2 - create a list of milestones for Wilmont-DroneTech case study

Project Description

Wilmonts is a top-ranked US retail pharmacy company based in St. Louis, MO with more than 8,000 stores nationwide and in all 50 states, and employing more than 244,000 people overall. The company has engaged in a number of innovative business practices, and now they are once again secretly considering breaking ground with an even newer concept delivering prescriptions and drugstore items by flying drone. The concept isnt new a small firm named DroneTech in San Francisco announced the approach in March, and they are looking to develop a relationship with drugstores nationwide to launch the concept for real. Wilmonts may be the big break they are looking for! The Operations Vice President (George Cranston) of Wilmonts wants to develop a pilot project to get something moving and see how this works. George will provide the funds and will oversee all aspects of this initiative. You are the Project Manager on Wilmonts business operations side who will manage the project generally for Mr. Cranston. Mr. Cranston has made an agreement with DroneTech CEO and founder Jordan Kempler to prototype this project in the San Francisco area, which is the home location of the DroneTech organization where it developed the system. DroneTech will customize its systems, interfaces and business process to conform to project requirements from Wilmonts. Mary Pearson is the Project Manager for Wilmonts internal IT department, and she has been assigned by CIO, James Connor, to lead the information systems development that will be needed to support the initiative. Phillip Greenberg is the project manager at DroneTech who will work with you. Generally, from the Operations perspective, the project will likely need to accomplish the following: Develop a Wilmonts online order entry process that will allow customers in the San Francisco area to register their willingness to have a drone deliver their orders by means of online entry or smartphone entry. There will be significant restrictions on the approval of customers for this service, so there will need to be a segment of the process to allow Wilmonts management to approve the customer, send a confirmation to the customer, etc. Page 2 of 4 Create reports for Wilmonts management to provide information on sales, customer reactions and key performance indicators that senior management will define for you. Create communications for customers electronically through email, online and through mobile alerts as the customer requests. DroneTech will handle piloting the drones and delivery of the products. They already have processes that handle order entry, delivery confirmation and a mobile app, but they need to be customized for Wilmonts so that customers dont see these as two separate companies. Eileen Seymour is the point of contact on the information systems side with DroneTech and will be overseeing the team on their side. A price for this system customization is not yet determined and the development of this proposal will be a part of your project plan. You will need to build in the contract negotiations between Wilmonts and DroneTech as you develop the project plan as well. Members of the legal teams of both organizations will assist you with this. Ensure that the relationship between DroneTech and Wilmonts does not compromise the security of Wilmonts business information, the customers privacy and the proprietary information about how Wilmonts will use the drones for delivery. You will work with Wilmonts Information Security Management Team to accomplish this, and William Scott is the project lead on that team for this project. You will need to identify basic business process requirements and then determine your team members from the list of people given in this document as you move toward final project planning. It has been determined that only four (4) Wilmonts pharmacies will participate in the prototype delivery system. These are in a close geographic area to one another, and they are in a non-city environment consisting mainly of suburban homes and small businesses. Customers in apartment buildings will not be permitted in the prototype due to delivery issues. You will need to ensure that the four participating pharmacies are fully ready to engage in this prototype by the time for first flight, and the Page 3 of 4 drone deliveries need to be seamless enhancements to Wilmonts already top-quality delivery processes for customers. The IT folks have determined that no additional IT infrastructure will be required for this project from Wilmonts, as all of that specialized technology is only on the DroneTech side, and they will be including it in their proposal and a separate project plan that they will give to you as a part of their contract. Wilmonts can accommodate operating this prototype system within their existing infrastructure that handles customer orders, but those processes need to be enhanced in order to provide this delivery option and all the management processes that must accompany them. Wilmonts has allocated a maximum of $1,750,000 for this prototype project. The two companies agreed that they would like to begin the project on next January 5, and that their first customer delivery flight should take place no later than November 30 to avoid harsh weather in the San Francisco area.