MIS610 Advanced Professional Practice Report 3 Part A Sample
Assessment Task
In groups, write 2500 words industry report providing a technological solution to a specific issue outlined in industry brief provided in class.
Please refer to the Instructions for details on how to complete this task.
Context
Information technology and systems are central to every organisation and industry today.
Enterprises may develop products and/or services themselves or procure them, introducing technology as a product or a service is always a risky proposition that requires thorough investigation. All technological interventions have their own complexities and can have legal, ethical, operational and strategic implications on all stakeholders. The purpose of this group report is to engage you in creating a technological solution to an Industry partner in response to a specific issue.
Instructions
1. Group Formation
• Form teams of 3-4 members.
• The deadline for group registration is 11:45pm AEST Friday end of Module 3.2 (Week 6).
• To register your group, you are required to send your Learning Facilitator an email with “[MIS610] Group Registration” in the subject line. In the body of that email, please list the names and student ID numbers of all the members of your team.
• You are required to send the registration email to your facilitator before the registration deadline. After the registration deadline, those students who are not in a group will be allocated to a group by the Learning Facilitator.
2. Team Contract
Please read the attached MIS610_Assessment 3_Team Contract. Each team is required to complete their team contract as part of the Learning Activity for Module 3.2 (Week 6).
3. Industry Brief
• You will be given an Industry brief from an organisation. The brief will be introduced via announcements in Week 5 (Module 3.1) and additional resources will be added during the teaching period.
• Please read the industry brief carefully.
• You are required to work as a group (3-4 people) of consultants for this organisation/industry.
4. Present your findings and solution in an industry report
• The report should be of 2500 words.
• Analyse the situation and complete your research before you start writing the report.
• You may have to do a great deal of problem solving and diagnosis. This would also require you to make use of your creative, analytical, decision making, communication and interpersonal skills.
• You would also have to develop business insight around the case provided to you. What will matter at the end is your professional judgement as an IS/IT professional and how you tackle the problem that has been provided to you.
• Your report should not only analyse the situation, provide insights, but also provide findings and solutions to the client.
5. Structure of the report
Please structure the report as follows:
Title page
The report should include a title page with the subject code and name, assignment title, students’ name, students’ numbers and facilitator(s)’s name, time and day of the class
Executive summary
The report should begin with an Executive Summary (not included in word count).
Introduction (500 words)
The introduction will also serve as your statement of purpose for the report. This means that you will tell the reader what you are going to cover in your report. You will need to inform the reader of:
• Your area of research and its context
• The key concepts that you will be addressing
• What the reader can expect to find in the body of the report
Main Body (1400 words)
Respond to the specific requirements of the selected Industry brief. You will report your findings in this section.
Solutions (400 words)
Present the solutions to the Industry partner in this section including any limitations.
Conclusion (200 words)
Summarise the report and make any further recommendations.
References
Reference list in APA format (not included in word count).
Appendix
Team contract and status reports from weeks 7-10 (not included in word count).
6. Format and Layout of the Report
The report should use font Arial or Calibri 11 point, should be line spaced at 1.5 for ease of reading and page numbers on the bottom of each page. If diagrams or tables are used, due attention should be given to pagination to avoid loss of meaning and continuity by unnecessarily splitting information over two pages. Diagrams must carry the appropriate captioning.
7. Status Reports
As a group you are required to complete weekly status report to track the progress of the industry report. Please see attached MIS610_Assessment 3_Status Report Template.
8. You are strongly advised to read the rubric which is an evaluation guide with criteria for grading yourassignment. This will give you a clear picture of what a successful industry report looks like.
Solution
Introduction
Under Armour is one of the leading sports goods manufacturers and suppliers of athletic and casual apparel and footwear in the world, and this organisation originated in America. This company was founded in 1996 and is very young compared to global leaders such as Nike and Adidas. University Assignment Help, Yet, this company generated the sixth-highest revenue of athletic capital and footwear globally (Statista, 2023). In the year 2023, there has been significant uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment; the expected revenue of this company is intended to increase by 3% resulting in $5 .9 billion despite a decline in gross margin and supplies in destruction (Under Armour, 2023). However, this organisation has witnessed lower-than-expected inventory growth. Under Armour focuses on three priorities while operating the business, and these three priorities include driving global brand heat with a focus on the United States and delivering elevated designs and products with a focus on footwear, woman's fashion and sport style. The third priority of these companies is growing sales in the US while leveraging continuous growth in international platforms.
While retaining competitiveness, Armour considered introducing digital marketing and digital-assisted services to customers in terms of introducing the organisational applications. However, there are certain challenges this organisation faced while implementing the App, as customers faced challenges while successfully engaging with the App, and there was a gap in understanding customer needs as well as poor implementation of the App. In 2015, Under Armour acquired three apps, including MyFitnessPal, Edmundo and MapMyFitness however, at the beginning of 2020, this company let away two Apps, including MyFitnessPal and Endomondo (Hensel, 2020). The major reason behind letting go of these two apps is the poor selection of target customers that resulted in no changes in customer engagement with the parent company. There was no significant improvement in revenue. Considering the competitor's position in the digital and ecommerce market, interim of App based services and customer interaction, Under Armour, failed to reach the targeted customer base, which resulted in challenges of inventory pile-up and poor revenue (Monteros, 2023). Thus overall, it is evident that this organisation could have successfully transformed in marketing operations digitally. Under Armour depends on celebrity endorsement; however, to retain competitiveness, this brand must focus on digital transformation and branding strategy.
This report focuses on analysing the changes implemented in Under Armour in terms of IT and digital specification and the reason it failed. Thus it evaluated the challenges faced by Under Armour while implementing the changes and its result on the revenue and profitability of the brand. Considering the factors hindering its digital transformation strategy, this report includes a set of solutions that can be followed by the company to overcome the solution and retain profitability and competitiveness in the global market in terms of providing digital app-based services to customers as well as via expanding its marketing.
IT and digital transformational changes implemented in Under Armour
Under Armour considered its digitisation of business to retain in competition by introducing app-based selling and customer engagement services. In 2015, this organisation acquired three applications based services, and by 2022 of the three apps acquired was laid off. The major reason behind laying off the apps is poor targeting, as the apps targeted a slightly different set of users who need to be more similar to Under Armour for customers. In this context, computers like Nike and Pilton started to market their apps, which was not the case for Under Armour, as it used third-party applications (Hensel, 2020). Under Armour started its digitisation in operations by introducing investment in areas such as 3-D applications, virtual selling platforms, digital showrooms, digital assets and more (Ciment, 2021). Through the virtual selling platforms and retail showrooms, customers can select their shoe size and access their specified products from the company; however, due to poor targeting of customers, there was less revenue than expected by the introduction of application-based services.
Further, Under Armour only focused on introducing app-based services, whereas in the case of marketing, there was consideration of celebrity endorsement and marketing only, with significantly impaired customer engagement. In the year 2020 CEO of this company changed and focused on incorporating digitisation into the core operations of the company and not only focusing on the app-based specifications. The new digitise structure of the company and the redefining of the brand resulted in a significant pile up on inventory; however, the overall revenue was higher in the third quarter of 2023. This organisation has redefined its target customers to 16 to 20 years old at least previously, which was significantly higher age target customers (Fonrouge, 2022). Further, there has been the implementation of changes in terms of full-priced items rather than discounts; thus, there has been a significant requirement of changing inventory and operations in the organisation, which requires successful change management (Monteros, 2023). Including digital and 3-D changes in product and service specifications will require customers’ acceptance and monitoring of customer behaviour towards the changes.
Introduction of the virtual experience and different digital techniques to ensure customer engagement and multi-year transformation has allowed Under Armour to incorporate changes in organisational strategy, operations and financial disciplines. Team working is significant to influence the success of digital transformation if there are significant areas to be considered as a priority and ensure a continuous improvement in the digital services. The growth strategy and business transformation considered by Under Armour focused on five platforms which include consumer centricity, product engine, go-to-market and into-end planning (Under Armour, 2022). Further omni-challenge excellence is also practised by the company. Here consumer centricity signifies the activating purpose of empowering customers and having a deep understanding of customer needs for which data analytics and interpretation have been applied. The product engine signifies enhancing the functionality of the organisation's website and the platforms through which the services are provided. Go to the market focused on balancing the inventory and focusing on storytelling and promotion, into and planning focused on overall product creation and life-cycle management in terms of sustainability, logistics and financial forecasting. Omni channel excellence focuses on easily raising different channels for a better understanding of customer needs and bitter awareness among customers and improving performance and speedy digital experience to customers (Under Armour, 2022). The transformation incorporated in terms of digital experience under Armour focused on enhancing customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. However, in the case of incorporation of transformation, there are challenges of poor inventory management as well as more targeting of customer bases that failed previous digital marketing practices, such as paying off the apps considered by the company. These areas are still addressed to ensure the continuous success of the digital marketing plan implemented.
Challenges faced by Under Armour while going through a transformation
Considering the areas of marketing and promotion, under Armour focused on the incorporation of brand awareness as well as ensuring products and services that allow athletes to gain benefits. thus the area is considered Under Armour while offering services as well as inclusion of digital marketing practices, including sports marketing, media and retail presentation (Under Armour, 2023). However, the previous app-based practices failed to retain profitability, and the sole dependence on celebrity endorsement resulted in poor competitiveness against other competitors. In this context, the major challenges that have handed the performance of Under Armour to implement the transformation include the macroeconomic factors, as well as the poor management of organisational culture and leadership, practises that impact the change management practices (Hensel, 2020).
During change management or inclusion of digital transformation, leadership and change management plans and practices play a significant role in this context gap in organisational culture and gap in communication and skills of employees to implement the changes practically can lead to failure of the overall transformation, which was in case of under Armour. Poor leadership during digital transformation can manifest the problems of poor communication and gap in collaboration as well as poor customer centricity and poor forecasting that result in a lack of revenue (Fready et al., 2022). Poor change management integration is also an example of poor leadership during regional transformation, which was present in the case of Under Armour as it was sealed to implement the change properly, which resulted in the laying of two apps acquired by the company in 2015. While the inclusion of the changes under Armour had to consider out of investment and included a revolution in overall practises. Companies like Under Armour which is going through a rapid digital transformation, require leadership practises that can refocus the employees as well as other resources to ensure long-term investment, whereas, in the case of the initial period where the company started to digital transform, there was less focus on the application of the digital strategy as the three apps considered by the company focused on three different target customers who are not the core customers of the company (Hensel, 2020). This gap in targeting and planning while implementing the digital transformation through app-based services resulted in the seller. It becomes clear that there is a significant gap in leadership practices under Armour which needs to be solved. Organisational culture is associated with leadership that hinders the success of change management and transformation (Widianto et al., 2021). Poor organisational culture leads to dissatisfaction among staff and poor understanding of staff requirements and difficulties the staff faces. Thus in the case of Under Armour, it is evident that similar issues occurred, which resulted in the lesser efficiency of the workforce to implement the desired strategy that, resulted in the overall failure of the intended strategy for Under Armour.
Culture also plays a significant role in digital transformation and is an asset to change management as it drives the success and failure of the change effort. In case of poor management of organisational culture, individuals resist the change, and there is an overall failure of the change management (Mabasa & Flotman, 2022). With digital transformation, there was a need to focus on customer need assessment as well as forecasting, and inventory management, as well as making the process smooth for customers to adapt to the world change successfully to retain competitiveness against major computers. However, in the case of Under Armour, the app target was different than the core customer target of the brand, with signified for implementation of the digital marketing practices and the transformation, as well as more focus on the transformation and poor research regarding the target customer segment. The overall situation signifies the gap in culture as well as the gap in employee engagement and high employee assistance, for which the overall strategy was a failure. However, in the current situation, the leadership changes ensure growth in organisational profitability, and the digital transformation has been diversified in terms of both advertisement as well as service enhancement by ensuring customer centricity.
Solutions
Current limitation faced by Under Armour
Considering the IT and detail transformation changes implemented in Under Armour and the challenges faced by Under Armour, it becomes evident that the current limitations lie within four identification of customer needs and the need to make customers ever of the changes in digital purchase practises. This organisation also needs to focus on its promotion in advertising as it has majorly focused on celebrity endorsement. While introducing online applications for accessing products and services, it avoided its core customer base and core business operations, which were to sell sports apparel and shoes (Hensel, 2020). This limitation lies within four designs of digital marketing practices and laser focus on customer needs and making the overall purchase journey for customers. Based on the complication in the application as well as failure to compete with other brands, signify poor leadership and change management in organisations that impair the successful inclusion of innovation and creativity in the services. Thus the solutions are needed to be based on the privatisation of change management, enhancing staff efficiency to empower customers to understand the change, implementing customer targeting and inclusion of market specifications in the promotion advertisement and operational services.
Strategies to overcome the limitation
Prioritising change management
Considering the challenges faced by Under Armour, it becomes evident that there needed to be a better implementation of change management that created a lack of customer engagement with the applications as well as the digital marketing tactics and impaired competitiveness against Nike and other sportswear brands. In the case of this company, implementation of change management training and development, as well as assessment of gaps in the skills of stars, is necessary. Through training and development practices, there is the possibility of improving creativity as well as better services to customers by understanding diversified needs and successfully implementing the strategies (Chaubey et al., 2022).
Enhancing staffs efficiencies to make customers aware of the changes implemented
Customer need assessment is necessary, and staff's efficiency in understanding the needs and implementing the news and services becomes evident for the company. For this, there is a need to improve communication between customers and staff so that customers have difficulty using the digital marketing platform and accessing products once the company can be determined. Direct communication through social media and email lets one understand customer needs and difficulties (Eid et al., 2020).
Reforming customer targeting and reforming App and market specification as per the needs of each targeted group
Considering the challenges faced by Under Armour, it becomes clear that this organisation needs to target the customer base and avoid the core customer base while launching and applying the app-based services. While introducing digital marketing specifications in promotion and advertisement as well as introducing app-based services, understanding or needs of targeted customers and the availability of target customer needs specific services and products in the App becomes necessary (Ofori-Okyere et al., 2023). In this way, this company can help to retain customer loyalty as well as long-term profitability and competitiveness against brands such as Nike.
Conclusion
After completing the analysis in terms of challenges faced by Under Armour in terms of digital transformation as well as the areas creating barriers for Under Armour, it becomes evident that there was poor implementation of change management and poor understanding of customer needs as well as customer communication that created the gap in customer engagement with the app-based services as well as the digital transformation implemented by the company. The major issues faced by the company were an excessive pile of inventory that signifies poor inventory management and poor forecasting of customer needs and demands. Further, there have been challenges in terms of leadership, as there were cultural issues regarding employee engagement and poor forecasting of future activities to be considered by the company. Based on the overall analysis, the solutions provided for improving change management practices enhancing staff efficiency for a better understanding of customer needs as well as reforming customer targeting. The side recommendations are to monitor the solutions implemented as well as ensure a continuous improvement in operations and services based on the behaviour of customers towards the digital marketing practises implemented.
References
Chaubey, A., Sahoo, C. K., & Das, K. C. (2022). Examining the effect of training and employee creativity on organisational innovation: a moderated mediation analysis. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 30(2), 499–524. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-06-2020-2271
Ciment, S (2021) How Under Armour’s Digital Transformation Set the Brand Up for Success in the Pandemic, FN [online], https://footwearnews.com/shoes/outdoor-footwear/under-armours-digital-transformation-1203207883/
Eid, R., Abdelmoety, Z., & Agag, G. (2020). Antecedents and consequences of social media marketing use: an empirical study of the UK exporting b2b smes. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 35(2), 284–305. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-04-2018-0121
Fonrouge, G (2022) Under Armour picks Marriott exec Stephanie Linnartz to be new CEO after seven-month search, CNBC[online], https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/under-armour-picks-new-ceo-stephanie-linnartz.html
Freddy, S., Vel, P., & Nyadzayo, M. W. (2022). Business customer virtual interaction: enhancing value creation in b2b markets in the post-covid-19 era – a SME perspective. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 37(10), 2075–2094. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-01-2021-0074
Hensel, A (2020) ‘Left out in the cold’: Why Under Armour’s app strategy failed, Modern Retail [online], https://www.modernretail.co/retailers/left-out-in-the-cold-why-under-armours-app-strategy-failed/
Mabasa, T. D., & Flotman, A.-P. (2022). Employees’ experiences of change management in the implementation of a performance management system. Sa Journal of Industrial Psychology, 48(1). https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v48i0.1980
Monteros, M (2023) New Under Armour CEO faces inventory pile up as she's tasked with redefining the brand, Modern Retail [online], https://www.modernretail.co/operations/new-under-armour-ceo-faces-inventory-pileup-as-shes-tasked-with-redefining-the-brand/
Ofori-Okyere, I., Edghiem, F., & Kumah, S. P. (2023). Marketing inclusive banking services to financially vulnerable consumers: a service design approach. Journal of Services Marketing, 37(2), 232–247. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-10-2021-0399
Statista (2023) Under Armour - Statistics & Facts, https://www.statista.com/topics/2470/under-armour/#topicOverview
Under Armour (2022) CHARTING OUR PATH FORWARD,https://about.underarmour.com/en/stories/2022/05/charting-our-path-forward-.html
Under Armour (2023) ANNUAL REPORT, https://underarmourinc.gcs-web.com/static-files/7c201214-9a4d-461a-b12b-f68b1739e960
Widianto, S., Lestari, Y. D., Adna, B. E., Sukoco, B. M., & Nasih, M. (2021). Dynamic managerial capabilities, organisational capacity for change and organisational performance: the moderating effect of attitude towards change in a public service organisation. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 8(1), 149–172. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOEPP-02-2020-0028
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