Case Study I-7 Midsouth Chamber of Commerce.
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Teaching Note on Case Study I-7
Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (B):
Cleaning Up an Information Systems Debacle
Objectives
While many firms have difficulties with their software providers, these predicaments are often
preventable through proper IT planning and execution. The situation was certainly no different with the
Midsouth Chamber of Commer
Overview
This case opens with Sage Niele, the newly appointed Vice President of Operations and Chief Financial
Officer for the MSCC, reviewing some of the challenges of her new position. On the day Niele started at
Questions for Discussion
1. Describe the mistakes that the Chamber has made since the implementation of the Unitrak
software i.e., since the Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (A) case study. What should they have
done differently?
implementation. Among them:
Failing to take care of Kovecki: While Kovecki was not exceptionally skilled, he was the only
person within the MSCC who knew the Unitrak system well and the only person who could keep it
Case Study I-7 Midsouth Chamber of Commerce.
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Failing to take care of Lassiter: While this did not harm the MSCC directly, it certainly could have.
Lassiter was ready to leave when he was offered the President position, and it took a considerable
amount of negotiating to convince him to stay. Clearly, Lassiter was a lynchpin for the MSCC.
Inadequate investigation of DMA C
management should have been more thorough in their due diligence stronger questioning could
problems a similarly situated organization (the Lake Erie Chamber of Commerce) had already
Too cost-oriented: It may have been expensive to continue using the consultants or to run both
systems in parallel, but the MSCC still had work to be done. It seems clear by the close of the case
2. How would you evaluate the work that Niele has performed to date?
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3. In what ways does the contract cause problems for the MSCC?
While not directly discussed in the case study, the contract with DMA creates several of the issues faced
by the MSCC management. Some of the contractual problems include:
Absence of performance standards: Without performance standards, the MSCC had no way of
4. What should Niele do now?
With the information discussed above and the committees formed to assist her, Niele has ample
information to make her decision. In addition, these groups will be able to help her obtain buy-in from a
larger cross-section of the company something that did not happen with the initial implementation of the
Unitrak or the DMA-based systems.
Nevertheless, Niele has several issues to address that require her immediate attention:
DMA is unwilling to commit the resources necessary to finish the job: The MSCC has little