Organizational Analysis Paper Outsourcing

“Organizational Analysis”

Performance Problem Paper

“Outsourcing Technology”

By: Jermaine C. Holt

MGMT 5590 Organizational Behavior: Richard C. Goldberg

Webster University

08/29/11

Introduction

In 1997 a local life science / fine chemical company, implemented SAP in order to support its overall software needs, including, supply chain, sales, and financials. I will call this company “company X” in this paper. The transition from the now “legacy” software systems to the SAP software solution was an arduous process and has taken several years to implement SAP in the corporate headquarters and the surrounding locations. Currently, the corporate headquarters for Company X is located in St. Louis Missouri. However, through acquisitions and mergers although Company X is based in St. Louis Missouri it has several locations all around the world. Since Company X has so many locations the executive management decided to install two separate instances of SAP, one for the U.S. that would run the U.S. business, and one for the European locations, to run the European business. This decision lead to establishing two separate I.T. organizations, one in Europe and one in the U.S. and both would be managed locally and report to a single CIO. During this time both SAP instances were highly customized to suit the local business. The SAP instance installed in Europe was heavily customized to meet the needs of the European business and the SAP instance installed in the U.S. was heavily customized to meet the needs of the U.S. business. The U.S. and European business during this time span did not share all of the same corporate initiatives or goals. Hence many of the I.T. needs were tailored to local needs and not “global/corporate needs. The actual organizations were also run differently. The I.T. organizations for Company X were vastly different also. The two I.T. organization did not communicate or work together to establish...