Software Maintenance Plan

The utilization of software in business organizations has helped bring about efficiency as well as accuracy in business processes. The software has enabled business organizations to automate most of their processes and this has played a major role in reducing operating costs. It is, however, important to mention that to maximize on the advantages brought about by software, business entities have to maintain all their software as this is the only way they can be able to perform their intended purposes effectively. Beaumaster (1999) defines software maintenance as the modification of a software product with the aim of improving performance, correcting faults, and other attributes to make sure the software performs at their highest performance level and increased efficiency. There is a common perception that software maintenance involves fixing defects in a software program, but this is not the case because software maintenance as a process involves taking the feedback of users and correcting all the aspects they felt needed some improvement to make the software a more efficient tool. 

The main feature of the software to be installed in the organization is that it is a Relational Database Management Software (RDBMS) of Oracle9i that involves C++ and C programming language (Golafshani, 2003). The software can also be accessed through Browser Based Universal Client such as Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. This is very important as it makes it possible for workers to work remotely even if they are not physically present in their offices. The software provides multi-lingual support, as well as, tight and multi-level security making it hard for hackers to penetrate the system and steal money or even customers data that is stored in the system. 

This mission will have a number of impacts on the organization as a whole. Firstly, the organization will have a new software system that will bring about efficiency in its operations. This will lead to increased profitability and competitiveness. Secondly, the employees will also be provided with a tool that can help them perform their work more easily and effectively. This will motivate the employees to work hard resulting in higher employee output. This is important to the organization, as it will make them realize the set bottom lines more easily.  

For this project to be a success, the implementation process should be structured with timelines, to enable the implementers and the organization management team and employees to know what needs to be done and at what particular time. The implementation schedule should be divided into three major parts. The first segment is the installation and training phase. This stage should be conducted on day one and it should take a period of 30 days. During this phase, the new software system should be installed in the organization and the employees trained on how to use it in performing their work. The second phase is the acceptance stage, where the organization will have to agree to the implementation process of the software and allow their employees to use this new system in their official work. The employees should also be noting all the bugs of the new system and any other issue they would wish to be rectified by the provider. This stage should take at least sixty days. The last phase is the software maintenance phase and this is where the software provider should take all the feedback from the end users and correct all the issues that have been highlighted. This phase is aimed at making the software user-friendly and more efficient (Dow & Leitch, 2007).  

References

Beaumaster, S. (1999). Information technology implementation issues: an analysis. Unpublished manuscript, Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Beaumaster, S. (2002). Local government IT implementation issues: challenges for public administration. 

Bryant, M. (2006). Talking about change, Management Decision, 44(2), pp. 246–258. 

Chan, S.L. (2000). Information technology in business processes. Business Process Management Journal, 6(3), pp. 224–237.

 Cooper, R. (1999). From experience the invisible success factors in product innovation. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 16(2), pp. 115–133.

Dow, K.E. and Leitch, R.A. (2007). Confidence in the implementation process of a new information system. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting, 4(1), 139– 159.

Glaser, John. (2004). Back to basics managing IT projects. Healthcare Financial Management. 58, 7. 

Golafshani N. (2003). Understanding Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research. The Qualitative Report Volume 8 597-607. 

Kuruppuarachchi, P.R., Mandal, P. and Smith, R. (2002). IT project implementation strategies for effective changes: A critical review. Logistics Information Management, 15(2), pp. 126–137.