Analysis of IT Management Issues and Solutions for Cut Short Salon

This report examines the IT management issues faced by Cut Short Salon, a popular hair dressing chain. The assignment identifies challenges such as long customer wait times and proposes solutions. The report analyzes Cut Short's business operations, highlighting the need for improved customer service and efficiency. Key recommendations include implementing pre-booking systems, incorporating CRM and SCM software, and providing staff training to enhance client handling. The report suggests that these measures can significantly improve the salon's business operations and service offerings. The report also provides suggestions for improving the overall business operations and service offerings, focusing on staff training and the implementation of decision support systems. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of effective IT management in optimizing organizational resources and ensuring efficient operations. Desklib is a platform providing students with access to this assignment and other study resources.

Running head: IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
IT Management Issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

1
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Table of Contents
Question 1....................................................................................................................2
Introduction...............................................................................................................2
Discussion.................................................................................................................2
Cut Short’s Business Operations Outline..............................................................2
Three Recommendations to Cut Short Salon.......................................................5
Conclusion................................................................................................................6
Question 2....................................................................................................................8
Two Relevant Suggestions to improve Business Operations and Service Offering
for Salon Cut Short....................................................................................................8
References.................................................................................................................10

2
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Question 1
Introduction
A proper management of information technology is stated as a core process
that helps in overseeing any issue that is being linked to any operation or resource of
technology in a business or organization. One of the most popular and budgetary
hair dressing chain is Cut Short that has become extremely significant for customers
(Schwalbe, 2015). Although they have received report from the clients that it is being
observed that each customer has to wait up in queue for fifteen minutes before he or
she gets opportunity to check in, Cut Short will be implementing an information
system that would have the core capability of eradicating this highlighted issue. This
report would be providing proper analysis of this new proposed information system
with three recommendations to Cut Short.
Discussion
Cut Short’s Business Operations Outline
Business operations in any organization eventually refer to all types of
activities, which are occurring within a business to keep it running and even earning
resources and hence providing major advantages to the business (Sun & Jeyaraj,
2013). Efficient staffing can also be determined after inclusion of these types of
business processes and operations for ensuring that only talented and accurate
individuals are eventually working within the organization. One of the major and
budgetary chain of hair dressing is Cut Short and had been subsequently providing
services to the clients for numerous years and thus have obtained several significant
competitive benefits within business.

3
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
The organizational clients are quite satisfied with Cut Short’s hair dressing
services, which Cut Short is eventually providing to the customers (Vaishnavi &
Kuechler, 2015). These types of services have helped them in gaining major
popularity in short span of time. In spite of these benefits, in recent days, Cut Short
has received a report from their clients, which refers to the fact that every customers
has to wait up to fifteen minutes on an average before getting scope to check in.
Moreover, the scenario is same for getting seats or requesting preferred hair
dressing style. This leads to losing of valuable time of clients as all the branches of
Cut Short makes queue for clients every day (Madon & Krishna, 2018). Thus, these
clients have to wait every day for getting their preferred services, hence leading to
high customer dissatisfaction and affecting Cut Short business in a negative aspect.
Existing business operation is thus needed to be organized so that they can easily
manage their customers in an efficient manner and making a systematic as well as
organized system.
The management of Cut Short has decided to focus on few important factors
so that they are able to improve their entire profitability. It is highly expected that
existing business processes or operations can turn in a better manner after
consideration of all the proposed factors (Marinagi, Trivellas & Sakas, 2014). The
most significant factors, which the management of Cut Short has taken the decision
to include in their proposed system are provided below:
a) Pre Booking of Salon Appointments: This is the major and one of the
most important and significant factors that Cut Short has decided to include in their
business. Pre booking of salon appointments through their official web site would be
given top most priority as this is highly expected to eventually reduce customers’
rush to a high level (Strohmeier, 2013). The customers will not have to form a queue

4
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
and also will not have to wait for average of fifteen minutes for their chance after
visiting any branch of Cut Short chain of hair dressing. Moreover, after inclusion of
pre booking facility of appointments, all customers would have the ability to choose
their respective hair dressing services such as re styling of hair, blow waving hair ad
even hair trimming (Luftman, Lyytinen & Zvi, 2017). Furthermore, the customers will
also be having significant facility to choose their own date and time regarding
appointment. This would ensure that time flexibility of customers is kept on highest
priority.
b) Easier and Simpler Modes of Payment: This is the next noteworthy and
important factor, which is required to be eventually considered within the business
operation of Cut Short. When these pre booking of salon appointments is completed,
any customer can make his or her payment for their pre booked services of hair
dressing (Tayeh, Al-Jarrah & Tarhini, 2015). Several significant gateways of payment
like credit card and PayPal are present for these customers and hence reducing
issues and complexities related to transactions after visiting the salon. For the
presence of such distinctive and effective online transaction, it is much easy for the
organizational customers to make their respective payments by not facing any issue
(Groen et al., 2015). Furthermore, the bookings of those clients, who all have not
made payments 24 hours before the pre booked appointments, would be cancelled
and thus there should be a repetition in the entire process.
c) Specialized Discount on Online Salon Appointments: The next
important factor, which is needed to be included in this phenomenon is providing
specialized discounts on the online salon appointments (Thomas, 2015). As the
organizational management is encouraging pre booking appointments, they have
also decided to a give a 10% discount on every online booked appointment. The

5
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
main reason for this inclusion of discount would be that it would attract the new as
well as existing clients and hence profit will be increased.
d) Imposing Surcharge on Customers being late: The fourth important and
noteworthy aspect that refers to the fact they would be imposing high surcharge on
those customers, who are late in their appointment time. These clients, not only be
kept waiting, but also would have to pay a certain penalty amount for being late and
also affecting other appointments (Mao, Liu, Zhang & Deng, 2016). This particular
feature will be eventually maintained within the business since they have decided to
maintain business time and thus ensuring organized and systematic work.
e) Purchasing Option for Hair Products: This is yet another important and
significant factor that the management of Cut Short has decided to implement in the
new proposed system. This specific system will also enable all customers to
effectively order as well as purchase the hair products through their official web site
(Pierce, Snow & McAfee, 2015). Although, the clients can book the products online,
it is not mandatory to pay them online. They can pay the amount while picking up of
these products.
Three Recommendations to Cut Short Salon
The management of information technology ensures that organization is
getting business value. In Cut Short, the business operations are extremely effective,
however these could even be improvised after consideration of three
recommendations, which are provided below:
a) Inclusion of Staff for Client Handling: The most important and significant
recommendation to Cut Short salon is inclusion of organizational staff and
employees to handle the clients (Liu & Wang, 2014). As, being a salon they have to

6
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
deal with customers, it is quite important for them to train their employees in such a
manner that all of them have capabilities of client handling. Employee training and
employee screening are required for this particular purpose.
b) Inclusion of CRM: Customer relationship management software
implementation is the next important and noteworthy recommendation for this salon
of Cut Short. The CRM software will be extremely helpful for the business as
customers’ data management would be much easier. Moreover, customer
relationship management software stores data in one location and allowing the
customers to be more productive and efficient (Peng, Heim & Mallick, 2014). With
the presence of this particular software, up gradation of database would be much
easier and thus tracking recent state of the bookings of customers would be
effective. Due to the up gradation of database, customer’s waiting time would be
reduced and the management would be able to maintain the software effectively.
c) Inclusion of SCM: The third important and significant recommendation that
would be appropriate for this salon of Cut Short is inclusion of SCM or supply chain
management software (Mishra, Modi & Animesh, 2013). The entire organizational
expenses and supply chain with vendors and customers are checked for this specific
salon so that they are able to eradicate the extra expenses and costs incurred within
the business. Moreover, issues like late in shipments or logistic errors would be
reduced and communication will be improvised.
Conclusion
Hence, conclusion could be easily drawn that IT management issue is
required to be eradicated on top priority in each and every organization for ensuring
that all the organizational and technological resource is being utilized by

7
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
organizational members in an efficient manner and not for wrong purposes.
Moreover, such resources should also be managed effectively after checking
requirements and priorities. Every technological resource also involves major
tangible investments like hardware, software, networks or data and any other facility
of data centre. Moreover, organizational staff and employees are also termed as
tangible resources as they are responsible for maintaining other resources. This
above report has properly described about Cut Short salon with subsequent
business operations and suitable recommendations.

8
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Question 2
Two Relevant Suggestions to improve Business Operations and Service
Offering for Salon Cut Short
The most suitable and effective suggestions to Cut Short for improvement of
their business service offerings are provided below:
a) Providing Periodical Training to Staff: The first important and significant
suggestion to Cut Short salon for improvement of their business service offerings is
to provide periodical and timely training to each and every staff or employee of Cut
Short. Since, this salon has to deal with clients, the staff should be trained properly
and accurately by professionals so that these staff comprise of the respective
knowledge of handling every client efficiently and effectively (Chuang, Liao & Lin,
2013). Furthermore, this handling of client is one of the major sector within any
specific business since it is responsible for incrementing efficiency or efficacy of
business to higher level. Moreover, the various business processes and operations
in Cut Short salon will be highly enhanced and the business plans can include one
section, which would be solely dedicated to business related decisions and activities.
It is required for understanding business processes, systems, business
equipment and people so that these are able to make business work (Liu & Wang,
2014). The most significant components of these business operations involve
industry, size and type of business and also for making entire business functional as
well as effective. The business processes comprise of a significant impact on both
productivity and efficiency of customers. Training of employees is one of the most
basic programs that could be quite helpful for staff as they can learn and re establish
their knowledge and skills to eventually improve the current role performances

9
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
(Thomas, 2015). Moreover, Cut Short would also be able to improvise the employee
performance and growth and thus overall business operations would be enhanced.
b) Including Decision Support Systems: This is the second important
suggestion that is required to be implemented to improvise business operations in
the salon of Cut Short would be decision support systems. Since, this particular
chain of hair dressing, Cut Short have to effectively control all types and forms of
customer information like booking within one database (Strohmeier, 2013). The IT
management also entails maximum business management functions like change
management, controlling, budgeting, better organization as well as staffing, which
are extremely and absolutely unique to IT and help in better software designing.
The various procedures, which are executed manually, can be efficiently
executed through software implementation and hence enhancing and improving
business operations in a better manner. With the successful deployment of decision
support system, the management of Cut Short would have the ability to organize
customers’ data and then take accurate decisions related to business (Madon &
Krishna, 2018). Due to effectiveness of DSS, the semi structured or unstructured
data would also be managed and thus making the organizational database faster in
comparison to other information systems.

10
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
References
Chuang, S. H., Liao, C., & Lin, S. (2013). Determinants of knowledge management
with information technology support impact on firm performance. Information
Technology and Management, 14(3), 217-230.
Groen, W. G., Kuijpers, W., Oldenburg, H. S., Wouters, M. W., Aaronson, N. K., &
van Harten, W. H. (2015). Empowerment of cancer survivors through
information technology: an integrative review. Journal of medical Internet
research, 17(11), e270.
Liu, S., & Wang, L. (2014). Understanding the impact of risks on performance in
internal and outsourced information technology projects: The role of strategic
importance. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), 1494-1510.
Luftman, J., Lyytinen, K., & Zvi, T. B. (2017). Enhancing the measurement of
information technology (IT) business alignment and its influence on company
performance. Journal of Information Technology, 32(1), 26-46.
Madon, S., & Krishna, S. (2018). The Digital Challenge: Information Technology in
the Development Context: Information Technology in the Development
Context. Routledge.
Mao, H., Liu, S., Zhang, J., & Deng, Z. (2016). Information technology resource,
knowledge management capability, and competitive advantage: The
moderating role of resource commitment. International Journal of Information
Management, 36(6), 1062-1074.

11
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Marinagi, C., Trivellas, P., & Sakas, D. P. (2014). The impact of information
technology on the development of supply chain competitive
advantage. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 147, 586-591.
Mishra, S., Modi, S. B., & Animesh, A. (2013). The relationship between information
technology capability, inventory efficiency, and shareholder wealth: A firm-
level empirical analysis. Journal of Operations Management, 31(6), 298-312.
Peng, D. X., Heim, G. R., & Mallick, D. N. (2014). Collaborative product
development: The effect of project complexity on the use of information
technology tools and new product development practices. Production and
Operations Management, 23(8), 1421-1438.
Pierce, L., Snow, D. C., & McAfee, A. (2015). Cleaning house: The impact of
information technology monitoring on employee theft and
productivity. Management Science, 61(10), 2299-2319.
Schwalbe, K. (2015). Information technology project management. Cengage
Learning.
Strohmeier, S. (2013). Employee relationship management—Realizing competitive
advantage through information technology?. Human Resource Management
Review, 23(1), 93-104.
Sun, Y., & Jeyaraj, A. (2013). Information technology adoption and continuance: A
longitudinal study of individuals’ behavioral intentions. Information &
Management, 50(7), 457-465.
Tayeh, M., Al-Jarrah, I. M., & Tarhini, A. (2015). Accounting vs. market-based
measures of firm performance related to information technology

12
IT MANAGEMENT ISSUES
investments. International Review of Social Sciences and Humanities, 9(1),
129-145.
Thomas, S. J. (2015). Exploring strategies for retaining information technology
professionals: A case study.
Vaishnavi, V. K., & Kuechler, W. (2015). Design science research methods and
patterns: innovating information and communication technology. Crc Press.