Case Study 1 Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (A): The Role of the Operating Manager in Information Systems Introduction In order to increase efficiency and productivity of the Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC), Leon Lassiter, Vice President of Marketing, decides that MSCC could benefit from a systems and software upgrade for each division. However, Mr. Lassiter’s effort to accomplish this failed as additional steps were not taken in order to ensure a smooth and seamless transition. Background Leon Lassiter, Vice President of Marketing for the Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC), conducted an assessment of each division within the organization. His findings concluded that information systems were limited in capability and lacking in operational capacity to better support its members. Mr. Lassiter realized that new information systems for MSCC would have to be eventually implemented.
This leaded to a displacement and diffusion of responsibility. When the system is in charge for decisions, moral disengagement of the employees appears. 3) Loss of autonomy Do to the fact, that everything was guided and recommended by the IT System, there was no space for personal reasoning and finally nobody felt responsible. 4) Change of business strategy Through the acquisition of the LPB business the original “Feel-Good-Strategy” of Mrs. Field´s cookies was gone. Further not to franchise the original cookie business and to diversify the business concept was not beneficial and leaded to high depths of the company.
When Electrolux faced rising costs and was losing the battle of middle-market products to competitors from Asia and Eastern Europe, Electrolux’s Chief Executive Straberg had to give the company a makeover to increase communication between departments. Straberg’s strategy was to ramp up Research and Development (R&D) and ensure a single cohesive effort was being put forth amongst all the departments to collectively create innovative products. This focus to break down communication barriers between departments would influence his designers, engineers, and marketers to synergistically develop new products. Straberg also hired executives from Procter & Gamble and Pepsi who have had reputable histories of innovative ideas at their respective companies. Furthermore, Straberg wanted to battle groupthink across Electrolux’s departments.
Case Report: “WESCO Distribution, Inc.” < Case Facts> WESCO’s customers have made significant changes to their business processes ( how and why?) Why: bridge the quality gap with international competition / improve their overall competitive stance by building integrated system and integrated supply chain How: implementation of stringent supplier / distributor quality program * To examine procurement cost and supply chain / sign long-term contract with less suppliers Sales reps need to change their approaches depended on types of customer; need to shift from hunter, for contractors, to farmer, for industrial customer. But customer locals were reluctant to change conventional systems because of good relationship with local distributors. [Company] Third largest full-line wholesale EES distributor; $2.2 billion in sales globally of which US sales were $1.6 billion Target: $3 billion sales and EBIT of over 5% by the year 2000; 6-8% up in sales and 12-16% up in profit Sales reps: receive same commission and salary in each branch. Each 18 NAMs serve 10-15 industrial customers and 15-20 potential customers.
Secondly, costs for the IT function were not assembled and analyzed. Hard costs, like facilities, were not included in the total commitment costs for IT, nor was there a methodology in place to provide management with what it would need to perform cost/benefit analyses. Ouellette identified $95 million in IT costs so misclassified. Add the sheer number of IT establishments, all of whom would ideally ‘speak’ to each other, and the consolidation/integration process that had been ignored for so long seems amazing in scope. The case further explores organization hierarchy of IT at Alcan.
Schindler also decided to outsource production and other activities to local suppliers. Schindler chose different local supplier, and it was easier to standardized product in order to coordinate and have lower costs in training. Another advantage is that if you have a standardized product outsourced you make biggest orders and you can easily switch suppliers because the outsourced product is a simple one. Suppliers may produce parts for different companies lowering costs, producing at a cheaper level than the company could do. Silvio Napoli already had experience on standardize products (swatch project: standard elevator).
Keda required to enhance its maintenance support and rethink its IT system and embark on an ERP implementation project. 2. Processes for implementing an off-the-shelf ERP system - Keda lacked IT competence, and it required to build a team for development which would be very expensive and highly time consuming2. Zhu had to classify the core needs of his system and believed that customizing an existing system would be more efficient, cost friendly, and of higher quality. To do so he was required to choose an ERP vendor who could support complex operational process across multiple production plants.
As the head of the Spartan Billing Department, I have been tasked to improve the process efficiency and reduce cycle time so that the bills can go out quicker; however, there are queues that are building up in many areas. This is causing inefficiencies in the entire process. In order to create a detailed plan for modifying the process to improve efficiency and reduce the cycle time so that the bills can go out on time, I have chosen to use Arena and go step by step to explain the changes and their purpose. This application allows me to simulate processes and calculate the differences in results between alternative business processes. The problem that we are faced with is the fact that we have two separate types of bills, normal and contract, that are handled
Research and Development played a huge role in the success of the launch in China as many flavors were researched to understand what exactly Chinese consumers were looking for. The team in Mexico first executed a test to assess the consumers in the market. Even though the consumers’ expectations were clear, the team did not extend the benefits of the product to tailor the Mexican consumers’ needs i.e. adding lack of cavity, and whitening benefits to the freshness factor. The advertising used in Mexico was “snowsurfer” which the Mexicans can’t associate with as snow surfing is not common in the region.
The first root cause is that there was no single process or person in the organization to articulate the company’s strategy of new product development. As a consequence, they always had too many ideas for new products and no project got the focus and attention needed to get it done. The second root case is its organization structure where functional managers made most major decisions for product development. During the company’s early years, functional managers used to work intimately with each development project. However, as it grew larger, they were mainly responsible for the management of operations.