Flash Research Paper #4 - Revised
WordPress
Taiki Sugiyama
Our IT department can save $2,451,000 over the three years by optimizing our operations with WordPress. WordPress is a blogging and content management system, which increasesthe efficiency of creating and managing web content. The successful implementation of WordPress can reduce the operating cost, increase the developers’ productivity and maximize their efficiency.
WordPress is a content management system with thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes. A plugin is software that performs extensional functions and adds new features to websites such as search engine optimizationand contact form creation. As plugins are built-in on WordPress, WordPress can reduce the amount of coding the IT department needs to do. Administrators can easily manage plugins on the home panel. Also, WordPress offers a plugin-like function, a widget, which can customize website design and structure along with themes. Widgets are mainly used to create the tag cloud, navigation menu, and calendar. In order to use plugins and widgets more easily, WordPress also offers a theme, which provides website visual interface and structural foundation. Thanks to plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is highly customizable and easy to use, which can improve our developers’ productivity and efficiency while decreasing the time to develop websites and its applications.
The integration of WordPress costs $174,000*6as a three-year cost, but our company will benefit $2,625,000*7 by the headcount reduction.With improved efficiency, wecan save $2,451,000*8as the three-year net benefit. Considering this, the implementation of WordPress will help our company to be more productive and cost-efficient.
Appendix:
Traditional:
Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3 / TotalDevelopers - 12 / $1,500,000*1 / $1,500,000 / $1,500,000 / $4,500,000
Total Cost / $4,500,000
WordPress:
Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3 / TotalHardware/Software / $100,000 / - / - / $100,000
Maintenance / $18,000 / $18,000 / $18,000 / $540,000
Developers – 5 / $625,000*2 / $625,000 / $625,000 / $1,875,000
-Traditional – 3*3 / $375,000 / $375,000 / $375,000 / $1,125,000
-WordPress – 2*4 / $250,000 / $250,000 / $250,000 / $750,000
Training and lost productivity / $200,000*5 / - / - / $200,000
Total / $763,000 / $643,000 / $643,000 / $2,049,000
*1: Developers/year (Traditional) = $125,000 * 12
*2: Developers/year (WordPress) = $375,000 ($125,000*3) + $250,000 ($125,000*2)
*3: Traditional developers = 12 – (12*75%)
*4: WordPress developers = 9 (12*75%) – (9*77.8%)
*5: Training cost = $100,000 * 2 developers
*6: Cost = Hardware/Software + Maintenance + Training and lost productivity
*7: Benefit = $1,500,000 (developer -12) - $1,875,000 (developer -5)
*8: Net benefit = $4,500,000 - $2,049,000
References:
"WordPress.org."About — WordPress. WordPress.org, n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <
Terada, Elisha. "5 Reasons Why We Use WordPress."Fresh Consulting. Fresh Consulting, 15 Feb. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <
Ariel. "What Is WordPress? And What Makes It So Popular?"FancyThemes. FancyThemes, 21 Aug. 2016. Web. 16 Apr. 2017. <
Tutored by Kate D on 4/17/2017