Customer Support, Inc. Case Study

Customer Support, Inc. (CSUP) is a large corporation with international clients that provides customer support related to their bank, credit card, or other financial accounts of their clients. It has over 5,000 full-time employees across the United States.

Its HR department recently completed a skills gap analysis for its workforce using resumes, employee feedback, managerial feedback, industry data, and analysis of internal data related to task completion. It identified skills gaps related to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, and its new CRM software that needed to be improved across the organization. HR also projects a 10-15% productivity improvement across its workforce by providing these skills across its workforce.

The IT department has been assigned with the project of providing access to a third-party vendors training materials to all of its employees. The courses taken should be tracked within each employees HR information which uses a separate HR software package. Lastly, each employee will have a set of courses linked to their annual performance assessment which is tracked using a same HR software. Employees will only get their full bonus if they complete the courses their managers assign to them and link to their performance assessment.

You can assume that the project will take 5 months with an initial cost estimate of $150,000.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Project management

Requirements definition

Vendor and course identification

Identification of courses needed based on skills gap analysis

Identification of potential vendors

Creation of vendor evaluation process and metrics

Evaluation of vendors including integration requirements

Negotiation with selected vendors

Finalization of course and vendor selection

HR Software integration

Identification of integration information vendors need

Integration of course assignments into employees profile

Integration of course tracking into employee profile

Integration of annual review with course assignments and course tracking

Integration of course assignment and tracking views for employees and managers

Integration of reports for managers on courses assigned, courses taken, and courses assigned that havent been taken

Testing

Training, rollout, and support

Task List

Many would argue that project managements biggest impacts occur at the beginning of a project and while managing the cost of a project. The project in your case study has been approved by the stakeholders; you are now tasked with creating a project scope and cost estimate. You may want to review the Case Study, work breakdown structure (WBS), and the task list you developed for the Week 1 assignment as you complete this assignment.

Part A:

Write a 1- to 2-page project scope using your case study. It should list stakeholders, project goals, background on the project, cost estimate, and expected time to completion. Include the cost estimate and your assumptions captured while preparing the cost estimate for Part B of the assignment. You can assume that the project will take 5 months, with an initial cost estimate of $150,000. Use APA format and cite at least 2 sources to support your rationale.

Part B:

Create a 1-page monthly cost estimate for this project using spreadsheet software. The spreadsheet sheet should contain an appropriate subset of the WBS tasks in the case study and the task list you created in the Week 1 assignment. Document your assumptions in preparing the cost estimate. Think about how the methodology you selected in Week 1 influenced the cost estimate. Assume a labor rate of $100 per hour for the project manager and $60 per hour for other project team members. Additionally, assume a labor rate of $100 per hour for any outsourced work. Labor costs for users are not included, and there are no additional hardware costs. The total estimate should be $150,000 and will not include the cost of acquiring the learning materials from the vendor. You may use the Cost Estimate Template as a starting point, but expand the template to support the WBS, task list, and methodology you selected for the Week 1 assignment.