For the follow up case to Midsouth Chamber of Commerce, the institution has implemented a new Vice President/CFO to the company. During this initial period, she is looking back on why she first decided to accept the positions and the reasoning behind it. Parallel to her inward search, the back story to the key players in the previous case is told. In the case, it describes the company’s battles with finding a system to replace UNITRAK. During the search, an alternative was found but in the research and the implementation, plenty of flaws and issues were found and caused several problems for MSCC. By employing DMA to handle the installation and support of the new system, the decision made the possibility of salvaging the system harder and almost non-existent by the end of the case. This left the new Vice President trying to find new ways to repair the damage done to an already flawed system.
The major problem that seems to plague MSCC is the fact that there was no opinion or guidance from an experienced information system professional. On either installation you can visibly see that the decisions were made quickly and even if there was research performed, it was not enough to quantify the decisions to implement either one of these systems or business. Also, the failure of Gramen to read and fully understand the contract provided by DMA which outlined what they were willing to provide and what MSCC was guaranteed. This would have provided some type of leverage for MSCC later on in the situation when a possible law suit against DMA was eminent.
The major problem that seems to plague MSCC is the fact that there was no opinion or guidance from an experienced information system professional. On either installation you can visibly see that the decisions were made quickly and even if there was research performed, it was not enough to quantify the decisions to implement either one of these systems or business. Also, the failure of Gramen to read and fully understand the contract provided by DMA which outlined what they were willing to provide and what MSCC was guaranteed. This would have provided some type of leverage for MSCC later on in the situation when a possible law suit against DMA was eminent. (Brown 10)
Another problem would be the time frame of the new implementation. Even though it was felt that time seemed to be of the essence in terms of getting rid of the botched UNITRAK system, saving funds on having the outside reporting firm, etc., more time should still have been taking on finding a company that could provide software that could not only run on the current system but that will still function long after the new system was implemented.
Also, more research should have been conducted into compatible systems and companies to provide them. Even though HP was a good choice, Gramen and Wilson should have furthered their search as well as checked into the recommendations of HP on the outside management (DMA). This would have avoided any hasty decisions made on the basis of surface information. The urgent problems are the unguided efforts of MSCC’s staff to try and manage the information system as well as the systems compatibility at this point in time. This will make it increasingly difficult for MSCC to function and would have made it harder for Lassiter’s department to function as a whole. Critical problems that can be stated would also be the fact that the system is not compatible with the needs of MSCC at this time.
In this course the case studies will have at least one major problem or question. There may be secondary problems or questions but there will be, at most, one or two secondary issues. Use as much space as necessary to provide a rational analysis but if there are more than four or five paragraphs for a given question the analysis needs to be reviewed and made more concise.
