Business Proposal for Integrating Information Technology in a Company

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S​‌‌‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‌‍​eminole Industries is a fake company. ASSIGNMENT: Create a proposal appropriate for submission to Donald and Pam. (hints: avoid jargon; never use “etc.”) The paper has 5 components to be addressed: 1. Introduction, no more than one short paragraph; do not use an abstract. The introduction summarizes the situation and states the problem(s). 2. What processes do you propose (change management, project management, changing the business culture) for solving Seminole’s information technology problem? Consider, what existing cultural processes can stay, which have to be changed or modified, or removed? 3. A one page summary of these information systems: database, transaction processing sys- tems; ERP systems; supply chain management systems; SaaS, IaaS, SaaS. READ ME: it’s a given that any and every company needs a database. Don’t include “database” as one of the 2 systems that the company needs. 4. What are 2 systems do you propose that Seminole incorporate? Address how each system addresses a part of Seminole’s problem(s). 5. Conclusion, no more than one short paragraph: reminder of the problem, and a statement of the benefits of addressing the problem? FORMATTING Length: body of paper, no fewer than 5 pages Title page; Separate reference page if necessary (references not required, but feel free to use them if you need to) Line Spacing, 1.5 Font, Times New Roman, font size, 10, 11, or 12 The paper will be submitted to TurnItIn.com SEMINOLE INDUSTRIES: what should the company do now? Summary of the Situation: Donald Dewar sat in his office reflecting on the tough past several months. He was the head of the international department at Seminole Industries. Recently, the Chairman of the Board had called Donald into her office. The upcoming British exit from the EU crisis was frightening the Seminole community, and it was clear that there were significant problems in gathering and disseminating appropriate information on both local / logistical and global issues. The “Brexit” situation was serving to push other Dewar-term technology-related issues to the surface. The current US political situation was problematic as well. The stock market was in flux, and employment was healthy, but strategic planners in the company were wary that those trends might not last. People were also concerned with the new presidential administration’s some- what combative stance toward the world economic community. Seminole is a respected producer of complex fittings, made to order for construction machines such as trucks and loaders. Seminole manufactures most parts in the US, but approximately 20% of its operations are through outsourcing and vendor contracts, mostly in non-critical parts that do not have to adhere to government and OSHA standards. The Chairperson’s question was simple: How can we leverage information technology more effectively? Seminole did not have integrated information systems. Local branches had their own small computers to keep track of local and global customers and handle the daily operations. While this type of operation would seem to be inefficient, Seminole has a history of successful business operations, and has a business culture that functions reasonably well using shared spread- sheets (emailed) fax, telephone and personal communication to maintain the business. The usual business process was that Donald had to call people in each branch and ask them to manually search their records for business operations across local and global sites. Site records were by customer, and it was incumbent on each branch manager to pull together information about vendors, customers and partners to address Donald’s requests. Donald seemed to recall a monthly report, which presented data by US site and country, but when he asked the main branch data processing department about the report, he was told that it had been discontinued over six months earlier when no one expressed interest in it. In Donald’s opinion, and demonstrated by the current situation, these reports should have been retained. They were of vital concern in reviewing Seminole’s current status. In checking with his people on why the reports were not used, he was told that because they were never reconciled with the various sites’ manual records, their accuracy was always suspect. Furthermore, the reports were always one calendar quarter behind: the March first-quarter report was for information collected as of December 31. Donald had asked for a meeting with the data center manager, Pamela Lawrence, to see what could be done. Recently, Seminole has begun to understand the need to gather data on the entire operation, so that they could strategize to address the threats presented by the global downturn. Because t​‌‌‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‌‍​he organization’s historical success was built on personalized service to its clients, branch managers had almost total autonomy to manage their branches in the manner that would be most satisfactory to their clients, considering local customs, services expected, and government regulations in a particular part of the country. Each branch manager had the authority to operate within these policy guidelines. The 11 US branches reported directly to Donald Dewar. The relationships between Donald and his branch managers were excellent. He had reasonable confidence in their judgment and was kept informed through phone conversations, faxes and email transmissions of Excel spread- sheets. Donald made semi-annual visits to US branches. Donald also managed vendor relation- ships with manufacturing partners in Taiwan and China. He did not visit these sites, but made it a point to enter into solid contracts, and have good long distance with vendor site managers. Once every quarter, each branch manager visited headquarters in Silver Springs, Maryland, to review clients, discuss plans, and exchange ideas. Donald would try to schedule these meetings so that as many managers as possible would be in Silver Springs at the same 2me. This afforded a chance for the managers to meet and to exchange information about mutual clients. All in all, the working environment at Seminole was compettive but cordial, and there was a feeling of trust and mutual respect among management personnel. The outsourcing partners were highly computerized, but were able to “dumb down” their information and communication with Seminole US to use only email and Excel spreadsheets. Other than monthly statements, client records were kept manually by each individual account officer. This arrangement worked well, but the threatened upset of the EUC brought technology fears to the surface. Seminole had a cultured management and communication system based on “traditional” or “old think” business practices, which worked long as things were going smoothly in the larger environment. Starting in the mid 90’s, Seminole’s competition started to offer computerized services to clients. Online ordering, visual product databases with product descriptions, online help desks, interactive web sites and weblogs were becoming common. Competitors even had Facebook pages and were creating marketing videos that could be searched for and found on both Google and YouTube. Seminole’s “personalized services” approach was no longer offsetting the increased use of technology by competitors. Branch managers, headquarters management and now the Board were beginning to understand that Seminole needed to make greater use of information technology as a competitive tool. This had been the subject of discussion recently, but nothing was done. 1. . . . because no single branch wanted to be the first to engage with technology. 2. Technology changes will require capital investment, which would threaten management bonuses. 3. Large scale changes involve not only implementation problems, but significant changes to the business culture 4. Site managers felt that they could maintain relationships through continued personal interaction, which has been part of a successful business model. Toward a Solution: When Pamela Brown, Seminole’s most technology-savvy employee, arrived in Donald’s office, Donald had already decided to seek her advice on how to approach this problem: 1. Donald wanted to be able to pull up an electronic file on each customer and be able to determine that customer’s current orders, historical orders, financial status, and other data. 2. As to sourcing partners and vendors, he wanted the same information, and he wanted to be able to access any and all of this information from any Web-enabled computer. This information would enable Seminole’s personnel to know the status of any of Seminole’s projects, orders and assets. It would also give them more complete information to use to assess those assets. 3. He wanted also to be able to get a sense of the public dialogue about the company, and to participate proactively in that dialogue. “Can we do all this, Pam?” Donald asked. “Frankly, I’m not sure,” Pam replied, “but we’ll need to do some planning first. In a sense, we’re lucky. Because we don’t have sophisticated IT systems, we may be starting at the beginning, and it will be expensive. But the upside, if it can be called an upside, is that we can plan for the extended future by addressing our near future problems. One thing is for sure, there will be significant costs involved. Not all tools are expensive, though. We can look at social media tools for communication and creating knowledge bases. And we​‌‌‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‌‍​ should investigate ‘the cloud’ for tools that can help us.