This case assignment draws from the Business InformationSystems and the Systems Acquisition and Development modules(Chapters 5 to 8). Its purpose is to provide you with experience inanalyzing organizational information systems, makingrecommendations to improve these systems, and formulating a plan toexecute on your recommendations.
Questions (Individual Case Analysis)
1.Describethemainissueinthecase.Inotherwords,whatisthebigproblemorchallengethatneedstobeaddressed? Clearly describe why you see this as the main issue.
2.Analyzethequalitativeandquantitativedatathatthecasepresents.Whatdoestheinformationinthecase tell you about the main issue and the effect it is having onthe company? Make sure you draw conclusions from your analysis.
3.Identifyanddescribetwocomplete,distinctalternativesolutionstothemainissuethatyouranalysissuggests as being relatively likely to successfully resolve themain issue. Consider both the short and long term in formulatingyour alternatives.
4. What are the key 4-5 decision criteria that should be usedto identify the best alternative? Make sure you define and clearlyexplain why these are the key decision criteria.
5.Recommendoneofyouralternativesthatisthebestsolutiontothemainissueandjustifyyourrecommendation. Your justification should be based on the keydecision criteria and you must clearly explain why the chosenalternative is better than the other alternative. It is recommendedthat you use a weighted decision matrix as part of therecommendation justification.
6.Describewhichimplementationcutoverstrategyyouwoulduseandwhy?Youmustfullyjustifywhythiscutover strategy is the best one for the solution you recommended.
Formatting
The case
Little Corp., a bicycle manufacturer located in Burlington,Ontario was a medium sized business that consisted of just over 200employees. Of these employees, approximately 50 worked in theoffice while the remaining 150 employees worked in themanufacturing and warehouse facilities. Little Corp. designed,manufactured, assembled and shipped high-end bicycles (both roadbikes as well as mountain bikes) both directly to end consumers aswell as to retailers across North America. In the last year, LittleCorp. sold over 30,000 bicycles at an average price of$1,000.
After 10 years of growth, Little Corp was beginning to feelthe strains of a small organization that was rapidly becoming toolarge to continue operating in the way that it had in the past.Until quite recently decisions had largely been made informally bycompany founder, Catherine Kuijpers, based on her knowledge of thebusiness and her industry expertise. Although Catherine was asengaged as ever with Little Corp.’s growth, over the past two yearsit had become clear to her that she needed to introduce more formalsystems to ensure that this growth was sustainable. With its mostrecent annual sales now in excess of $30 million, the company wassimply becoming too big to make informal decisions. There was toomuch at stake and resources were being wasted by decisions that hadbeen made without sufficient analysis. Hence, over the past yearthe company had begun to introduce formal processes in a wide rangeof areas including employee recruitment and strategic planningefforts. This latter effort, in particular, had pleased Catherineas it had yielded a set of clear objectives and performance metricsthat were now being used to guide organizational decisions.
From a background perspective, prior to founding Little Corp.,Catherine had worked at a very large bicycle manufacturerheadquartered in the north eastern United States. After more than adozen years working in various operational and marketing roles atthis organization, she identified an opportunity to manufacturehigh- end bicycles that could be sold at a premium price. Aftersome discussion with family and colleagues, she decided to returnto Canada to pursue this opportunity. Many challenges arose duringthe early years of the business including challenges related towhere product development efforts should be focused, how toestablish and develop relationships with new and prospectivecustomers and retailers, and how to acquire access to costeffective manufacturing capabilities. In many cases the financialand other pressures were such that hasty decisions were made thatlargely aimed to quickly resolve whatever crisis was at hand.
 Â
Short-term thinking was also evident in information systemsdecision making. Over time, Little Corp. had acquired a wide rangeof information systems that had been implemented to addressspecific problems as they arose. At present, the organization wasoperating and maintaining over 50 separate systems that addressedneeds across all functional areas. Most of these systems did notinterface with the other systems at Little Corp. The major systemsincluded a financial accounting system, a production planningsystem, an employee time- tracking system, payroll system, twoproduct labeling systems, a knowledge management system, threeshipping systems provided by the company’s three main shipmentservice providers, and a wide range of personal productivitytools.
Among the systems that had been introduced was a system tokeep track of employee compensation and benefits. This had beendeveloped by a small vendor that had since ceased operations. As aresult, human resources staff were regularly required to make“adjustments†to system data to support changes in employmentpractices and legislation. Every second week the data from thissystem was exported to an Excel spreadsheet and sent to an onlinepayroll service provider that was responsible for handling employeesalary and benefit payments. Reports were generated by the payrollservice provider after employees were paid and these reports werethen used to manually update Little’s internal compensation andbenefit system.
Accounting and manufacturing staff experienced similarfrustrations as both departments were using systems that relied onconsiderable manual data entry. The lack of integration betweenaccounting and manufacturing systems was also problematic. Forexample, although orders were entered into the financial accountingsystem (based on the Excel spreadsheets that were used), thedetails of these orders needed to then be transferred via otherExcel spreadsheets to manufacturing staff. Manufacturing would thenuse this information to plan production, acquire necessary rawmaterials, and ship finished product to Little’s customers. Sales,marketing, and accounting staff had only limited insight into rawmaterial orders or the manufacturing process such that an email ortext message was often necessary to determine the status of ordersand verify the need for payment. In some instances, products hadbeen shipped to customers without invoicing these customers. Issuessuch as this were embarrassing and they were having negativeimplications for Little Corp’s operational and financialperformance.
A recent problem with the compensation and benefit system thatdelayed payment of employee salaries led Catherine to think onceagain about what to do with Little Corp’s current mix of aging andoften incompatible systems. Her IT manager was a long-term employeewho seemed to be able to keep current systems running but the worldhad changed a great deal in the last ten years. Consumers were nowhighly connected with mobile services having become the norm,particularly among the types of people that typically purchasedLittle Corp’s bikes. These consumers had come to expect mobileservice options, access to real time information concerning theorder status of their bikes, rapid assistance in the event of bikefailures and warranty repairs. In short, there seemed to be manynew opportunities for Catherine to consider in light of thetechnological and social changes that had been taking place. Almosttoo many opportunities!
