Rich Con Case Study Review

1. What do you think were the reasons for Rich-Con’s difficulties in implementing its new information systems? Think about the principal root causes of the problems Sawyer encountered? Be precise and justify your response.

Rich-Con Steel had difficulty implementing the software from a number of reasons. If all these root causes are address, then operations would have moved smoothly.

Manager distribution- Marty Sawyer was the new president of the company during a big change. She was responsible to integrating a new IT system, beginning the operations of a million dollar machine, and managing a company. She should have relied on technical managers for the IT department rather on taking on the challenge. Anyone could get bogged down in IT issues that will take much time and energy to resolve. In this case, she could not free herself from these problems, and the rest of the company fell apart.

No incentives- the employees had no incentive to learn the software. From past experience, it seems that implementation of software into a company has more resistance than praise. Employees need incentives to learn the programs and training lessons. They went back to hand writing, because it is quicker for them in the short run.

The big transition- One of the troubling decisions managers have to face when implementing new IT systems is the transition. Will it be slow or should the product be pushed? Pushing the entire product in this case caused shock and chaos.

No transfer of knowledge between departments- The sales department was doing well with the product. While one department was strong, others were struggling. There was not enough information to determine whether an employee from the sales department to billing, if possible the manger should have used this technique to distribute the knowledge throughout the company. In my past company, the more experienced AutoCAD workers would spend some of their time to help the less developed employees. I remember that one engineer helped me for two and a half hours straight. That is a good management decision and very sustainable.

Lack of communication- After two weeks, they found out the shop was not getting their paper work through. Orders were being doubled, canceled and inventory was lost. This type of work is at the core of the company. Without shop the customer