Building Shared Services at RR Communications

The major lines of RR Communications business include the internet, cable TV service, landline, and mobile. All the IT systems of the company are decentralized, and therefore every department had their customer service center, databases, and IT systems. Vince Patton (the VP) decided to redesign the organization’s structure by creating a single enterprise organization that would enable the company to be simplified and standardized. Additionally, he set up a single customer service center that would enable the company to share common data. While Vince Patton’s idea would yield positive results, he faced issues from the CIOs who did not support the implementation of the idea as they knew that they would lose their powers if the idea moved on. Vince Patton realized their attempts and decided to fire them so as to be able to move ahead with centralizing the system.
Key Issues of RR Communications
Firstly, the decentralization brought all the issues realized in the study as the CIOs were unwilling to coordinate and understand the ways of working together to achieve a common objective. Additionally, the CIOs proved to have poor leadership skills due to their lack of coordination and cooperation with the IT Vice President. The result of such misbehavior led to them being fired up. Thirdly, decentralization of database posed a huge problem to the departments as issues such as data duplication; poor data management, storage, and security made them complicate the processes in the company. Customers were not satisfied with the services of the company as they felt that the process was complicated as they received four bills, where it was supposed to be only one bill. Besides, the CIOs were involved in projects that could not realize beneficial results, for example, they could not support Patton’s idea of centralization of the business, an idea that would reduce the company’s expenditure by the huge amount of money. Finally, due to poor information management, beneficial activities such as innovation and outsourcing options would not be easily done as the company’s data could not synchronize (Molen, Lemmen & Strategies for Renewal of Information Systems and Information Technology for Land Registry and Cadastre, 2003).
Discussion Questions
List the advantages of a single customer service center for RR Communications.
The implementation of single service center project has six advantages as described: Firstly, it would assist is the elimination of data redundancy such as data for customers and customer calls and therefore the personnel would easily work with the customers. Secondly, it reduced the processes used by customers by moving among different departments be served as well as the number of bills they received to one. Thirdly, the single service center would make it easier for the company to remain competitive within the market as the cost of data maintenance and procurement costs would reduce. They would now implement innovations easier than before. Besides, the internal operations would now become easier and faster to implement as the complexities associated with many departments would reduce. Also, decision-making procedure on customers or systems would be easier due to a reduced system and data redundancy. Finally, the single service center would increase the customer satisfaction as they would get served efficiently and effectively (Khosrowpour, Information Resources Management Association & Information Resources Management Association International Conference., 1999).
Devise an implementation strategy that would guarantee the support of the Divisional Presidents for the shared customer service center.
The key technique that would make the process of convincing the Divisional Presidents was to utilize the most effective communication that would make the DIOs get convinced that shared service center would be the best strategy to assist the company in growing. The case study indicates very clearly that the DIOs could not support VP’s idea because they feared that they would lose the power they had in managing their department. Also, they believed that the implementation would make them fail to receive the right amount of budget and resources in their departmental projects, and they were also not concerned about the organization as a whole. Some of the strategies that would make the DIOs agree with the VP’s ideas are as discussed. Firstly, strategic meetings needed to be set up to enable the participants to share their ideas, assess the situation and decide on the way forth. Also, the provision of the right metric, infrastructure and enterprise architecture would assist the Information Technology guys to standardize their processes and tasks would help them successfully sell their services while supporting the needs of different department heads. Besides, the IT folks needed to understand the business so that they could be part of it and work together with the other personnel so that they could make the right decisions when deciding on the project that needs to get implemented. The VP would discuss the implementation of a centralized database system and data architecture that would not bring down the departments, but rather it would be a way of reducing the overall cost, improving customer satisfaction and minimizing data duplication. An ideal governance mechanism needed to be set up. The mechanism should involve monthly meetings to assign enterprise projects to the divisional presidents with full support and allocation of the required budget and resources. Finally, the IT should also carry out the survey of the current technology that applies to the organization, which can be used to reduce the costs and other issues identified within the system (Bocus, 1998).
Is it possible to achieve an enterprise vision with a decentralized IT function?
Decentralization refers to pushing the decision-making authority to lower firm levels. It is not possible to achieve the vision when the IT functions are still decentralized. Decentralization makes it harder because the concerns will still evolve around local levels and the separation of the departments makes the process tiresome. The departments need to be eliminated first before the enterprise vision if implemented. With many uncooperative leaders, miscommunication will always exist because each of the leaders tends to put more effort on the developments of the own department without focusing on the growth of the entire organization. Also, it makes it hard for new IT staff to get employed as the cost will increase (Aucoin & Bakvis, 1988).
What business and IT problems can be caused by lack of common information and an enterprise IM strategy?
Such divisions and lack of a common source of information lead to the development of many issues within an organization. For example, in our case, the company’s brand is tarnished because of the increased processes that customers follow when requesting for bills. The customers are dissatisfied with the services the company offers to them such that they spread bad rumors to tarnish the company’s name. The market of their business is highly competitive such that they need to pull up their socks and determine the best way of operating the business. The costs and inefficiencies associated with decentralizations are high, and there is the need for the company to eliminate all the IT departments and all the unnecessary redundancies. More time and storages get wasted as a result of multiple data access and storage. It is inefficient to produce the monthly reports, allocate resources and decide on budgets as the organization has to collect all the information from all the departments, which is a tedious process. If all the information would get shared, the auditors would easily collect all the information easily; therefore the entire auditing work would be less and easier to manage (Institute of Public Administration of Canada & Cameron, 1994).
What governance mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure common customer data and a shared customer service center? What metrics might be useful?
Some of the basic features of the new governance mechanism to be enacted should be in such a way that it ensures transparency of metrics and activities, shared enterprise vision and it aligns IT with business departments. The mechanism should focus on mitigating risks, business opportunities , and other regulations. The steering committee should also oversee that all the strategic operations are followed. The metric formation should get facilitated by a conducive atmosphere that supports focus on customer services and continuous growth of the company. The metrics should get chosen in such a way that they tie with the business objectives since putting up all the necessary features is hard for them. The specific metrics needed shall involve; moving all the departments’ data into a single enterprise structure and also, the data speed and validity should be highly considered (Michel & Kupferschmied, 2015).
Conclusion
The situation at RR Communications Company may easily drive an analyst in a dilemma as the analysis of the action of the vice president towards the DIOs may not be the best way even though his aim was to minimize the issues within the company. If both parties (VP and DIOs) would coordinate and cooperate, the issues would have been set up easily. Effective communication skills should have been applied so as to ensure that the whole project got carried out successfully. The DIOs should also have realized that the success of the entire business lies in their hands and therefore they had to look deeply into the situation and assess if they should still continue with the decentralization or merge the whole departments into a single enterprise structure. Based on the situation, the DIOs had to agree with VP’s idea and admit that they would give up their positions and power.

References
Aucoin, P., & Bakvis, H. (1988). The centralization-decentralization conundrum: Organization and management in the Canadian government. Halifax, N.S: Institute for Research on Public Policy.
Bocus, R. A. (1998). Barriers to effective communication. San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago: R.A. Bocus.
Institute of Public Administration of Canada., & Cameron, D. M. (1994). Decentralization and power sharing: Impact on public sector management. Toronto: Institute of Public Administration of Canada = Institut d'administration publique du Canada.
Khosrowpour, M., Information Resources Management Association, & Information Resources Management Association International Conference. (1999). Managing information technology resources in organizations in the next millennium: 1999 Information Resources Management Association International Conference, Hershey, PA, USA, May 16-19, 1999. Hershey, Penn: Idea Group Pub.
Michel, L., & Kupferschmied, T. (2015). Management design: Managing people and organizations in turbulent times.
Molen, P. ., Lemmen, C., & Strategies for Renewal of Information Systems and Information Technology for Land Registry and Cadastre. (2003). Strategies for renewal of information systems and information technology for land registry and cadastre: Proceedings of a symposium held by FIG Commission 7 on 8 and 9 May 2003 at ITC, The Netherlands. Frederiksberg: International Federation of Surveyors.