managing database system, gathering information and developing good strategic planning (Stupnytska, Kalaman and Markova, 2019). Data silos are also beneficial for the institutions to improve their operational efficiency and lead the employees towards achieving the organisational goal.

Digital database management system and data silos are hereby important for the organisation LTR in order to runt heir business activities and secure future sustainable development. The corporate leader of LTR focuses on managing the employees across different departments, including finance, management, customer service and operation through managing data silos and utilising efficient data base management system. The data related to housing facilities, operational activities in the market and other facilities are shared with the finance team for managing the organisational service quality and serving the customers efficiently (Siniak et al., 2019). The major departments of LTR are such as finance, facility management team, customer service, housing personal coaches, and senior management and administrative departments. All the staff member across diverse departments at LTR focus on managing their data base and enhance internal communication for enhancing their working practice and maximising their productivity in long run. In the institution LTR, the finance team with ten staff members is effective to maintain own database in word and excel format. The finance team utilises primarily Excel spread sheets, and word documents as well as they also utilise a specialised Sage One Accounting for data management and in depth analysis. The finance team also tries to share the important documents and data with others through SharePoint server with restricted access to non-authorised employees. There is restricted access of the information and database system of the finance team, as data protection is necessary to be maintained to avoid the issue of data hacking.

Hence, the data related to organisational personal, revenue and incensement and other budgetary information are stored and handled with safety and security through the organisational data silos and computerised system (Oota, Iwafune and Ooka, 2021). On the other hand, the customer’s service team is also playing a crucial role to manage their job role and satisfy the ultimate users of the housing services at Luton. In this regard, the customer handling team members also utilise the excel sheet and word documents for noting down the exact issues and requirements of the customers (Manville and Greatbanks, 2020). This is the major strategy of data base management system, where the team members try to engage the clients and identify their feedback to develop database, so that in future, it would be possible to analyse the existing feedback and improve their housings service with additional facilities by utilising latest technical advancement. The word documents are widely used across 4 housing estate of LTR where the management team at customer service department utilise work processing for arranging the issues and personal requirements of the customers for developing further strategic planning to resolve the existing issues. The functional team and leader of LTR manage data confidentiality and protect the sensitive data and information successfully through password protected laptops and cloud based system for avoiding data breach. There is personal hard drive in which the sensitive information and internal operational data are stored securely (Landau-Ward and Porter, 2019). The cloud based system at LTR as well as the password protected system provide a scope to their digital data base and work efficiently by developing effective strategic planning. Additionally, the facility maintenance departments also utilise uses a specialist cloud-based system called 360 Facility to manage their facilities and ensure high quality housing services.

Communication plan in the organisation LTR

Communication and cooperation are mandatory for the organisation to enhance their activities and in this regard the departmental heads at LTR focus on enhancing internal communication and collaboration for better performance management. The cloud based system and 360 Facility are beneficial for the organisation to handle their data base and support the team members at different departments to work collaborative for achieving the ultimate mission of LTR by supporting the customers with high quality housing services. Most of the communication at LTR occurs by using email, with several employees where the corporate leader as well as the management team tries to send email on daily basis for communicating and interacting with others at the workplace. Organisational wide information is also shared through daily newsletters and these are emailed to each employee at LTR every morning. Key information is shared and the managers also utilised email for reminding the employees about job roles and responsibilities at the workplace.

The newsletters are distributed every morning, through email and for other purpose at the workplace email is utilised for communication and cooperation (Muhammad and Johar, 2019). However, the employees complain about the use of email for communication and cooperation, as they face difficulties in maintaining the large volume of email sent and received every day. Sometimes, the emails are missed or ignored by the staff members. It becomes a critical issue, for the staff members to handle the emails as there are huge numbers of email sent to each employee every day. The customer’s service team also faces the issue of managing email requests for further responds to share the information with the team, and this results delay and increasing waiting time of the guests to get the high quality housing services and other facilities (Kim and Park, 2018). The company laptops issued to some employees, mostly the personal coaches working with Supported Housing residents, other employees have access to their own PC, and they utilise SharePoint drive that is management centrally. The SharePoint drive is mostly utilised by the finance team to ensure the access and version control of the key financial activities. It is hereby necessary for the organisational leader to develop alternative communication strategy, rather than interaction through email, so that the employees can communicate easily and get access of the data base for maximising their performance and productivity at LTR.

Recommended suggestions to develop Internal Communications at LTR – Alternatives to Email

For developing alternative solutions at LTR, the leader and management team must cooperate and develop good corporate culture with harmony and flexibility, employee engagement, respect and integrity and equality and diversity management, so that each employees will participate in the changed process and adopt the project through technological advancement and creativity. The recommended suggestions for enhancing communication at LTR are such as,

Implementing ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a software system utilised for planning and managing the organisational services, financial activities and other process of the organisation. LTR would be efficient to invest in ERP, where the whole process can be managed well. Through ERP, it is possible to handle the housings services, maintaining the quality of houses as well as managing other facilities in the housing estate of LTR. The ERP system also provide a scope to the managers of LTR to handle the customers database through online integrated software system, where the employees in customers service departments are guided and supported by financial data and client database for delivering the best quality housings services (Pavlineri, Skoulikidis and Tsihrintzis, 2017). Through ERP, LTR would be able to enhance communication with the finance team, facilities maintenance team and Supported Housing Personal Coaches, where it is possible to gain information about the facilities, availability of housings and the requirements of the customers to support the clients with high quality houses. Hereby, ERP system is fruitful for the organisation LTR to develop integrated system of managing the whole operations by developing partnership working practice, where it helps to develop cooperation with the finance team; customers service representatives, operational managers, facility managers and general administrative staff.

ICT

Information and communications technology (ICT) is another integrated software system for enhancing communication at the organisations. It is mainly an integration of telecommunications, telephone lines and wireless signals and also computers, where the staff members can be engaged and connected with each other through the ICT software system. It is mainly an extension of Information Technology, where it stores, processes, transmits, converts and receives the electronic information from one device to another (Fields and Rogers, 2021). Through this ICT program, LTR would be able to develop an integrated software system for managing communication as well as develop cooperative working practice through continuous communication.

Share drive

Share drive is shared workspaces where the teams can easily store, search and access the files anywhere from any device. The organisational leader and managers must provide access of Share drive to the employees so that they can access important files and documents for working efficiently. This is also another mode of enhancing communication and cooperation at the workplace where the employees at different departments of LTR can interact and serve the customers with high quality housing services and other facilities.

Implementing telephones

The use of telephonic conversation is important strategy through which the organisational leader and managers can communicate with the employees directly and share the data and information for further operational activities. The finance manager and facility management team must implement the telephonic system in each department, so that the staff members can call others and share the information and existing issues successfully through open communication. Additionally, the employees can directly call the managers and staff members across different locations of LTR across Luton. Open discussion and collaborative working practice are hereby possible through telephonic conversation. On the other hand, the staff members in the customer’s service department at LTR are also able to communicate with the customers over telephone and resolve their queries successfully and this practice leads to reducing waiting time and maximising the efficacy of the organisational representative of LTR to ensure better customer’s services.

Implementing Skype

Skype is considered as a cost effective strategy to enhance internal communication, and it ensures instant messaging and flexible software to be utilised for developing workplace communication and cooperation. The management team of LTR can contact the employees through video conference and share the important information and data for better performance and productivity. Hence, the strategy of using Skype would be beneficial for LTR to maximise communication and cooperation at the workplace.

Project planning

Scope management

The scope management in the project are essential to identify the future scope of the project through analysing the input and output of the project planning. The input and output analysis will be conducted for analysing the scope of the project.

Value proposition

The values of the project are such as,

Relevancy can be maintained through this project, where the staff members in customer service department can interact with other departmental staff members for service the clients with high quality housing and other facilities.

Quantified value is possible to be created through delivering the best quality housing services to the customers.

Differentiation is another value proposition of the project, where the management team can enhance communication and serve the clients differently through ICT and ERP system that also provides a scope to gain high competitive advantage.

Execution is another value, where the experienced staff can utilise latest communicate modes and fulfil the project successfully for maximising their performance at LTR.

Control and consistency are other values, where the organisation LTR is successful to maintain financial stability for further investment in this project and thus the project planning can be implemented in a systematic way through adequate capital investment.

Conclusion

LTR is efficient to handle different departments in the workplace to deliver the best quality housings facilities to the customers for creating their values. The departments finance, customer service, operations and facilities management are working collaboratively through partnership working practice which further helps the leader of LTR to implement the alternative strategy of communication, rather than using only email. As per the recommended strategic planning, the alternative ways are such as implementing ERP, developing ICT framework, using Share drive, implementing telephones at the workplace of each departments and Implementing Skype. The project planning is effective to follow the activities and arrange capital fund for investing in technological framework, so that the organisation LTR would be able to manage their activities and secure future sustainable development through maximising performance.

The value proposition, scope management and risk registers are also developed which indicates that the project is necessary to be handled efficiently, by the team members and senior management team at LTR so that the leader can lead the staff towards achieving the future mission of the institution. Through creating good corporate culture with equality and diversity, resect and integrity as well as enhancing collaborative working practice and empowering the staff in the project planning would be the east strategies for LTR to implement the project activities and meet the objective of the project that is enhancing communication through alternative strategy. Hence, the project planning would be beneficial for LTR to adopt new strategies for enhancing communication among the employees through technological innovation where they would be efficient to serve the customers by teamwork.

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Reference List

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