As a successor to the VERIFIER system, CONFIG was a good technology that was implemented horribly. Some of the main problems that plagued implementation of CONFIG were lack of employee training, poor interface design, and hardware inaccessibility. With the addition of a lack of motivation from employees who had disincentives to aggregate the system, this resulted in less usage and application across the board. Instead of assuming CONFIG as a “Turkey” or an “Edsel,” we must look at the organizational structure of the companies and make sure the optimization of subprocesses such as the sales representatives does not suboptimize the processes such as new technology that will benefit the company. CONFIG is an important example of how system analysts …show more content…
This seemed like an ideal solution, and worked for a while. Soon after the initial novelty worn off, use of CONFIG went down dramatically over time. Since CONFIG wasn’t built for the users, most of the users could not or wouldn’t take the time to test solutions. Without proper training, users complained about a plethora of issues from too many menus to a lack of shortcuts making most tasks tedious. The IS analysts decided to roll back their initial design to brainstorm new implementations of CONFIG that would be more user …show more content…
Being user friendly, the IS analysts thought that user compliance would boost the usage of the product. Much to the IS analyst’s dismay, surveys concluded that the program had small differences with usage. This problem was due to the socio-economic factors within the company which caused the sales representatives chosen to operate the system to shun the system. These excuses were due to disincentives such a lack pay bonus or reward for using the system, and being obtrusive toward their responsibilities. As sales representatives, they made excuses such as the system being “dirty work” for the manufacturers. Behind the excuses, the process of using the system was sub optimized by the sales representative’s subprocess within the company which was optimized for efficiency. Unfortunately, the IS analysts in charge of the project were not in a position to make changes regarding who used their system. Communication issues between the creators of the product and the managers who employed the product caused this
MidSouth Chamber of Commerce is an organization that rely heavily on their information systems. Lassiter, Hedges and Kovecki who has no information technology background were taken into computing operations. Introducing a new system is not an easy task until an organization has senior IT professionals and backup plans. In the end, it was the lack of proper management and lacked intimate knowledge of information systems made them depend on outside persons to make decisions that caused all these problems.
Since information technology is growing at a rapid pace, communication and data processing costs are at an all time low. For employees, this rapid impact can threaten or enhance opportunities within one’s career. If one is hesitant and uncertain when it comes to constructing a model for a potential system then they are likely to lose their job. Employees must be able to quickly adapt to changing technology. For example, a chair manufacturing company is loosing revenue due to its
Carr eliminates the possibility of advantages due to proprietary software using the example of American Hospital Supply’s ASAP ordering tool. He highlights how specialized software can turn from a boon to bane, when more generic and updated solutions come into the picture. Many companies such as Dell and Wal-Mart have used the opportune time frame of the IT boom to set up their brand name and goodwill. That window seems to have closed now, because the possibility of a competitive advantage using IT is minimal, if not zilch.
Initially, the managers usually lose their confidence whether the benefits of ABC system can really outweigh the costs, e.g., this may not be applicable for small businesses where the costs can exceed its benefits. In addition, some managers may be unaware about ABC system and does not know how such system can increase the success of an organisation, e.g., some managers may not be curious to know about current trends happening in the new costing system. Moreover, the organisation may be reluctant to accept changes amongst managers and employees, e.g., some employees may resist changes in an organisation due to the inability to handle new technologies. Ultimately, concerns may still raise when trying to consider the massive resource requirements to implement ABC, e.g., small firms often require large capital funds when investing in a IT system for ABC
The current system had coincided with Solvik's organizational and budgetary approach that allowed budgetary decisions to be made at the functional level, but left IT organizations reporting directly to him. This allowed the modifications required by the legacy system to be addressed by each functional area as required. Ultimately, these modifications ("workarounds") contributed to the systems malfunction. Ironically, the three alternatives produced to address the issue were all consistent with initially removing the functional level budgetary responsibility. This was based on two reasons: 1) the lead-time involved in the implementation would not allow for multiple areas performing their own investigation, and 2) the functional areas could not justify the investment of at least $5 million each.
Ans: Jean has failed to consider a fundamental rule of “business as usual”. The manager level employees of all departments are cautious about status quo being maintained. In addition to this, Jean has also failed to account the need for cross functional team. The repercussions of which will be in the form of increased pressure on him in making sure users of the software package implemented have right kind of expertise and qualifications to use.
Intuit Inc. is an American software company that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals. Intuit flagship products include Quicken, TurboTax, and QuickBooks. With these products Intuit main goal is to revolutionize the way people manage their personal finances, run small businesses and pay employees. One way to stay ahead of competition is to consistently be innovating. But how can Intuit revolutionize their company whilst keeping the simplicity of their products? The main problem faced by Intuit was incorporating user contributing systems. Because Intuit is a software company mostly developed for tax preparation, Intuit’s main task was to customize a user contribution system to one of their products called TurboTax. The purpose of using a user contribution system was to further simplify the taxing process. The user contribution system was called “Collective Intelligence Agent. (CIA)” CIA would help answer users’ questions by posting the question for other users to answer. But the “Collective Intelligent Agent” faced much skepticism. One main problem most had with this system was its reliability. Most users felt more comfortable if tax experts provided the answers rather than ordinary users. All in all if CIA could were functional, Intuit could potentially gain cost savings and lower service cost.
The aspect of quality is particularly evident in the book by Pyzdek and Keller. For instance, information can be poorly cataloged and some of the engineering documents are likely to be misleading or not sufficiently detailed. Problems can also arise from records imported from systems with different quality standards and cataloging requirements. With these issues likely to be inevitable, configuration control becomes crucial in improving the quality of stored information through constant improvements. Personally, configuration control particularly becomes important on acknowledging that change tends to be the only constant. Better ways of doing things, new technology and mistakes in the existing systems continue to emerge. To improve quality, the improvements that arise are incorporated into the emerging designs as well as practices. When one part has been altered, the value of configuration control appears as it ensures that the new part works appropriately with the
Training employees how to use the system is a significant step in ensuring that the organization realizes its goals. Employees need to master and understand the functionality of the system. It is noted that the training of the employees should be planned accordingly. The resources used in the training have to be identified and set. The professional should be aware of the objective of the training. In this case, ensuring that system runs effectively, as well as ensuring that information is safeguarded. Maintenance of the hardware is not only the responsibility of the information technology team in the organization, but also the employees of the organization. For this reason, all the stakeholders should be involved in ensuring that the system functions, as expected.
One main apprehension that they have against Information System is the high investment cost. In addition to this there is the high maintenance and upgrade costs associated with the deployment of new IT systems. In fact they prefer to outsource the heavy IT department expenditures to other companies having IT as their core activities. In return they expected to receive a full solution pack to meet their requirements and they are ready to pay these IT services as an operating cost. At the same time the risks associated with IS are being shifted to the other
When planning configuration identification is it important to: define how the classes and types of assets and CIs are to be selected; define the approach to identification; allocating identifier such as serial number, version number to CIs; uniquely naming and labelling all the assets or service components; define roles and responsibilities of the owner of CI; defining and documenting the criteria of selecting CIs; specifying the relevant attributes of each CI; deciding a level at which control must be exercised. (Office of Government Commerce, 2007). By identifying CIs, a baseline of software-related items will be established. This way, changes to the baselines can easily be controlled; audited and reported. According to ITIL best practices, CIs selection should be done by applying top down
Increasing the productivity – Configuration management with the aid of automation, reduces the IT staff time.
Asemi observe that Management Information System (MIS) is one of the information systems that is computer based. Besides, Asemi defines MIS as “an organizational method of providing past, present and project information related to internal operations and external intelligences. It supports the planning, control and operation functions of an organization by furnishing uniform information in the proper time frame to assist the decision makers,” (2011). The aim of MIS is to satisfy the general information need of the entire manager in an organization. Before the advent of computers, the process of decision-making was one that was full of built-in advantages and ad hoc methods. Computers technologies have changed the landscape of the decision-making process completely by making the process less demanding and easy to undertake. The reason for this situation is that information technology has made access to information more automated, efficient, effective, timely, and less ambiguous. Consequently, the ordinary t...
Done with the system and done apply the system in the business, I am going to evaluate the entire project. To know whether the system is useful or not, I asked the views of the users of the system. To know about the users views, I went to meet the two employees who managed the handle the selling report of the business three days after I applied the system to the business. I asked them whether the system is useful or not, hard to use or not, as well as their suggestion for the system. One of them said that the system is quite helpful and quite hard for the first time. The other employee said that the system made them more efficient since they did not need to waste their time too much to make the selling report, however the system is quite confusing for them. From these two users, I realized that my system might be useful for the business but it need to be simpler since the system is confusing for them. These positive and negative opinions from the users are an important input and suggestion for me to improve for the next project.
Effectively integrating information technology (IT) into an organization’s business processes is critical if the organization wants to increase productivity and remain profitable. IT includes items such as the systems software, application software, computer hardware, and the networks and databases that help manage the organization’s information. When implementing quality standards and processes that are forever changing in the IT world, organizations must balance these changes while continuing to rapidly implement new systems technologies in order to stay competitive.