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Assignment 3

June 25th, 2007

Due Monday@class, July 2, 2007
Two sections, two sets of questions
You may complete this with your project group or if you’re alone, you may join another group (up to size 4).

Part I Case Study: Advantage 2000 at Owens Corning

This case puts you into the management and implementation chair. This is an example of an IS organization leadership within a company that is transforming the way it does business. Owens Corning was one of the first U.S. based companies to implement common, global business processes using a highly integrated ERP package. Its Advantage 2000 goals included aggressive business objectives. It also illustrates significant business process redesign as well as an IT architecture change. The case describes the 100-week implementation plan, the project team roles, and the learnings from the early releases. The case ends with some implementation dilemmas faced by management in the midst of release 4.

According to an article published in 1999, the Owens Corning ERP implementation had brought the following results:

• 50% increase in inventory turns
• 20% reduction in administrative costs
• Millions of dollars in logistics savings

The logistics savings were largely due to consolidating shipments from different divisions to the same customers, which is enabled by a standardized order fulfillment process across all of its divisions.

Required Readings

1. Owens-Corning Case - In case the link doesn’t work, it’s in the Class Reserves inside the “BBUS 510 Supplemental Readings Folder”

2a. Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System - This is Harvard Business Review article by Davenport on the problems with ERP installations, especially the ERP system from SAP. This is a beginner level reading.

OR

2b. Making ERP Succeed - ERP implementations are typically late, over budget, and under deliver on its promised features. This article from the Wharton School of Business is a classic article. Most of the material still applies although the situation isn’t as depressing as in 1999. It’s shorter but weightier than the Davenport article.

Supplemental Reading

1. Business Processes - Operational Solutions for SAP Implementation - The authors put their textbook onto the web. If you’re into this, you can dive into this topic.

Required Homework Questions

1. What type of organization was Owens Corning? What were its principal products? What was its organizational structure? How would you characterize its recent organizational history?

2. What do you view as the critical success factors for Owens Corning? What were the main issue(s) confronting this organization?

3. What type of IT organization existed at Owens Corning? What were its main challenges? Describe the three major structures for the new IS organization. Why was a major change to this IS organization necessary?

4. What were Owens Corning’s goals for implementing the SAP R/3? In light of this organization and its critical issues, do these make sense to you?

5. What appears to be the advantages and disadvantages of the aggressive ERP implementation schedule? What the do you think is meant by the term “good enough reengineering”? Is this an oxymoron or do you agree with this concept?

6. What problems were being faced at the end of this case? If you were top management at Owens Corning, what would you decide?

7. Answer one of the following two questions:

a. How does the so-called integrated business relate to the execution of critical (esp. cross-functional) processes? What does this mean with respect to silos or stove pipes? Can you break functional silos if the data and hardware are also stovepiped?

b. Give me 5 thoughts regarding: 1) the difficulty with implementing an information system that aspires to arc across the enterprise; versus 2) the potential gains to be made with a successful implementation and adoption.

II. The Essentials of IT Management & IT Project Management

On Monday, July 2, Butch Leonardson visits our classroom. He has served as Vice President of Information Technology for BECU since 1999. BECU is a $4.5 billion Credit Union serving over 330,000 members.

Butch has spent over 25 years in Information Technology (IT) leadership. His initial 12 years in the profession was in strategic IT consulting and large-scale systems implementation. He served as a practice director for the financial services industry at a big five consulting firm. From 1988 to 1996, he was the Associate Executive Director and Chief Information Officer for Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.

He is a frequent speaker on IT organizational leadership and a guest lecturer for the Master’s of Business Administration program at the University of Washington, Bothell and Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. He was the co-professor for UWB’s Summer MBA IT course in 2003. On Monday, we welcome him back as our guest instructor.

Required Reading

1. King County PeopleSoft (in the handout) - Butch will often refer to this reading. The earlier article represents the skewed public face that the county gave to the public regarding the failed install. One of the later articles gives the real deal from an outside auditor.

2. Damn the ROI, Full Speed Ahead- Whyy the ROI numbers you trust may sometimes not help.

Required Homework Questions

1. Do traditional ROI measures yield valid criteria for IT project selection? Why or why not? Give me a set of guidelines or rules (no more than 5) that you would use to guide for performing project due diligence. You should use no more than a few sentences to explain each guideline.

Assignment 2

June 20th, 2007

Due Monday@class, June 25, 2007
You are allowed to complete this assignment with your project group
Four Sections, Four sets of questions

Part I Introduction to CRMs

Sidebar: What is Customer Relationship Management Software? Want to know something? It’s hard to define CRM. Some say it’s a piece of software. Some say it’s a philosophy or concept, that “it’s wherever the customer directly touches your business.” Is your enterprise app simply a piece of automation? Or is it a package of “best practices”? Your “world view” about enterprise apps will shape your approach to project approval and implementation. As for defining CRMs: I can give you a conventional answer and you’ll read some good answers in your readings. In the beginning, we had Sales Force Automation (SFA) software: this was CRM. Now SFA is a subset of CRM. SFA enables the salesperson to track large lists of customers and deals. A standard CRM should track sales, forecasts, commissions and quotas, and have a contact management system. Nevertheless, there are still a few “best-of-breed” CRM systems that are merely SFA tools. The first CRM functions included: order management; sales automation; merchandising, and billing. It later came to include relevant customer history and data analytics. CRMs that power websites often include: dynamic personalization (e.g. “My T-Mobile”) and web analytics. The list goes on and on. The graphic below is basic representation of the kinds of elements within a CRM. CRM Applications & Data “What industries are leading the way in CRM implementations? As in most leading-edge technology implementations, the financial services and telecommunications industries set the pace in CRM. Other industries are on the CRM bandwagon include consumer goods makers and retailers and high tech firms. Which industry is behind the curve? Heavy manufacturing.” (CIO Magazine article: “What is CRM?”) Two Sides to Online Customer Service People also debate the relationship of CRM to customer service. You’ll see the debate: CRM does not equal customer service. Duh. It’s always been more than just the software. There are actually two sides to this coin. An increasing number of CRM packages help companies set up web-based customer service and troubleshooting guides. For example, the following project was headed by one of our computing students. A large engineering tool company set up some rather extensive troubleshooting web pages. As far as they can figure, the average online problem resolution costs them under $15 per person, even if the person later makes a phone call. This is a liberal, or high figure, and I can confirm it through viewing the actual data. For folks who start with a phone call, the average cost was over $40 and that was a very low figure. Furthermore, customers who went to the web first to resolve their problem were likely to have their problem resolved in a fraction of the time and report greater satisfaction. This did not seem to vary with problem complexity. Can you see the unintended problem here? The bogey is when the online customer service is so good, that people are much more satisfied with the online experience than the in-phone experience with the company. The good online customer service simply raises expectations regarding quality of service. Can you guess what happens? What can you do to help with this? It’s the other danger with good web-based customer service. It’s when the software is better than the help processes around the human service reps…which only further enrages the customers.

Required Readings

The first three sets of readings are really really light. The first and third readings require that someone “bites the bullet” and registers at the Wharton site to grab the article.

1. Read this two-pager from the Wharton Professors: Making customer relationship management work. The Profs at the Wharton School of Penn discuss the state of CRM in today’s enterprises. You’ll need to sign up and perhaps search back for the article.

2. The Self Destruction of AT&T Wireless - “Success is a horrible teacher” and if this is true, then all of us have learned from the twice-failed installation of Siebel at AT&T wireless. I’ve asked a number of people about whether this article was accurate. The general response has been that the CIO (in the article) isn’t as culpable as detailed in the article. On the other hand, he wasn’t popular among the IT troops and so perhaps it captures the spirit.

3. Why Some Companies Succeed at CRM (and Many Fail) - “What makes some companies so much better at managing customer relationships than their competitors? Put a different way, how are companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Pioneer Hi-bred Seeds, Fidelity Investments, Lexus, Intuit, and Capital One able to stay more closely connected to customers than their rivals, in ways that significantly influence the profitability of the firm? It’s a question that Wharton marketing professor George Day answers in his paper. His research notes, among other things, three distinct approaches to customer relationship management (CRM), each with dramatically different results.” You might need to sign up and perhaps search back for the article, although I’m hoping I got you the right link to go directly without revealing yourselves.

Supplemental Readings

These are not required readings. The following two just clarify some of the issues around CRM implementations.

Four Myths about CRMs - A two-pager with pithy advice about choosing CRM software.

The Truth about CRM - This mirrors the principles outlined in “Four Myths about CRMs” but it’s dramatized by real world examples. It’s longer but is more narrative rather than a glorified outline.

Homework Questions

1. Integrate the AT&T wireless with one or more of your readings. How did AT&T wireless contradict best practices? Can you and your group create a few lessons learned from the AT&T wireless story?

2. Why in the world would you want to even install enterprise applications into a mid-size or large enterprise? Thought question: offer a handful (no more than 5) reasons for having enterprise application?

3. Is CRM software really just software? Is the CRM vendor represent a software company? Or does it properly represent a process management or even management consulting company? Feel free to argue both side of the coin. Given your answer, does it create your own best practice for due diligence in choosing such a vendor?

II. Hosted vs Traditional?

Salesforce.com is the most famous hosted CRM application. Some people laughed when it first came out. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for Salesforce to create a believable niche. Since then, Siebel has been acquired and has also delved into web-based, hosted CRMs.

Required Browsing

Feel free to cruise around the web sites. One or more of your group members may elect for the free trial of SalesForce to get a quick look.

1. Siebel Home Pages - Where else to learn about Siebel?

2. SalesForce.com - Where else to learn about SalesForce.com? Did you want to play with the free trial?

Homework Questions

1. What type of solution would be applicable to your company? Would your company use a hosted solution? Why or why not?

2. Create a set of guidelines for deciding between a hosted versus traditional CRM solution.

3. Create a set of guidelines for choosing between a set of hosted CRM solutions. This of course assumes you’re interested in a hosted solution.

III. Supply Chain Management and Starbucks

On Monday, July 25, Chris Jones will be our featured guest. Chris was the architect at Aspen Technologies, the leading supply chain management solution in the oil and chemical industries. He is now at Amazon.com, in charge of a key piece that enables order fulfillment. He was a business professor at Wharton, Simon Fraser, and the University of Washington.

This mini-case gets into an IT holy grail: a seamless, integrated IT.

Starbucks was once cited as one of the best examples of piecing together an integrated supply chain via a Best of Breed approach. They proposed that different pieces manage each part of their supply chain. “Starbucks decided that none of these ERP packages could meet its needs. Instead, it opted for a best-of-breed approach, which meant pulling together nine separate components.” Considering that the reading is pretty thin, it simultaneously underscores some core issues: integration; implementation approaches, and the use of IT.

Their CIO, Deborah Gillotti, was named one of the 100 best CIOs in the USA. In the case, we also have mention of Ted Garcia, senior vice president of supply chain operations, Tim Duffy, director of supply chain systems and support.

1. The Starbucks Caselet - This reading is in your packet. it emphasizes their best of breed IT approach to Supply Chain Management. It’s really a brief two pages.

3. The Green Mountain Counter Caselet - This reading is in your packet. This small coffee company used a single vendor and they’re downright happy about it, thank you. This is barely 1 1/2 pages.

Homework Questions

1. What’s the setting for Starbucks and its IT? Why is a comprehensive supply chain management solution so critical for Starbucks?

2. Starbucks has taken a “best of breed” approach to their supplier management solutions. Looking at the case, do you agree with them?

3. From the readings and your own unique insights, what appear to be the relative advantages and disadvantages of using a “best of breed” versus “single vendor” approach? What do you think of the suggestion to have a “hybrid approach”? How do you resolve the difficulties between both positions?

4. Many companies choose to install its CRM portions first. Why do you suppose this is the case? From a “rational” perspective, what makes better sense? CRM first, SCM later? SCM first, CRM later? Feel free to argue both sides of the matter.

IV. Production Management of MIS Departments

Chris Oleson (and his co-authors) will be visiting us on Wednesday, June 27. What is their business? This group helps MIS departments go about the business of smoothly operating…period. The group has finished the book and we eagerly await its publication. The readings and the first question come from Chris Oleson

Required Readings

1. New York Times go Off-line
2. Glitch delays email at AOL
3. Bound to Fail
4. Salmon dies - you might need to log in to the Seattle Times.

Homework Questions

1. “What are the top 3-5 things you are looking for in your next automobile or truck?” I kid you not, this is the question. I suspect he may be getting philosophical here.

2. What questions do you have for Chris Oleson?

Assignment 1

June 18th, 2007

Due Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Can be completed alone or by a group up to three

Your answers should be written in the form of a memo. Use a brief writing style, quick to the point. This does not mean brief of good content. Hand in well thought out answers, not merely restating the text or articles. You can have long essays, but it should be quick to its points. You are also permitted to submit answers in outline form. I love tables, charts, and graphs to illustrate your thoughts. Why write about pros and cons, or contrast between two choices, when you can neatly insert the info into a table?

I. For Newbies

I’m requiring that you still learn some basic definitions (in a separate blog post), although many of you already know this and more. You are free to use any text, although you may wish to save a few dollars and use the excellent reference sites listed below. Simply insert the word, e.g. “client server”, and you’ll receive a link to a full definition. Part I does not require you to hand anything to the instructor. You may also wish to use wikipedia.

Helpful Readings

CIO Magazine - It’s free and it’s about IT from a general management perspective. The research center area includes some decent article.

II. Alignment

You say potato, I saw potatoe. I say alignment, you say strategic. There are historical reasons for why we didn’t have a strategically focused IT. One problem: we’re still talking about alignment.

Required Reading

1. Why Is Business-IT Alignment So Difficult? - This issue is still at the top of the boiler for IT.

Supplemental Readings

This is what it means: not required. These are provided if you want other readings on the topic.

1. Why We’re Still Talking About Alignment - This is a seminal panel on the topic. Most of the material still applies.

2. The Business of IT is Business - List of best practices.

3. Really Basic conversation about Alignment - If you really want a basic primer on the subject, this is it.

Homework Question (Hand this in!)

1. How do you think you’d go about defining and assessing alignment? You may think back to a committee you were on, or perhaps what your work unit was trying to achieve with technology? As strongly implied in the readings, we’ve historically done a crappy job of achieving alignment in IT. Why do you think this has been such a problem in IT management (it’s been continually among the top 3 problems annually specified by executives during the last 10 years). Why is our failure rate so high?

Discussion Questions

You are NOT to hand in your answers to these questions. These are possible topics for discussion in a future class session.

1. What do you think are the top 5 responsibilities of the MIS or IT group in a corporation?

2. Specify the attributes of a good IT project manager or analyst (choose one: either an analyst or a project manager). How technically sophisticated must a good IT project manager or analyst be? Use your combination of work experience, prior classwork, and gut instinct to answer this.

III: MidSouth Chamber of Commerce Case

This is an easy read. I won’t require a lot of questions, but we’ll go over it in class on Wednesday. I’ll simply want you to read it and answer one set of questions.

Homework Questions (hand this in too!)

1. Is Kovecki the right person to be the IS director? Is he the most capable person to be a systems analyst? Or isn’t he? How should we educate and train for our IS managers? Be ready to argue with your fellow MBA students. Who do you think should be the project champion? What steps should have been taken? What should be done?

IV. The Foundations for Workflow Modeling

A non-printable electronic version of the chapter is below. Alec’s current project is with the data and process integration at the Northern Ireland Justice System. With luck, we’ll be able to grab him if he passes through Seattle during this next month. He simply believe in this heuristic: “Simplicity is for Professionals, Complexity is for Beginners” (and “Simple Mindedness is for numbskulls”).

Required Reading

The approach in a nutshell - This is really a quick overview chapter. Without being brazen, it goes over the scope of the textbook. “Brazen” means, “in Chapter 7, we’ll be discussing blah blah blah”.

Homework Questions (hand this in)

1. Do you agree with Alec’s contention that functions rather than results get tagged as process outcomes? (Can we really reengineer the accounts payable department?)

2. What do you think about the relationship between unclear processes and scope creep? Is it true that when we lack clarity in IT projects, we substitute quantity for quality? Feel free to speculate with your colleagues.

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