Problem/Issue
Statement
Arthur Andersen had viewed internal IT the way largest
companies do today: as a cost center with an assigned budget, run largely by
technology-savvy engineers with limited involvement from management
-
Problems
o
Systems were composed of a patchwork of legacy applications
that did not interconnect readily with each other
o
Due to the obsolete software platforms on which
they ran, key systems and databases could not be accessed remotely through the
internet. (75 percent of Accenture’s employees spent significant amounts of
time working outside Accenture offices)
o
Large, expensive private networks were required
for this task, and financial information often had to be manually compiled to
aggregate results from different offices.
o
Andersen’s offices around the world had adopted
their own individual accounting and human resources software systems, making it
very complex to get an up-to-date snapshot of the whole organization’s status
at any one time.
Situation
Assessments
Accenture’s incoming IT management had a different vision,
which was to IT not as a cost center but as a business within a business.
-
Criteria
o
IT products and services conceived and driven by
the needs of internal customers and stakeholders
o
Clear and verifiable services levels for each of
the IT products and services offered
o
IT spending priorities would be determined by a
panel of C-level executives from different realms of the business
o
Cost of the new upcoming IT management
List of Plausible Alternative
Courses of Action
-
Alternatives
o
Technology platforms with a decentralized
approach
§
Each country chose its own IT platforms
o
Mixed approach
§
Same standard applications would run throughout
the enterprise but would be managed independently by individual offices
o
One firm approach
§
Centralized implementation of its most critical systems,
with all its offices interconnected on the same “instance” of a software platform
Recommendation
-
Quality and Logical Recommendation
o
One firm approach
§
It would bring advantage of generating important
economies of scale for the company. When dealing with only one vendor or even a
few select vendors to meet its application needs, Accenture would gain leverage
as it pressed for deeper discounts in licensing fees and maintenance.
§
Accenture could efficiently operate with a lower
IT support head count and reduce training costs for its IT specialists while
leveraging economies of scale under the establishment of global support
centers.
§
Deploy new technology more quickly and less
expensively.
No comments:
Post a Comment