Analysis

 
    Lawns Unlimited is a family owned and operated business providing complete landscape and snow plowing services to its residential and commercial clients. They use only the newest and most efficient  machinery as well as power equipment. Lawns Unlimited also provides complete snow removal and deicing services throughout the winter season. The company goal is to ensure complete satisfaction to its customers while providing their services at reasonable costs.  The MIS manager in this company is Frank D. Matrisciano. He is the CEO of Lawns Unlimited and has high school diploma.

Collaboration

We believe that our team uses both cooperation and collaboration for our project.  Cooperation is a group of people working together, all doing essentially the same type of work, to accomplish a job. For a group to function everyone has to do things and bring them together so everything gets done.  We have not done a lot of work to our project yet however from what we have started it has been very successful.  Our first task was to pick a company.  From there we had to start our blog and everyone had to input the proper information such as emails.  Next thing we had to do was to contact the owner to ask questions about how he runs his company. From there  one person got the information, the next organized the information into Microsoft Word, and so forth.  Without cooperation of the whole group we could not have been as successful when deriving the information.  Collaboration is as a group of people working together to achieve a common goal via a process of feedback and iteration.  We do this by having google pages which allows all of us to put our input information in.  After we put the information in we all read over each others answers to make sure that they are logical and correct.  This allows our group to be able to give each other feedback on each question to make sure that we are accurate with our answers.  Having collaboration within the group allows each member to contribute so we get done quickly and accurately.

   
     Companies create teams so work can get completed more effectively and efficiently. When a group of people work as a team, they are able to put their ideas together and find the best way to get things done.  The four primary purposes of collaboration are: Become informed, Make decisions, Solve problems, Manage projects. These primary purposes apply to our team because we make sure each team member understands what the task is and that we are all on the same page.  If one team member is left behind confused on something the project will not be able to move forward.  Together we make decisions, such as picking our company, and help solve any problems we may come across along the way.  We manage our project by going through the starting phase, planning phase, doing phase, and finalizing phase together.

Some Synchronous collaboration tools our team will use would be Microsoft Office applications such as Word, and Excel. Also we use text chat and screen sharing tools. For our teams Asynchronous tools we use E-mail, and Screen sharing as well so we could each work on the project at individual times. Furthermore for our team the Good collaboration tool set is best for us because we will have access to tools such as google drive etc.
 

Information Silos

      When data is not shared throughout all departments of a company it is known as an information Silos.  Lawns Unlimited does have information silos in process. Some information they will store in Excel, some in Microsoft Word, some is hand written. For example, client addresses / information is stored in excel while contracts are written up in Word. Other records are also handwritten and stored in files. We have silos because lawns Unlimited does not integrate the excel information with the handwritten information. In Lawns Unlimited, we work with another company, TruGreen, for our chemical needs. When a customer requests a chemical treatment, we notify TruGreen and they contact the customer to set up an appointment. When it comes to billing, Lawns Unlimited is the middleman. TruGreen sends us the bill, and we deliver it to the customer. 

                             Information System Components

Software

   Within the company that we will be choosing to analyze the tools that are used is Microsoft word, excel, and quick books. With using all of these tools, it has helped Lawns Unlimited organizes its business financially. Lawns Unlimited is able to control and manage its customers as well as employees. With all of these tools coming into play it will ensure customer satisfaction.
 

 Hardware

Hardware are all the physical tools used for information systems. Some of the Hardware used by Lawns unlimited such as computer, laptops, cellphones, filing cabinets, and printers. We use the computer to store our data, and then print an invoices, or sales receipt that may be needed to give to the customer. The filing cabinets are used to successfully organize any data that is written. 

Data

   Data is important for Lawns Unlimited because we need to collect customer information, store the data from payment methods, keep track of scheduling, and inventory operations. We need to make 

sure we are organized in all aspects of this data so operations throughout the week run smoothly. Our primary source of recording our data is excel but as we previous discussed this creates information silos.

Procedures

 

            For the different daily and weekly operations that Lawns Unlimited has there are procedures that must be adhered to. For example Inventory Management where first we purchase inventory then we must record it in our inventory Stock so it can be routinely checked to see what we are running low on or if any tools are broken and outdated. Another procedure that must followed is our Scheduling Jobs procedure. When Lawns Unlimited receives a customer's request the employee must create a weekly table and add the dates and times of customer’s request and what they want specifically whether it be gardening, planting, trimming and things of that nature.
 

People

         The Lawns unlimited employees are an essential part to the success of the company. They handle the actual landscaping and lawn service labor that makes the customers homes look beautiful. However they also are a vital part of what makes the daily operations such as scheduling jobs and inventory management successful. Following the procedures and actually using the tools they are always on top of how we can better manage the inventory. Also since everyone travels to the sites to work on the jobs the employees make sure they keep track in excel of the jobs that are scheduled and completed so everything works efficiently. Furthermore Lawns Unlimited employees keep a good relationship with new and longtime loyal customers which allows the company maintain its success around Morris County.   

 

Social Media 

 

      Lawns Unlimited uses a variety of social media providers such as Instagram and Facebook. These social media sites allow Lawns Unlimited to advertise to its existing and new customers the types of services that we provide. This gives the customer a visual idea of how their properties can potentially look and be maintained. Customers enjoy viewing the different types of service. We currently don’t sponsor any social media providers but would like to in the near future. We feel by doing this it will allow Lawns Unlimited to expand even more with its clientele.

    The activity that we are analyzing is operations and how Lawns Unlimited proceeds to satisfy their customers. We ensure to keep our goal which is customer satisfaction keeping up with our services and customer needs. Social media can help support our customer wants and needs by revealing photos of our recently completed jobs. This allows the customer to see how their property or homes can potentially look. This can help increase our company's sales as a whole by being more profitable. By being able to go back to view our recently completed jobs, this allows Lawns Unlimited to analyze and improve the qualities and details. By doing so this can increase our positive customer feedback.

     Social Capital is the investment in social relations with expectation of returns in the marketplace. What this means is a company uses its presence on social media with previous customers as well as future customers to build its brand in hopes of gaining profit. The value that social capital adds is information, influence, social credentials, and personal reinforcement. Value of information is opportunities, alternative, informs about problems, and gives data that is needed by business professionals. A second relationship is the possibility is to influence employers and organizational member that make decisions. Third relationship is social credentials if people believe critical personnel stand with you they will be more likely to work with you. The final value relationship is reinforcement. A strong social network can reinforce professional identity, image, image, and position in an organization. We have a medium social capital due to the fact that we have a facebook page that connects strong with people in around morris county but it stops there. Outside of  morris county our social media relationships are not as strong.     

     No, there is no social media policy that is implemented for the employees.  All forms of social media are protected with the privacy setting.  Only followers can view the pages for Facebook and Instagram, this helps avoid any unfavorable reviews from random people that have never received a service.  If there is an issue where there an inappropriate reviews or comments, we would respond in a professionally matter based on what was said by the viewer..

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