This case assignment draws from the Business Information
Systems and the Systems Acquisition and Development modules
(Chapters 5 to 8). Its purpose is to provide you with experience in
analyzing organizational information systems, making
recommendations to improve these systems, and formulating a plan to
execute on your recommendations.
1. Recommend one of your alternatives that is the best
solution to the main issue and justify your recommendation. Your
justification should be based on the key decision criteria and you
must clearly explain why the chosen alternative is better than the
other alternative. It is recommended that you use a weighted
decision matrix as part of the recommendation justification.
2. Describe which implementation cut over strategy you would
use and why ?You must fully justify why this cut over strategy is
the best one for the solution you recommended
The Case
Little Corp., a bicycle manufacturer located in Burlington,
Ontario was a medium sized business that consisted of just over 200
employees. Of these employees, approximately 50 worked in the
office while the remaining 150 employees worked in the
manufacturing and warehouse facilities. Little Corp. designed,
manufactured, assembled and shipped high-end bicycles (both road
bikes as well as mountain bikes) both directly to end consumers as
well as to retailers across North America. In the last year, Little
Corp. sold over 30,000 bicycles at an average price of
$1,000.
After 10 years of growth, Little Corp was beginning to feel
the strains of a small organization that was rapidly becoming too
large to continue operating in the way that it had in the past.
Until quite recently decisions had largely been made informally by
company founder, Catherine Kuijpers, based on her knowledge of the
business and her industry expertise. Although Catherine was as
engaged as ever with Little Corp.’s growth, over the past two
years it had become clear to her that she needed to introduce more
formal systems to ensure that this growth was sustainable. With its
most recent annual sales now in excess of $30 million, the company
was simply becoming too big to make informal decisions. There was
too much at stake and resources were being wasted by decisions that
had been made without sufficient analysis. Hence, over the past
year the company had begun to introduce formal processes in a wide
range of areas ncluding employee recruitment and strategic planning
efforts. This latter effort, in particular, had pleased Catherine
as it had yielded a set of clear objectives and performance metrics
that 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 manufacturer
headquartered in the north eastern United States. After more than a
dozen years working in various operational and marketing roles at
this organization, she identified an opportunity to manufacture
high- end bicycles that could be sold at a premium price. After
some discussion with family and colleagues, she decided to return
to Canada to pursue this opportunity. Many challenges arose during
the early years of the business including challenges related to
where product development efforts should be focused, how to
establish and develop relationships with new and prospective
customers and retailers, and how to acquire access to cost
effective manufacturing capabilities. In many cases the financial
and other pressures were such that hasty decisions were made that
largely aimed to quickly resolve whatever crisis was at hand.
Short-term thinking was also evident in information systems
decision making. Over time, Little Corp. had acquired a wide range
of information systems that had been implemented to address
specific problems as they arose. At present, the organization was
operating and maintaining over 50 separate systems that addressed
needs across all functional areas. Most of these systems did not
interface with the other systems at Little Corp. The major systems
included a financial accounting system, a production planning
system, an employee time- tracking system, payroll system, two
product labeling systems, a knowledge management system, three
shipping systems provided by the company’s three main shipment
service providers, and a wide range of personal productivity
tools.
Among the systems that had been introduced was a system to
keep track of employee compensation and benefits. This had been
developed by a small vendor that had since ceased operations. As a
result, human resources staff were regularly required to make
“adjustments†to system data to support changes in employment
practices and legislation. Every second week the data from this
system was exported to an Excel spreadsheet and sent to an online
payroll service provider that was responsible for handling employee
salary and benefit payments. Reports were generated by the payroll
service provider after employees were paid and these reports were
then used to manually update Little’s internal compensation and
benefit system.
Accounting and manufacturing staff experienced similar
frustrations as both departments were using systems that relied on
considerable manual data entry. The lack of integration between
accounting and manufacturing systems was also problematic. For
example, although orders were entered into the financial accounting
system (based on the Excel spreadsheets that were used), the
details of these orders needed to then be transferred via other
Excel spreadsheets to manufacturing staff. Manufacturing would then
use this information to plan production, acquire necessary raw
materials, and ship finished product to Little’s customers.
Sales, marketing, and accounting staff had only limited insight
into raw material orders or the manufacturing process such that an
email or text message was often necessary to determine the status
of orders and verify the need for payment. In some instances,
products had been shipped to customers without invoicing these
customers. Issues such as this were embarrassing and they were
having negative implications for Little Corp’s operational and
financial performance.
A recent problem with the compensation and benefit system that
delayed payment of employee salaries led Catherine to think once
again about what to do with Little Corp’s current mix of aging
and often incompatible systems. Her IT manager was a long-term
employee who seemed to be able to keep current systems running but
the world had changed a great deal in the last ten years. Consumers
were now highly connected with mobile services having become the
norm, particularly among the types of people that typically
purchased Little Corp’s bikes. These consumers had come to expect
mobile service options, access to real time information concerning
the order status of their bikes, rapid assistance in the event of
bike failures and warranty repairs. In short, there seemed to be
many new opportunities for Catherine to consider in light of the
technological and social changes that had been taking place. Almost
too many opportunities!