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Century
Homes
3 . Opportunity / Problem definition and Objectives
Gerry McCaughey believes that “to be successful
we need to be efficient in absolutely everything. We
also have to be marketable. No point in being the first
if not the second. Our IT business strategy is key to
supporting these two things”. The company decided
to establish an eBusiness sales and service channel
(extranet) for customers and suppliers together with
an interactive web-based, information resource (www.century.ie).
An intranet link across the various sites would also
be established. An accounting system upgrade would enable
the project to proceed while internal efficiency would
be enhanced by the development of an integrated ordering
and scheduling system.
Why the need to change? A review of their administration
and project management processes showed that they were
wide open to inefficiency, errors and time delays. The
current ordering and scheduling process is outlined
in Fig 3.1
With regards the company web site, the original Century
Homes web site was a basic brochure style site with
little customer interaction or feedback potential. A
more dynamic site was needed, which would present a
better, more professional image of where Century Homes
saw itself in the marketplace as well as providing more
information about the company, its products and services.
The site would also facilitate client services such
as order placement, payment and query facilities as
well as a shop allowing then to sell building materials,
house plans and Century Homes merchandise.
In particular, they wanted to target the one off homes
market. As Gerry explained, “we are not yet engaged
in this market, mainly because it takes a lot of resources
in our design and engineering department to make a one
off house”. By establishing an online database
of all the individual unit drawings they have produced,
they hope to encourage use of these plans for new units,
hence eliminating the initial design stage.
4 . Decision
Century Homes is a knowledge-based company, who believes
that “it is the information that we process that
makes us the successful company that we are”. Gerry
sees “In-house efficiency as a function of how
much you can handle the
information and knowledge that you have”; a message
he believes is shared by all the people who work for
him. As he explained, “getting something down on
to the factory floor, it’s how we process the engineering
information through the CAD systems and move the information
around the company that determines how efficient and
hence how competitive we are”.
In April 2000 the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Acceleration
Fund provided the financial resources to develop the
eBusiness solution explained below.
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