Case Study 1 Homework Will There Need Additional People Support And

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Teaching Note on Case Study I-6

HH Gregg:

Deciding on a New Information Technology Platform

Objectives

This case study of

with minimal changes made to protect the identities of some of the participants and some of the vendor

organizations involved. This case describes the complex and often risky process of making an

Secondary objectives of this case include:

2. Illustrating that often an internally developed system, in place for many years, has automated and

4. Illuminating the situation, more common than not, where such a system change puts the business

5. Recognition that the cost of system changes goes beyond the technology purchase and

Overview

appliances, headquartered in Indianapolis. This family-run business started in 1955 as an appliance

This system purchase included eventual acquisition of the source code, and the company was able to

with minimal external help enhance and expand the system to meet the needs of the business for twenty

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Unfortunately, Hewlett-Packard (HP), the vendor providing the underlying hardware, operating system,

and database management system (which were all HP proprietary products), announced in 2003 that it

was discontinuing its sales and support of the platform and suggested that its customers would need to

appointed the CIO. After reviewing the existing vendor evaluations, he charged the team with rethinking

the project and looking for additional alternatives. Was there a way to move the existing application

programs to a new hardware, operating system, and database management system platform while

maintaining the existing application functionality and user interface? They discovered that Ford Motor

Case Study I-6

Questions for Discussion

1. Identify the key players in the case and describe their respective roles.

Jerry Throgmartin, CEO and Chairman, and Mike Stout, CAO these officers recognized the

need for automation and led the original procurement of the existing HP system to replace a paper

procurement through 2002, he was also the CFO.

2. Focus on the role of the first CIO. What was his approach to the problem? Was this appropriate

for the given situation?

Given the HP announcement, there was certainly a need for urgency as this problem was addressed.

Spending two-plus years window shopping what was available from every vendor for any type of retail

operation could be seen as a significant waste of time.

Even if Burns chose not to make a detailed functional specification at the beginning of the process, clearly

3. on needs to summarize to the

Board of Directors? How many options do they have?

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Obviously, they have proposals in hand from Delphi and Sentra. Nelson has spoken with the Texas firm

that worked on the Ford migration as well as members of the Ford team that carried out the project.

4. Are there costs to be considered that are not quantified in the case?

Clearly, yes, there are additional costs to be considered. If there is a platform change that requires the

5. How would you evaluate the alternatives? What would you put on a single PowerPoint slide to

When asked this question, most students list the options we covered in question number three above, and

6. What part of the system conversion in a situation like this presents the greatest risk?

Any IT organization has as its highest priority to protect the business and insure continuous operation.

Most organizations, like a retail company, need to continually process transactions in order to serve their

customers and keep moving forward.

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7. Whatever path is chosen, what are the options for implementation? Can this be phased in or

to a new platform at the same time. What other options are

there? Obviously, one would prefer to phase a new system in to try it on a limited basis and, after

success, expand its usage. In a retail environment, to do this you virtually need to divide th

What Happened

Nelson:

Contracted for the

migration would take and to identify risk areas.

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The major activities during the migration were:

Identifying which of the 3,600 programs were actually being used in production. The production

libraries held many copies of the same program old versions had been kept. In some cases, the

business had reverted back to a previous business process so the older version of the program that

The Conversion

The conversion was completed on a Sunday in late February 2010, after the stores closed. The data in

both systems were balanced

turned on. The first orders through the new system were Web sales that came in early that Monday

morning. The warehouses were closed, and

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