Building Shared Services at Rr Communications

Mini Case #2:

Building Shared Services

At RR Communications

Dominick De Mauro

Nicholas Distefano

Kyle McNulty

Janine Minerva

CIS600*01

September 18, 2011

Executive Summary:

In the mini-case Building Shared Services at PR Communications Vice President of IT, Vince Patton, is faced with the task of creating a single customer service center for the company. The case starts off with Vince firing the four divisional CIO’s, stating that “We don’t need any of you anymore. I’m creating one enterprise IT organization, and there’s no room for any of you.” (McKeen, p 127). Ross Roman, founder of PR Communications, then gives Vince the opportunity to completely turn around the IT department and has given full support to any of Vinces projects. This puts a lot of pressure and responsibility on Vince to complete this difficult task.

The IT department was comprised of four separate divisions, Internet, mobile, landline, and Cable TV service. The goal was to consolidate all four divisions into one centralized IT division. This would be a difficult task because each business unit had its own hardware and software. This upset the DIO’s who didn’t want to integrate all their systems together.

The first step to integration was redesigning the company’s internal computer infrastructure and using one set of technologies. This would cause serious problems with suppliers and centralized procurement, but was essential to the consolidation of the divisions. Once this was achieved Vince would promote a single vision throughout all divisions. This vision will focus on the better good of the company as a whole instead of different visions for each division. The problem Vince is faced with is getting all the DIO’s to accept the change and work alongside each other rather than running their own division.

The case ends with Vince’s decision to let go the four DIO’s and his next steps in implementing a single customer service center for all divisions. Vince understands that...