Case Study I-5: Midsouth Chamber Of Commerce (B)

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Case Study I-5: Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (B) In 2001, MSCC was still having some problems with its UNITRAK and AS/400 system. Dick Gramen “was hired” to take the position of Information system support specialist, replacing with Kovecki (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin and Perkins 193). Gramen used to work in his former company under an IBM RS/6000 “computing environment”, and he did not know anything about the systems used at the company. At that moment, Lassiter was still the VP of marketing and agreed at first with the IBM RS/6000 idea. However, after asking Gramen to study the potential costs and the advantages of the new purchase, he showed his reticence. On the other hand, Ed Wilson, who was the VicePresident of operations at that date, agreed with this idea and he thought the decision had to be made as soon as possible. He and Gramen convinced to the executive committee to start the negotiations with VAR, which was the company recommended by IBM to purchase the hardware. DMA, or Data Management Associates, whose manager was Dittier Rankin, was the company selected to provide its software to MSCC (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin and Perkins 196). Even though the negotiations did not become as clear as it should, Lassiter and Wilson agreed that VAR was the best supplier for MSCC with its “Association plus software” (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin and Perkins 196). Gramen and the president accepted the contract, which put MSCC in clear disadvantage. “The first week of July 2002” was the chosen date for completing the implementation (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin and Perkins 197). Stacey Porter, a DMA consultant, was the first arrival for implementing the first module of the new software. From the very beginning, the new software was used and it did not convince to anybody within MSCC. Beyond the operational problems, it was the bill controversy. DMA was

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