Mgmt408

Study Case 1: Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (A): The Role of the Operating Manager in Information Systems

Date September 5, 2014

Course Management of Technology Resources

Instructor Professor Rene Trevino

The Midsouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC) is facing major issue with a new program issues. The company was to install a new program to help solve some issue to help producing in several departments in the company. The Vice President of Marketing Leon Lassiter believed that UNITRAK would reduce the price of the software. The software was new, and UNITRAK had sold it to only one other statewide chamber of commerce organization, the Northern State Chamber of Commerce. Jeff Fritzly, Vice President of Marketing and Development of the NSCC, told Lassiter: We looked at quite a few software packages as well as writing our own custom software, but our consultant chose the UNITRAK software. We purchased the software from UNITRAK and got a good discount on the needed new hardware. They have been very helpful and supportive of our needs. (Brown 14)

Kovecki had promised that the new system would be up on each of the last several Mondays. Each Monday brought disappointment and compounded frustration to the staff. Lassiter knew that the two days of training had been wasted because the staff had long forgotten how to use the new system. He also had heard that Kovecki was interviewing for a new job and was out of town on a regular basis. Something had to be done—but what? (Brown 16)

For a few years, Lassiter was able to operate his organization’s tasks with the existing set of individual workstations, all of which were connected to a print server. The marketing division’s primary information technology activities were to track the activity occurring in membership. Primary uses included:

• Developing the membership database

• Developing the prospective member database

• Making daily changes to both databases

• Generating a series of letters for personalized...