Specification topic: Network analysis Case Study: Shelley's Boutique Shelley Hunter graduated from university, having completed a Masters Degree in Fashion Design, ten years ago. Her career goal was to set up and run her own fashion boutique. After a few years of working for small fashion houses, she managed to produce enough designs and borrow the money needed from her parents to set up her first shop in Manchester. Shelley's boutique proved very successful and over the last five years her business has grown to 15 boutiques across Manchester and the North West. Shelley does however, have little business acumen and as a result has no real understanding of some areas of business, particularly marketing. Recently her designs have been attracting attention from various fashion magazines, and there has been requests for Shelley to open up further shops in other areas of the country, as Shelley does not have a website. After careful consideration and discussion with her bank manager, who has expressed mild reservations about the firm's cash flow position, Shelley has decided to expand the number of stores she has. Shelley proposed that she should initially starther expansion in London because of the potential market and the fact that a vast number of enquiries about her business had recently come from that area. The intention was to open one store initially before looking at further growth. Shelley, however, also decided that she would like to operate a website, to enable more people to accessher designs. Shewashowever, concemed that she would havevery little experience in setting up an effective website. Her other major concern with this decision, was that she felt she would have to expand her designs and the number of garments made, to ensure orders could be met instantly. High levels of customer service would bevital if the website was to be | successful and therefore sheknew she would have to ensure that customers did not have to wait long periods of time for deliveries. The business therefore, set the target to fulfil an orderwithin one week. Thiswould require a sophisticated website, supported bya 24 hour customer helpline, together with an experienced team of 30 employees who would not only manage the website orders, but also produce the products. Shelley believed that customers wanted more than just access to her products. She believed that, "If they could provide high levels of quality in the designs of the products, then people would be prepared to pay more rather than go to competitors." Shelley's objective was to get the new outlet and website up and running before the start of the crucial summer season, when market research suggested that customers spend most money on clothing. Shelley therefore set a deadline of 31 weeks to complete this project. Shelley, despite her limited business experience, produced a network diagram to show the various tasks and their proposed length of completion (see appendix A and B). Shelley's proposal however, had raised some concerns from her fellow management team. The marketing director felt that it was too optimistic that thisventure could be operational inless than 31 weeks time. He felt that a period of seven weeks to design and test the new website (task H) would bevery difficult to achieve and would take 10weeks, whilst the advertising campaign (task J) would be likely to take an extra two weeks to get right. Appendix A Activity Length Activity Length Task A- Conduct market research 4 Task F-Train staff 5 Task B-Obtain premises 12 Task G- Undertake test marketing Task C-Recruit staff 8 Task H- Design and test website Task D-Initialise marketing plan 6 Task I -Launch website Task E-Obtain stock TaskJ - Undertake local and national advertising campaignAppendix B 4 2 A 13 D 4 6 0 B 12 E 19 G 3 5 24 31 0 6 12 19 8 12 7 5 24 7 31 C F 3 8 8 H 4 15 7 14 7 21 Critical path = B, E, G, J Exam-style questions 1. Analyse the consequences of the design and testing of the website (task H) taking 10 weeks and the advertising campaign (task J) taking an extra two weeks (12 marks) 2. Evaluate the value of using critical path analysis to Shelley (20 marks)