Managing a Systems Development Project at Consumer Products, Inc.
Managing Information Technology
Abstract
This paper will describe how a large international corporation tries to implement a new company wide system and explain the details of what needs to be done to successfully manage a project of this magnitude. The paper will also provide a brief background on how intricate the ground work is to development a new system. Lastly, the paper will discuss how the absence one employee could potentially derail the project and insights on how the project can be put back on track.
Payable Audit System
Consumer and Industrial Products Company, Inc. (CIPI), is a Fortune 100 manufacturing company known for its products in consumer and industry. CIPI is based in the United States however, with manufacturing worldwide. The overdue need for reevaluation of the Payable Audit System (PAS) is a main priority for upper management. CIPI is a very labor intensive company and a need to develop a new system to increase productivity and increase over all total quality management (TQM). (Brown, C. et al. p.432)
CIPI is experiencing a great deal of delays with the current PAS and how CIPI purchases goods; receive goods and pay for them. CIPI has challenges with redundancy and the lack of productivity in their current system. In fact, some vendors have known to wait 30-60 days before they are paid. For smaller vendors, this could mean major cash flow issues, inability to pay employees and even bankruptcy. All of this was unacceptable and a new system was badly needed. (Brown, C. et al. p.432)
Essential changes were handed down within the organization providing the changes that needed to be implemented and the steps that were required however, after nine months, very little had changed and management realized that real drastic changes needed to be carried out from the ground up. Frequently accounts payable (AP) personnel world did not think outside AP world. They rarely took into considerations other departments and certainly not others outside of CIPI. (Brown, C. et al. p.433)
To help alleviate some of the major delays in payments a decision was made that if invoices fell within a given threshold, then they would be automatically paid. A new quality control would be implemented to document all transactions for each vendor. This way they can track each vendor and make sure they are performing to CIPI standards and if any vendors were causing issues or not adding value, they would be eliminated. (Brown, C. et al. p.433)
CIPI is also planning to be more environmentally friendly by creating a paperless environment by developing a Document Control System (DCS) means that all incoming paper invoices will be immediately identified by department, indexed, and into the system, then electronically routed to the appropriate department. (Brown, C. et al. p.433)
Besides the development of a new document management system the new AP approach required CIPI to develop new systems or significantly alter the following internal systems: Freight Audit System (FAST), Computerized Invoice Matching System (CIMS), which is invoice auditing system; Corporate Approval System (CAS), which verifies if an authorized person(s) had approved the vouchers; and lastly a vendor database system that deals with manually entered transactions/purchase orders. The PAS project was primarily intended to change the CIMS system.
Employee Roles in the PAS Project
There are several important players involved with this project that will assist with the necessary changes needed for the new Payable Audit System (PAS) to be successful. Each person has very detailed job duties and the specific skill sets that would be used to make the changes to the system.
First, Linda Watkins is the project director for the Payable Audit System (PAS) and is also responsible for managing the IS team members. A few of her primary duties are to manage the project budget and schedule. She puts together a project plan for each phase, what it will cost, and manage the budget. Watkins also determines that the right people are involved in the project. Watkins talks to her clients beforehand letting them know what is going on, building a trust relationship with them and providing full details through open communication. She is responsible for selecting technical help who would interact with her clients and have good communication skills. When issues emerged, Watkins does not force recommendations however, represented technical problems and presented them in business terms with her suggested solutions. (Brown, C. et al. p.436)