Building shared services at RR communications

Question 1: Advantages of a single customer service

·         A single customer service if essential in ensuring that we have few auditors unlike the case of separate customer services where many are in the requirement. That shortens durations for audits and saves on resources.

·         A single customer service ensures quick services to customer service as there is no transferring of customers from one division unit to another.

·         A single customer service helps the company to consolidate data in one place making it easy for the company to trace the services offered to customers.

·         A single customer service ensures that the information technology and the business work together harmoniously, and this leads to delivery of better services to customers.

·         A single customer service ensures that the work of auditors is easy as they will have one pace to look at compared to the many areas in case of a decentralized customer service. Centralization of customer service also ensures more coordination of auditors.

·         A single customer service ensures that there is one IT system that helps manage the entire organization. It saves on the cost of having specific IT needs for each division in case of decentralized customer service.

Question 2: Implementation strategy for a customer service center to guarantee support from the divisional presidents

Enhancing understanding

In this step, it will be necessary to get all the presidents on the same page. It entails eliminating their ill-formed mindset regarding the merger by helping them understand the benefits to accrue from the customer service center. There will be the calculation of the costs and resources in requirement both the separate customer divisions and a single customer center. There will be a head-to-head comparison to help the presidents see the difference between the two systems. Without tangible evidence, they will not understand the need for merging the customer centers, but with the clear comparison of the advantages of the new system and disadvantages of the old, they will comprehend better. There is nothing that interest organizational administrators like cutting down on expenses in the daily operations of the business (Moss & Brodie, 2002). That itself will have the presidents’ full support for the merger.

Laying down objectives

The stage of outlining the objectives and the company vision is also indispensable in ensuring full support by the presidents for the new system. There will be listing the objectives for the news system as this will make it clear why there is a need to merge the divisions. The presidents will have a better understanding of the deliverables of the new system. Some of the objectives, for instance, will be to reduce the amount of resources required to manage the system, to have more accountability for operations, easy mining of data for more intelligent decision-making, etc. A single customer service center will also lead to the easy maintenance of the associated hardware and software as this will take place from a single point (National Computing Center, n.d). There will be need to demonstrate how the objectives have alignment with the company’s vision. That will ensure full support by the presidents.

Unifying the IT and the Business

Unification of IT and business is a vital task required in the company as there is a lack of a common information management system in the organization in question. Business and IT unification is the set of applications supported and delivered, called the application portfolio (McKeen & Smith, 2009). There is a disjoint of the firm’s information assets which means that there is a wide gap that exists between the IT and business. Unifying IT and business and ensuring that the presidents understand why that is needful will make them fully willing to support the strategy. In the effort to unify the IT and business, it will also be necessary to remove the CIO team that has been a great hindrance for the unification. The business cannot master the rapid pace of business complexity, but it is possible for it to manage the consequences of its operations (Dvorak et al., 2013). Those consequences are normally the information visibility and unclear priorities. The IT and business unification will help the company to maintain its competitive advantage; otherwise business complexity will weigh it down.

Appointing an overseer team

Another way to ensure that the implementation of the single customer service center has support by the presidents is to appoint a team to oversee ten maintenance of the data warehouse. The team will handle the management comprised of all the presidents. The members of the overseer team should consist of analysts belonging to vital functional areas of the firm. That will not only ensure the buy-in of the presidents, it will also make the project to have success because the team members are people who have knowledge and capability due to their previous performance. The purpose of having his team is also to assure the presidents that every department has representation in the new system and that there is the protection of their interests. It will increase the potential for global acceptance of the system and help to eliminate any roadblocks to the system’s adoption.

Question 3: Is it possible to achieve an enterprise vision with a decentralized IT function?

A decentralized it functions cannot make an enterprise to achieve its vision because there will be no focusing of the vision of the enterprise. A decentralize IT function in an organization leads to the evolution of many issues in the various company divisions. There can be conflicts of interest regarding the management of the IT functions when they exist in a decentralized format. It is hard to have a common strategy and view from the company’s vision when the IT function exists in such a way. The success metrics will only focus on the individual divisions rather than focusing on the corporate vision of the company. It is easy to integrate the IT and business with centralized IT functions, but if the IT functions do not have centralization, then it is hard to merge the two for organization’s success.

 A centralized IT function ensures that a company information runs seamlessly and is relevant to all departments including the accounting and financial (McKeen & Smith, 2011). A single, standardized and centralized IT operating system enhances quick decision-making across all the departments as all the departments look at the same data. A decentralized system lengthens decision-making. A decentralized IT function makes customers visit different databases for the same company making the purchases and queries take longer than expected by customers. The company vision is to have high quality and improved customer service, and a decentralized IT function makes the achievement of that vision almost impossible.

Question 4: Business and IT problems caused by lack of common information and IM strategy

There are many IT problems and business problems when there is no common information and enterprise information management (IM) strategy as outlined below.

Business problems

The auditing of information is not sharable by all the departments, and the duration of both internal and external auditing is long. Lack of a common information and IM strategy makes the company not focus on the new growth opportunities that may emerge in the market. It will be hard to consolidate information and then make solid plans to seize the upcoming opportunities. The data update takes a long time as it is not in a common place. The management conflicts may also arise due to the different approaches to the administration of the different lines of business of information (Khan & Sikes, 2014). It makes the company not be flexible and responsive to the new and better ways of doing business. Lack of a common information and IM strategy results in less efficiency of services and it also leads to high operational costs; which is uneconomical for the firm (Porter, 2008). The services offered to customers may be poor due to the many points of service for the customers. That will culminate in loss of customers due to dissatisfaction.

IT problems

Important projects aimed at improving the company’s operations will not receive the required support and effort by the entire management and IT administration (Smith & McKeen, 2007). That is because there is no sharing of the information and communication pathway within the organization. There can be data duplication, for instance, the customer data will exist in all the divisions, and this is uneconomical. Management of information is a core to an organization’s success, but if there is no common IM and information strategy, then there will be poor information management. It will consequently make the company lose to its competitors. Backing up of data is problematic due to lack of consistency in the data and duplication of data.  Lack of a common information and IM strategy within the enterprise makes it difficult to have uniform data protection strategies in place, and there will be no accounting for information loss (Smaltz, 2011).

Question 5: Governance mechanisms for common customer data and shared customer service. The useful metrics

Many governance mechanisms and metrics exist for encouraging the implementation and usage of a shared enterprise data system. The first governance mechanism required for the shared customer data and service is the alignment of the divisions and the IT department. The metrics need to have alignment with transparency to make sure that information technology has congruence with the business operations. The governance mechanisms need to incorporate all organizational departments to focus on regulatory issues, risk alleviation, and enhancement of business opportunities. The concern of the metrics should entail making the company information useful in the enterprise system (Porter, 2008). Those metrics need to identify the areas of weakness as well as the avenues of improvement for the firm to have a competitive advantage over its rivals. The company will be identifying the additional governance mechanism required as it cannot come up with all the mechanisms in a day and then be successful. Close governance and metrics will help in any improvement plan of the firm.

References

McKeen, D. & Smith, A. (2009). IT Strategy; Issues and Practices (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

McKeen, D. & Smith, A. (2011). IT Strategy; International edition (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Moss, L. & Brodie, M. (2002). Data Rich, but Information Poor? 

Porter, M. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review. 

Smaltz, H. (2011). Are You Leveraging Your Data or Is Your Data Leveraging You? HIT Exchange , pp. 8-9.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom essay paper writing if you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom research paper services.