LXS Ltd. Meets Tight System Development Deadlines via the St. Lucia Connection

LXS Ltd., a Toronto software house, has identified high market demand for their proposed new product called Estitherm, a Web-based software tool that supports heat loss calculations for architectural engineers designing structures. Estitherm’s development requires sophisticated Java programming skills, however, and the project stalls when LXS is unable to hire enough additional programmers to be able to meet the development deadlines dictated by competition. Through lucky coincidence, LXS’ chief scientist stumbles onto a pool of Java talent while vacationing on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Negotiations follow, a contract is signed and the project is quickly brought to successful completion with the aid of Caribbean programmers, working via the Internet. Similar contract arrangements hold the promise for improved economic conditions in Caribbean nations and can reduce software backlogs for companies in developed nations, but better mechanisms are needed to bring together buyers and sellers of IT services.

Ford Mondeo

This case weighs the advantages and disadvantages of going global. Ford presented its 1993 Mondeo model, sold as Mystique and Contour in North America, as a “worldcar”. It tried to build a single model for all markets globally to optimize scale of production. This required strong involvement from suppliers and heavy usage of new information technology. The case discusses the difficulties that needed to be overcome as well as the gains that Ford expected from the project. New technology allowed Ford to overcome most of the difficulties it had faced in earlier attempts to produce a worldcar. IT was flanked by major organization changes within Ford. Globalization did not spell obvious success though. While Ford may in the end have succeeded in building an almost global car, it did not necessarily build a car that was competitive in various markets. The Mondeo project resulted in an overhaul of the entire organization under the header of Ford 2000. This program put a heavy emphasis on globalization although it perhaps focused too little on international cooperation and too much on centralization. In terms of Ford’s own history, the Mondeo experience may not be called a new Model T, but does represent an important step in Ford’s transformation as a global firm.

Better Army Housing Management Through Information Technology

The Department of the Army must provide its personnel with acceptable housing at minimum cost within the vicinity of military installations. To achieve these housing objectives, the Army often must enter into agreements for the long-term construction of on post housing or the leasing of existing off post housing. A decision technology system, called the Housing Analysis Decision Technology System (HADTS), has been developed to support the construction or leasing management process. The HADTS architecture is based on a combination of database, econometric, heuristic programming, mapping, and decision support techniques. Its deployment has enabled the Department of the Army to realize significant economic, management, and political benefits. Future enhancements, motivated by the challenges from the current system, promise to increase the power of HADTS and to further improve the Army’s ability to manage its housing assets.

The Australasian Food Products Co-Op

This case tells the story of a Food Products Co-op from “Australasia” and their attempt to create a global information system. The Co-op is among the 20 largest food enterprises in the world, and international information systems (IIS) have taken on increasing importance as the organization expanded rapidly during the 1980s and even more so as the enterprise refined their global operations in the last decade. Set in the six years since 1995, the story demonstrates the many pitfalls in the process of evolving an IIS as it follows the Co-op’s global business development. Two key findings stood out among the many lessons that can be drawn from the case: first, the notion of an “information system migration” following the development of the Global Business Strategy of the multi-national enterprise through various stages; second, the failure of the IIS to adapt to the organization’s strategy changes set up a field of antagonistic forces, in which business resistance summarily killed all attempts by the information technology department to install a standard global information system.

A Case Study of IT Chargeback in government Agency

In 1997 the Nevada Legislature mandated the formation of an IT division for the Nevada Department of Public Safety (NDPS). Prior to this time the 14 separate divisions within the department had carried out their own IT functions. The legislature also mandated that the full, actual costs for the IT Department would be allocated to the divisions on the basis of use, a form of IT funding known as “hard money chargeback”. Complicating the issue considerably is the legal prohibition in Nevada of commingling funds from multiple sources for any project, including interdivisional IT projects. Five years after its creation, there is a widespread perception among users that the IT Division is ineffective. Both the IT manager and the department chiefs believe the cumbersome chargeback system contributes to the ineffectiveness. This case introduces the concept of chargeback, and then details an investigation into the “true costs of chargeback” by the chief of the NDPS’s IT Division.

Cross-Cultural Implementation of Information System

GHI, an international service conglomerate, recently acquired a new subsidiary in an Asian country. A new information system was planned to facilitate the re-branding of the subsidiary. The project was outsourced to an application service provider through a consultant. A functional manager from another subsidiary in the country was assigned to assist the development of specifications. The customized information passed numerous benchmarking tests, and was ready for implementation. At that point, it was discovered that the native users at the rural location of the new subsidiary could not comprehend any of the user interfaces programmed in the English language. A depressed local management team, with a depleted technology budget, must reinvent all operating procedures dependent on the new information system.

Corporate Collapse and IT Governance within the Australian Airlines Industry

The purpose of this case study is to highlight IS/IT governance arrangements in multi-layered organisations for the purpose of advancing knowledge about the effectiveness of such arrangements when, as in this case, the holding company collapses. The Kendell case is an example of a smaller entity with its own IS/IT governance embedded in a larger holding company with separate governance practices. Such arrangements raise questions relating to issues such as what most appropriate style and form of governance is required, whether benefits may be derived from multi-tiered governance systems for corporate groups, and if synergies can be created. The insistence of the Kendell IT manager and management team on autonomy in Kendell’s IS/IT governance proved to be an integral element in its corporate resilience during the collapse of the holding company.

Success in Business-to-Business E-Commerce

This teaching case focuses on Cisco’s experience with their trading partner, Compaq NZ, and the findings contribute to strategies on how businesses can succeed in e-commerce participation.

Managing the NICS Project at the Royal Canadian University

This case describes the installation of an IBM mainframe computer at the Royal Canadian University. The goal of the described project was to establish a Numerically Intensive Computing Service (NICS) in order to provide “first-class” computing facilities to the researchers. Due to a number of factors, NICS failed to meet its objectives and the university abandoned the project within the first two years of its operations. The factors that contributed to its failure include: advancements in computing technology and changes in the computing style of end users; political and other non-technical considerations in selecting the system; and the weak and adversarial relationship between the computer center staff and the senior university administrators. These factors, with a special emphasis on organizational issues, are discussed throughout the case. At the end of the case, the reader is invited to provide solutions for managing the current failure situation and minimizing its negative consequences.

Success and Failure in Building Electronic Infrastructures in the Air Cargo Industry

Reasons behind the failure and success of large-scale information systems projects continue to puzzle everyone involved in the design and implementation of IT. In particular in the airline industry very successful (passenger reservation) systems have been built which have totally changed the competitive arena of the industry. On the cargo side, however, attempts to implement large-scale community systems have largely failed across the globe. Air cargo parties are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of IT and they understand the value that IOS could provide for the total value chain performance. However, whereas in other sectors IOSs have been very successful, there are only fragmented examples of successful global systems in the air cargo community, and the penetration of IOS in the air cargo industry is by no means pervasive. This case describes the genesis and evolution of two IOSs in the air cargo community and identifies plausible explanations that lead one to be a success and one to be a failure. The two examples are drawn from Europe and from Hong Kong SAR. Thecae clearly demonstrates that it was the complex, institutional and technical choices made by the initiators of the system in terms of their competitive implications that were the main causes for the systems’ fate. The case thus concludes that it was the institutional factors involved in the relationships of the stakeholders that led to the opposite manifestations of the two initiatives, and that such factors should be taken into account when designing and implementing large-scale information systems.