###BeginCaseStudy###
Case Study# 3
Corporate Information and Physical Locations
A Datum Corporation is a midsize consumer marketing company based in Denver, Colorado,
that has a number of regional offices. A.Datum provides marketing consulting and services to
customers across the United States. A.Datum has enjoyed steady revenue growth during the past
decade, earning approximate annual revenues of $50 million.
EXISTING ENVIRONMENT
The company has an incentive program whereby Engagement Managers and Engagement staff
are rewarded for reducing project costs. In addition, rewards are increased exponentially with the
number of hours billed and/or the number of staff assigned to a project. Despite these incentives,
however, staff turnover has increased.
Existing Business Processes
A.Datum has the following business processes:
Business process for hiring new employees – Each office is responsible for its own hiring. New
employees are required to complete a variety of paper forms that are faxed to the Human
Resources department in Denver. The information is then entered manually into a third-party
human resources database system. Business process for assigning resouces to customer
projects – For each new project that A.Datum starts, an Engagement Manager selects an
Engagement Team based on the manager’s preferences, the team member’s availability, and the
project’s requirements. Business process for drafting proposals – Proposal drafting and
opportunity management are handled by the regional offices and are responsible for the primary
source of revenue for A.Datum. Proposals are developed by a team of four to five Engagement
Team members and generally take one to three weeks to complete. Each team member
dedicates between six and 10 hours to building one of the many sections of the proposal. Team
members collaborate on documents by using e-mail. All proposals are reviewed by the regional
office lead prior to being submintted. Business process for project collaboration – Documents and
materials for A.Datum’s client projects are usually developed and reviewed collaboratively by the
Engagement Manager and the Engagement Team members. Collaboration is facilitated by using
e-mail.
Existing Technology Infrastructure
The technology infrastructure is managed at corporate headquarters in Denver. The company
currently has an Enterprise Agreement (EA) with Microsoft, but has not deployed Windows Vista
or Microsoft Office 2007.
BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS
Planned Changes
The company is experiencing a decline in new business, so management is planning to freeze
new employee hiring to reduce costs.
Problem Statements
Manual routing and data entry processes cause delays in new employee onboarding and
inaccurate data entry. Scheduling of resources is a problem when projects take longer than
anticipated, creating resource shortages for other engagements, and pushing back start dates
leaving staff underutilized. Engagement Team members are often asked to help develop sales
proposals, usually in addition to their current engagements. The current drafting process is
manually intensive, and employees must recreate similar content from proposal to proposal.
Multiple versions of documents cause issue with versioning and unnecessary utilization of server
storage. The CIO has stressed the importance of improving the company’s underlying technology
infrastructure, but most of the staff is wary of technological change.
Business Goal
The President of A.Datum wants to increase revenue by 10 percent and decrease overhead by
10 percent during the next 10 months. A.Datum of initiatives are underway to reduce costs,
though little has been done to increase revenue.
INTERVIEWEES
Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Supports the IT Directors.
Provides insight into current technology and technology initiatives.
Regional Office Lead
Financial responsibilities with full insight into administrative overhead.
Provides insight into management practice variance across offices, and highlights additional
challenges not covered by corporate.
Engagement Manager
Mid-level manager in charge of engagement delivery.
Makes staffing, resource, and delivery decisions.
Provides insight into problems and opportunities relating to customer engagements.
Engagement Team Member
General Information Worker (IW), supporting the Engagement Manager.
End-user of Microsoft technology, responsible for content development and delivery.
Deputy Director of Human Resources (HR)
Supports Director of HR and key influencer in resource assignment decisions.
May gather HR feedback on different processes that touch HR.
Deputy Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Supports the CFO to manage the organization’s finances and financial reporting.
###EndCaseStudy###
You propose a solution to Woodgrove Bank. The bank responds that the proposed solution is too
expensive and will take too long to implement. You need to identify which negotiation points will
likely convince Woodgrove Bank to purchase the proposed solution. Which two negotiation points
should you identify? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose two.)
A.
Rely on the customer for project management
B.
Stage the solution rollout so that value is added incrementally
C.
Incorporate more of the customers own IT staff into the solution rollout
D.
Rewrite the statement of work (SOW) to narrow the scope of the solution