CASE:
PETRIE’S ELECTRONICS
Systems Implementation and Operation
Jim Watanabe was in his new car, driving down I-5, on his way to work. He dreaded
the phone call he knew he was going to have to make.
The original go-live date for a pilot implementation of Petrie’s Electronics’ new
customer relationship management (CRM) system was July 31. That was only six
weeks away, and Jim knew there was no way they were going to be ready. The XRA
CRM they were licensing turned out to be a lot more complex than they had
thought. They were behind schedule in implementing it. Sanjay Agarwal, who was a
member of Jim’s team and who was in charge of systems integration for Petrie’s,
wanted Jim to hire some consultants with XRA experience to help with
implementation. So far, Jim had been able to stay under budget, but missing his
deadlines and hiring some consultants would push him over his budget limit.
It didn’t help that John Smith, the head of marketing, kept submitting requests for
changes to the original specifications for the customer loyalty program. As specified
in the project charter, the new system was supposed to track customer purchases,
assign points for cumulative purchases, and allow points to be redeemed for
“rewards” at local stores. The team had determined that those rewards would take
the form of dollars-off coupons. Customers who enrolled in the program would be
given accounts that they could access from Petrie’s Web site. When they signed on,
they could check their account activity to see how many points they had
accumulated. If they had earned enough points, they were rewarded with a coupon.
If they wanted to use the coupon, they would have to print it out on their home
printers and bring it in to a store to use on a purchase. The team had decided long
ago that keeping everything electronic saved Petrie’s the considerable costs of
printing and mailing coupons to customers.
But now marketing had put in a change request that would give customers a choice
of having coupons mailed to them automatically or printing them from the Web site
at home. This option, while nice for customers, added complexity to the XRA
system implementation, and it added to the costs of operation. Jim had also learned
yesterday from the marketing representative on his team, Sally Fukuyama, that now
Smith wanted another change. Now he wanted customers to be able to use the
coupons for online purchases from Petrie’s Web site. This change added a whole
new layer of complexity, affecting Petrie’s existing systems for ordering online, in
addition to altering yet again the implementation of the XRA CRM.
As if that wasn’t enough, Carmen Sanchez was now telling Jim that she would not
be ready to let the team pilot the system in her Irvine store. Carmen was saying her
store would not be ready by the end of July. Maybe that wouldn’t matter, since they
were going to miss the go-live date for the pilot. But Carmen was hinting she would
not be ready for months after that. It seemed as if she didn’t want her store to be
used for the pilot at all. Jim didn’t understand it. But maybe he should try to find
another store to use as the pilot site.
Jim was almost at his exit. Soon he would be at the office, and he would have to call
Ella Whinston and tell her the status of the project. He would have to tell her that
they would miss the go-live date, but in a way it didn’t matter since he didn’t have a
pilot location to go live at. In addition to going over schedule, he was going to have
to go over budget, too. He didn’t see any way they would be ready for the pilot
anytime close to when they had scheduled, unless he hired the consultants Sanjay
wanted. And he would have to stop the latest change request filed by marketing.
Even more important, he would have to keep the rumored change request, about
using coupons for online purchases, from being submitted in the first place.
Maybe, just maybe, if he could hire the consultants, fight off the change requests,
and get Carmen to cooperate, they might be ready to go live with a pilot in Irvine on
October 15. That gave him four months to complete the project. He and the team
were going to have to work hard to make that happen.
Jim realized he had missed his exit. Great, he thought, I hope it gets better from
here.
(Hoffer 358-359)
Hoffer, Joseph Valacich
Joey George
Jeff A. Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design, VitalSource eBook for DeVry
University. Pearson Learning Solutions, 02/2012. VitalBook file.
