It Planning at Modmeters

Synopsis

This case follows a manufacturing firm ModMeters (later MM) looking to expand its business beyond North America as well as create a portal for direct to consumer sales. In this case, we are following along from the viewpoint of the IT manager. In lieu of this expansion, the case looks at the IT budgeting process, as it has existed and the changes required to accommodate these larger initiatives. In this analysis we will examine IT’s role in supporting expansion as well as day-to-day business operations. We will analyze this from the perspective of the departmental executives meeting to create a new budget to meeting the needs for these two requirements and strategic plans. Much like the other cases we have examined this is a struggle between “keeping the lights on” and “delivering new products and services to customers”, successive CIOs have failed to connect effectively with their business partners despite seemingly effective relationships at the mid-management level. As the book has shown, collaborating effectively with the business at all levels remains the key IT challenge.

Key Issues

1. Strategic Initiative 1: Expand from North American operations to global operations.

a. Open new plants in Asia and Eastern Europe.

b. These areas likely lack infrastructure new operations will require.

c. The focus of the new strategy is growth in new markets and supplying foreign markets more quickly with offshore operations.

2. Strategic initiative 2: Set up direct-to-customer sales.

d. This will place new web driven demands on the company.

e. Marketing’s budget will need an increase.

3. IT funding in the organization is tightly controlled and has historically been ROI based

4. Current architecture is a large range of technologies of varying ages, layered on top of each other, that have been kludged to work with one another.

5. The IT budget has approximately 50% going to support current operations and 30%...