Riordan

Response to Task A: Harrison Keyes, Inc. has the opportunity to increase profits and broaden its customer base through its e-publishing efforts.

Generic Benchmarking--The purpose of generic benchmarking is to identify potential solutions to the problem statements defined in Task A. You will do this by looking at how companies in other industries have dealt with similar issues.

Topic A: Best Practices for Project Tracking and Status Reporting

Response to Topic A:

HarperCollins

An e-book is an online replication of the printed version. The market for e-books appears to be growing at a steady rate. As stated by David Steinberger, president of HarperCollins says, Harper's e-book imprint, has, "clear and significant sales growth every month over a broad range of titles. The trend is clear and it has been very encouraging. We feel confident that we are seeing the beginnings of a potentially big market." Headquartered in New York, the company employs 2,600 in publishing groups located across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Harper Collins IT department, headed by Spillman, wanted to implement a Web Content Management solution system. Spillman first determined the objectives it wished to meet by implementing a CMS.

Harrison Keyes should determine the objectives it would like to achieve by entering the e-book market. In doing so Harrison Keyes should be very clear, as these is a critical step in planning a project. In addition Harrison should develop a realist budget for the cost of implementing this project. If a budget is not assessed accurately the project could fall short of its objectives. Another strategy HarperCollins's IT department utilized was to attack the project in phases; this allowed the project team to digest the projects and its many tasks into small bits instead big chunks. This in turn allowed the team to stay focus in achieving milestones. Harrison Keyes may wish to roll out the project into two or three phases in order to keep its team on track. By putting in place some of these suggestions Harrison Keyes my find success with its efforts in planning to enter the e-books market.