If You Want to Do Business Here

Management Information systems

If you want to Do Business here

Case Study # 7

Chapter 9

Basema Tkrory

(Basima Takrouri)

November 3, 2014

If you want to Business here

Case study answers:

Question #1: Do you think market forces would push Kia Motors to invest in IT the way it did if the US government had not passed the TREAD Act? Why or why not?

To a certain extent, I think yes, even without the Act, the market forces would have pushed Kia Motors to consider an IT investment that can enable the company fulfill its CEO commitment regarding improving the quality and reducing the defect rate that was found significantly high, and rated the company as the market joke in terms of quality despite the low cost on the short run, that wasn't enough since the bad quality resulted in more repair costs after purchasing the low price cars.

The Act though pushed the company to think directly in IT as a means to fulfill the act requirements, rather than having to go through more steps and more processes before thinking directly of IT as a solution. The company needed to track its customers' relation data and link it to the parts sales data along with all other data bases the company ran and had being operated separately. Both the Act and the market forces pushed Kia motors to enhance their information management systems and invest in IT for that purpose so as to better qualify both legally and market wise and thus compete with other strong car brands such as the Japanese manufacturers.

Question # 2: What was the role of IT in raising the quality of Kia cars? Is IT alone the reason for improvement?

IT played a significant role in raising the quality of Kia cars in terms of bringing all pieces of the puzzle together to create a full picture in front of management, by linking all databases together, allowing a system that highlighted certain terms related to problems signaled by customers in their complains. The terms that were highlighted for...