RR communications Essay Example for Free

RR communications EssayAt RR communications, it is unequivocal there is a task that motives to be handled if they are to annul losing knobs. The conundrum lies with the de centralize operations where apiece argument unit has a mandate to operate main(a)ly. The clientele units drop the power to make and weapon new projects and make decisions without having to involve the full-length plastered. This has led to galore(postnominal) problems much(prenominal) as guests complaining of having receipts for to apiece ane of the four products projected by the comp either and would p rear having unmatchable receipt for entirely their transactions. Due to the variableness among plane sections, the comp whatsoever has been uneffective to meet inform requirements for the Sarbanes Oxley Act. It has proved obvious that a divided up IT ser sin, which is standardized among both the units, is selected to consider everything goes puff up. The frontmostborn prob lem we see at RR communication theory is that there is a definite lack of alter and concise IT governance.Currently wholly of the give way departs of the smart piece turn out their own individualistic leadership with no central leadership. For this reason, each of the sections takes actions and makes decisions based solely on how it affects their own specific departments. There is no coordination to view that the act of mavin area does non negatively affect the rest of the firm. This in turn has led to a signifi fuckingt lack of conformity across the presidential term, which is hurting client relations. There are integrated entropybases and each section maintains their own tack of records this is causing great frustration among their guests who continu solelyy have issues when dealing with to a greater extent than angiotensin converting enzyme area. Much of the part of departments has been caused by a lack of central leadership. The CEO of the firm has faile d to immix the department or posit any control over the individual IT vice professorships. Even though they reported to him, each had acted copely independently. This continuous failure of leadership has caused the department heads to develop a sense of isolation and self-survival.Even though a new executive VP of IT has been ap shewed to bring unity to the firm, there has been blunt resistance as each department feels it volition suffer. The lack of concentrate trouble for so long has caused signifi go offt strife between the departments that lead take considerable effort to overcome. In addition, this connection positioning has filtered down from the VPs to the tenderness and lower oversight creating an boilers suit atmosphere that is dangerously disjointed. Even the suggestion of bringing in concert the infobase systems and caution has caused a nearmutinous uprising and rejection of leadership. The current managerial atmosphere has been around so long, the atti tude of individualism has been deeply imbedded in the corporate finis.While, individual thinking is useful to foster innovation and creativity, when the strengthened-in agreement acts to satisfy precisely its individual requirements, the firm over all told pull up stakes suffer. Unless this attitude cease be overcome, any guarantee at bringing unity to the high society leave fail. From the technical standpoint, RR communications is low from a severely fractured entropy management system. Every section of the company maintains its own individual customer selective disciplinebases, which are in in congenial formats. If a customer maintains relationships with more then whiz di hatful, they get bills from each individual area. Customer issues often fail to get resolved because the departments do not communicate or share study. This is causing problems with diminished customer satisfaction. In addition, without a centralized selective educationbase, full customer informa tion and statistics are impractical to have.In addition to suffering by not being able to collect detailed records, the company is facing regulative issues by not being able to go out complete information on the companys activities, and significant resources are being wasted to assemble simpleton reports. Currently management and associates at RR talks believe that a collective solution is impossible, and any attempt to do so allow cause them to suffer. While it may be true that the initial performance of such(prenominal) a system provide require a significant collective effort, the end end impart be healthful worth it. It is also clear that much of the perspective of management is super short sided projects are selected scarcely based on a very narrow and limited realize view with no regard for their long-term viability.As more and more systems have been patched unneurotic to fulfill immediate gaps, the overall collection of programs has become a cumbersome, in effec tual, and unmanageable mess. A truly efficient system would be one that is all- encompassing and communicates across all facets of the organization to deliver a incorporate and amply integrated information system that can add real value to the firm. One some early(a)wise major issue at RR Communications is the proliferation of rouge projects completed without oversight or regard for how they forget affect the firm. In a large company every project should be examined to determine how it could provide value to the organization before being launched. At RRCommunication projects are being launched that benefit however select areas and may in fact be causing a significant negative pretend to the rest of the firm. The company currently does not have a steering or operating(a) delegacy to administrate and exert control over these projects.Without any form of centralized control and governance, these rouge projects exit continue to sabotage the effectiveness of the organization. Lack of common information and go-ahead IT outline has caused several problems for the line of merchandise and the IT departments of RR communications. Customer overhaul has suffered and customer dissatisfaction has grown. Lack of common information has made it baffling for management to superintend the logical argumentes as a whole. Business units are unable(p) to exchange information and remain unaware of the separate divisions written report. There is little sense of how the divisions work together to meet the companys overall goals. The be problems make it difficult to presend shareholders with accurate financial information, and the system is not cost-effective in any case.Furthermore, each division on the job(p) at individual level to attain its success makes them rigid and unable to adapt to changing requirements under these circumstances even the utiliseation of new technology forget be extremely difficult. The organization cannot operate efficiently as a who le or at division levels, and the costs are bound to keep increasing.AnalysisAs many annoyed customers can be identical agree, being transferred from one department of the company to anformer(a) over and over a produce to resolve a simple issue is one of the main reasons many companies lose customers. This is certainly an issue at RR Communications. The main cause of the problem seems to be the division of the contrasting concern units. This lack of unity is caused by a faulty commission system that rewards individual performance over company profit. The fact that the four CIOs pass up to work together and resort to sabotaging the efforts of the former(a)s, serves to show that they are more interested in their own self-serving financial goals. While the president of the company may have been a visionary and brilliant entrepreneur, he lacked the managerial skills to recognize the accept to have a unified commission system which would foster meshing in a common goal, and then a commoncommission which is interdependent on all four tune units would be more or less beneficial to the company. Unifying IT ResourcesThe most cardinal problem for RR Communications to correct is a significant deficiency of successful information management, reflected by the confused state of their customer information informationbases. Currently customer info is disbursed in separate entropybases for each section of the company, so that data from one department is not available to another. Thus, customers are force to maintain relationships with triplex departments and receive boot from each. This separation means that valuable information resources are not being effectively utilized, hurting the firms productivity and cleverness. To cleanse the state of information capital at RR Communications, a complete serving of the current systems depart be necessary, from both an IT and business standpoint. education represents a vital as square up to any company. This can be in the form of customer accounts, sales records, research development, financial statements, etc. However, in order to realize full benefits, the same information must(prenominal) be readily entrance moneyible by all individual units, so that the company can leverage it in the most efficient manner.The first step to correct the issues at RR Communications is to create a unified data architecture that combines all information resources into a central database that is accessible to all sections of the firm. By providing a centralized database clients depart be part served by allowing complete access to customer records throughout the company. This will also improve reporting abilities, lower administrative costs, and greatly increment the value of information resources. To achieve the greatest benefit to the company, RR Communications could consolidate its data from eightfold silos into a unified first step data warehouse (EDW) (Smaltz, 2011). This architecture provides multi ple benefits including a single location for all information storage reducing the sum of duplicated efforts. This also greatly improves the integrity of data by providing a single version of the truth (Smaltz, 2011). When data is spread throughout multiple databases, invariable some of it will differ.For example, a customers address may have been changed in one department but not another. These differences can prove costly to a company. A centralized EDW means that only one record should exist for each customer and humiliatedata discrepancies. Having such a centralized system would also satisfy customer necessitate in a more efficient manner and would help to cross-sell products, which in turn would result in higher wage and more profit for the company. By allowing customers to have a single point of contact, and share-out information by standardizing software and databases across the organization, information will lead more freely and readily available and then giving the emp loyees the ability to communicate in real time with accurate data and maximizing customer contact to incr assuagement profits.Having a decentralized IT routine is not conductive to achieve an enterprise vision because by keeping the separate business units separated, it keeps pertinent information out of reach of other business units, and thus allows missed opportunities to maximize profit. Also, the lack of communication among the units creates chaos and disorganization in the organization and gives antecedency to individual goals above company goals, which in turn will end up hurting the overall enterprise vision and may even spell the end of the enterprise altogether. Finally, having a decentralized IT function creates customer frustration such as in the case of getting several bills for different products. This frustration may cause the company lost customers and lost profits. learning Stewardship Information Management PolicyThe problem in implementing this solution is the current state of the databases scattered about the firm many are in incompatible formats, so that significant effort will hold to be invested to bring together all of this data into a single, dual-lane IT returns system accessible to all. In addition, not all data is equally valuable to each unit. Efficiency necessitates allowing employees access to the information that is most pertinent without inundating the various departments with external details. For this reason, whatever IT solution is implemented must be able to adapt dynamically to the storage and recovery needfully of each department. other challenge to creating a centralized system is the role of information stewardship. Information stewardship involves the ownership and control of information to slim discrepancies and redundancies.To maintain the consistency and accuracy of data, information stewards need to be appointed. Information stewards are businesspeople. They should be responsible for determining the meani ng of information chunks and theirbusiness rules and contextual use. They should be responsible for the accuracy, timeliness, consistency, validity, completeness, and redundance of information (McKeen Smith, 2009, p. 76). A serious challenge to the integration of data at RR Communication will be consolidating all of the disparate information from around the firm into a single enterprise data warehouse. It is very credibly that there will be duplicate information, conflicting records, incompatible data formats, and other inconsistencies that will not lend themselves to easy integration. However, the reduction in duplicate and conflicting information will be vital to the success of RR Communication. Duplicate data means an increase in administrative work and overhead, and conflicting and inconsistent information means the company is not performing at optimal levels.The reduction of duplicate data, or data deduplication can improve the performance of virtual systems, reduce electro nic network traffic and cut the costs associated with data protection. In addition, deduplication allows backup data to be replicated more efficiently to other sites for disaster recovery (Symantec, 2011). Duplication increases the amount of data a corporate network must process, reducing efficiency and increasing costs. Storage costs increase as the same information may be stored and backed up across multiple databases, again wasting resources. Finally, duplication of data importantly increases the amount of labor required to utilize it in any useful manner. Clearly, RR Communication will need a significant amount of data deduplication to create a useful, consolidated enterprise data warehouse.To press forward the proper stewardship of information, an information management policy needs to be created that addresses these issues in a way that keep backs such confusion and disarray. An information management policy will dictate the rules and guidelines for how information is handle d, who is responsible for maintaining and updating it, and summary the policies and practices to do so (McKeen Smith, 2009). To begin to unravel the data mess at RR Communications they should define an encompassing information management policy that will effectively address the issues of what information is retained, who is responsible for updating it, how it is to be maintained, and who should have access to it. Critical to the success of this policy will be the involvement of management from all functional areas of the company. Each should be prone the opportunity to contribute to the policy,and each individual needs should be addressed. In addition, the problem with this solution will be gaining acceptance from the different functional areas of the business.There will obviously be conflicts of ideas and differences of opinion in how the policy should be created and enforced. To improve the effectiveness of the policy it needs to be thoroughly enforced from top management down. This means to gain compliance, RR Communications CEO needs to set the example and pressure all levels of management below to do the same. Another strategy to hike the back up of the divisional presidents for the shared customer attend to is by creating awareness that the free information flow would be beneficial for all and would simplify business processes, thus allowing then to increase their bottom line, and thus their bonuses. Finding opportunities to demonstrate small success would help show the support being given to the divisions. To aid in compliance, a large corporate training program should be initiated to ensure the policy is well known by all associates. Gaining compliance by all of the business areas will be the most difficult part of this solution the ingrained attitude of self-preservation that exists at RR Communication will be difficult to overcome. However, change is not impossible, but only by dedication of management. The initial implementation period will b e the most difficult, and if enforcement waivers the policy may fail. Creating Useful Information from Raw entropyOne lineament of an enterprise system is ensuring seamless integration of a companys information among all divisions, including financial and accounting Markus, M.L., Tanis, C. (n.d.). Hence, to achieve a successful enterprise system, a company must have its IT systems centralized to ensure information runs smoothly and is relevant among all divisions, specially the financial and accounting information. Considering the accounting problems brought up at the final meeting, the company obviously needs to implement a centralized IT function. Moreover, it will be far more expensive to have an enterprise system with a decentralized IT function, which is contrary to the drive of achieving an enterprise system. While a centralized information management system will indeed run benefits at RR Communication, if there is no way to utilize and interpret that data, it is useless this is analogous to being data rich and information poor.Justbecause a company has loads of data does not mean that is fully informed. A company such as RR Communication collects vast quantities of data, but having the resources to convert that into useful information can be an extreme challenge. At RR Communication, they are facing a double-sided problem they have incomplete a collective data warehouse, nor do they have any effective information management. Once the problem of centralization has been addressed, information management can be. One voltage way to improve the use of wide amounts of data is using a metadata repository.A metadata repository functions much like the card catalog of a library dapple it does not specifically contain the information, it provides an index of what is available, including the relevant points on what it contains, as well as a pointer to locate the information (Moss Brodie, 2002). This index provides an extremely valuable resource shaft to quickly locate pertinent information. In addition, the metadata repository should be designed with the ability to hook into other systems that are developed to provide information to mother systems as necessary. Establishing this framework now will offer increased benefits as more systems are built off the central repository. Addressing Corporate CultureAs seen in RR Communications, lack of common information and enterprise IM strategy can cause several problems to the business and the IT department. RR Communications has encountered serious customer improvement problems, due to lack of common information and enterprise strategy. In addition, lack of common information makes it hard for the overall management to monitor the businesses. Business units are unable to exchange information, and none is aware of the other divisions work. The company is not in a position to strengthen its brand since no divisions work together. To remedy this, a unification of the firm needs to take tu rn up from more than just an IT standpoint. The disjointed nature of the firms information assets reflects a deeper separation of the force play at RR Communications. Departments work for their own ends with naught but passing concern for their effects on the company as a whole. This lack of cohesion manifests itself in the behavior of the CIOs, divisional managers, and even the employees, and has resulted in the severe fragmentation of corporate last.The fragmented IT systems are only a symptom of a much larger problem. Before addressing the ITproblems at RR Communications, the underlying culture of the business needs to be transformed. This begins at the very top, with the president of the company and the highest leaders they need to be the first to set the example, and it is clear their current attitudes have set the company on the disastrous course it is on. Removing the CIO team which has hampered the companys efforts at unification up until now was a good step, but serious c onsiderations now need to be taken to prevent things from getting worse. Other associates could easily see firing the CIOs as a usurping of departmental sovereignty however, they need to use this as an opportunity to show that the company can be brought together without sacrificing any of their needs.To take advantage on this opportunity the president and vice president should bring together the next level of management into a council of members to set the direction and culture of the firm in a way that promotes unity and usual respect. This council should be responsible for creating and fostering an atmosphere that shows the benefits of the firm functioning as one. They need to prove to the management and associates that their departments will have a say in decisions, and their needs will not be overlooked. To improve the odds of acceptance, the council should be selected from leaders that have proven themselves as examples of good leadership and who are regard in the firm. Key t o the success of this council will be keeping everyone on equal footing and ensuring that no one area is given preference over another, especially in the beginning.It is obvious that certain departments will have greater needs then others, and sometimes priority will need to be given to one area however, if this behavior is present from the outset they will receive much resistance from the firm, as this will reinforce existing fears. Once a unity of the firm has been established, people will be more flexible to accept changes after they see the benefits. It will be up to the president and vice president as leaders to maintain these policies and be the example. As demonstrated in previous cases, the president has been lax in demonstrating himself as a leader and this could prove damaging to any such plans to unify the firm. Leadership must begin at the top, and the success or failure of a company often reflects the abilities of its leadership. Implementation ChallengesThe advantages of a shared IT system eliminate some of the above-mentionedproblems. A single centralized and standardized IT operating system will rear quick decisions across all the departments, since all units will be looking at the same data. Furthermore, with a shared table do, customers will not have to reckon different databases for the same company rather, all their queries and purchases can be done from one site that will serve them with all that they need from the company. Another advantage will be easy monitoring of the divisional unitstheir individual performances as well as their contributions to the whole company.Another advantage for the company will be the ability to monitor financial operations, since all operations will be reflected on one database centrally (Amces, 2010). To implement the shared service strategy, it will be important to seek support of the divisional presidents, considering they will be in charge of the units, which are the money devising branches. Their will ingness to participate in the construction of the shared service will benefit the whole company. The first step to the implementation of this strategy will require assurances that it will benefit the whole company far more than the current system that is facing opposition from not only the customers but also other stakeholders such as the suppliers. In turn, since employees remuneration is awarded on performance, improve performance for the whole firm will be an added advantage.Since the divisional heads are used to being in control, it is important to remind them that having a shared service will not mean the imposition of decisions from above. Rather, the shared service will make the operations of the whole organization work in harmony for the use of goods and go of easy monitoring customer convenience. They should be include as part of the implementation team, so they can offer in typeset on what they may not want to change. For instance, many are worried they will have to do away with specific projects. Ensuring them that these projects will continue after implementation of the shared service would increase their support, as would helping them understand that the new, shared system will enhance the harmony and efficiency of whole organization eventually they will come to see that their roles will remain mostly the same. Another way to improve the odds of success to a centralized data structure is by appointing a team to oversee the maintenance of the data warehouse from an enterprise level. Ideally the members of this team should be comprised of analysts from the important functional areas of the company.This can help gain buy-in from the companydue to the fact that the members of this team have already proven themselves to be knowledgeable and capable in their previous environments (Smaltz, 2011). In addition the benefit of incorporating these individuals is that individual departments will feel that they have representation in the new system, and that their interests are protected. This will increase the potential for global acceptance in the program. Another way to increase compliance with the new systems is to implement an fillip program that would drive associates to achieve the best results. Incentive programs drive people to reach specific targets by offering them tangible rewards beyond their current compensation. At RR Communications, an incentive program could be implemented to increase compliance and adoption of a new centralized system.For example, the company could offer monetary bonuses to departments that lower their operating costs using the new system the most. Another more abstract idea would be to have a small bonus program for departments that offer ideas to enhance the productivity of the system. Many of the departments have complained that a shared system would cause them to be overlooked however, offering this type of inventive would both hike them to make enhancements of the system while simultaneously de monstrating that their opinions count. Positive reinforcement, such as an inventive program, help gain the compliance of the workforce in a much more efficient way then penalty or negative reinforcement.There are governance mechanisms and metrics that can be used to instigate the implementation and use of a shared enterprise data system. The governance that needs to be put in place is the alignment of divisional units with the IT department. The metrics must be aligned with transparency to ensure that IT is in congruence with business operations. The governance mechanism should involve all departments focusing on regulatory issues, risk alleviation and opportunity enhancement. The metrics used should be concerned with making divisional data fit into an enterprise system. These metrics will identify areas of weakness and avenues of improvement. To quote an analogy, Rome wasnt built in a day and it will take significant time and effort to remedy all the problems at RR Communications . Close governance and metrics will aid in any improvement plan. tributeIt is evident that RR Communications need an intervention in its customerservice pore. The lack of a centralized customer care center is making it hard to provide unified services to customers. More so, a lot of time is wasted by customers who have to be referred to different department for complaint. Customers are forced to have several accounts with the company for each division since each division is held with its independent operations including billing (Smith McKeen, 2007). This makes it hard for customer care provision. Considering consumer service is very crucial for any business, RR Communications need a centralized customer service center. A centralized service center will have many benefits to the whole organization such as cost reduction, time saving, good management of customers data or information, and customer satisfaction. I recommend a centralized customer service center for RR communications for its advantages as predetermined below.The divisional IT service means having separate analyses for every division. Having each division with an individual audit is expensive for the company since several auditors will be needed. Eliminating the divisions will save some costs that would other than be used for the services of the auditors at every division. With a single it department, data can be fed there and only one audit team will be required for the whole company. This also means reduced time for audits since with divisions audits have to be put together after each department has completed its audit (Smith McKeen, 2007). Coordination among the auditors will be efficient since information is collected from one point where all information concerning company accounts is stored. Therefore, having a centralized service center will enhance such operations across the whole organization. In addition, with a centralized customer service center as well as IT, it will ensure informa tion is collected at one point making it easy to access information concerning any department from any point within the company without having to refer to the division in charge. Hence, for the auditors, complying with the set Sarbanes Oxley act will be easy since information about customer billing and accounts of the whole firm will be centralized ensuring accuracy.Having the customer service centralized enhances business operations and processes, ensuring best practices such as timely audits are realized. With data consolidated in one central place, information can be exploited to breed new opportunities for the company. When data is at one place for all the divisions, it is easier to have a broader pictureconcerning how the divisions can create a new opportunities. Exploiting these opportunities together with among the divisions is better than going individually. Moreover, security can be more enhanced with a shared service center since monitoring will be done by one entity. Thi s will further reduce costs associated with having each division taking responsibility of storing and maintaining its own data. Considering that RR communications is currently having several softwares, consolidating information together for the whole company is hard. Smooth flow of information across departments to ensure easy sharing is vital not only for the whole company, but for divisions too, considering information consolidation is a fundamental shaft for doing business.Consolidating the IT services to one centralized structure will require removing of service center hardware from each division to one central department that will mitigate risks and have a common geomorphological design as well as policies that are easily reviewable for updating. A common security use will reduce risks associated with information breech. Through the same procedures and practices, the company can reduce file systems redundancy within the organization and enhance efficient document retention a s well as reduce costs. Another reason to have one service center is to match the technical capacity of the company with its vision. At the current divisional independence, the divisions exploit their own visions that are not in congruence with the organizations vision and mission. Considering the companys vision is to have a consistent brand across all the divisions, it is necessary to have cross-shared services across all divisions to achieve this vision.The vision can be achieved through cross- sales of all the company services to its customers, as opposed to each department having its marketing strategy. Having a shared sales service will serve to reduce the costs incurred when divisions do it individually hence creating a better line up for profit across all departments. Having a central service center will ensure that the overall vision of the company is followed since the central service center will be inclined towards the vision of the whole company. This way, each divisio n can have a chance of benefiting form other divisions, hence the company as a whole (Smith McKeen, 2007). Having a single service center will allow easy outsourcing for the organization. Currently, businesses are outsourcing majority of their operations to other professional companies for reductionsof costs.With independent divisions and IT strategies for each individual division, outsourcing will be quite complicated. Having a central service center to oversee all requests will enhance efficiency as well as value. More so, through the consolidation of IT services and information at one common place will reduce security risks associated with outsourcing services. This will further ensure reliability and security of information. A consolidation of information and IT services will enhance cross-services for customers such as billing (McKeen Smith, 2011). The company divisions at current circumstance hold their information hidden from each other, making it a competition within the divisions that raise the problem of billing where customers have to be referred to other divisions for other services. With the consolidated information, customers will only need to visit one department from which other information concerning other divisions can be met. This will improve the perception of their whole company as a brand and the standing of the company can be improved as well as customer satisfaction.There is need for the company to realize that in the current world information is one of the drivers of businesses, which all businesses need to survive. Having each division with its own information center reduces the chances of the company improving in the future since the harmonious climate needed among the divisions for this achievement is minimal. Having stipulated the advantages bound to arise or reasons why a central service center should be achieved, it is important to consider how RR can be able to implement this recommendation with ease and least resistance from the divisions. This is the first most likely problem to arise during implementation. Hence, the first step should be generating support form all divisions, which has been quite hard up to now especially from the managers who are self centered and concerned with their earnings that depend on their performance.The managers also have a negative attitude towards merging of information and data among the divisions through one central service. A three-point strategy can be used to gain their support. It includes financial strategy, mitigation of risks associated and compliance to regulation. Financial point can emphasize the advantages the shared service is bound to raise, which will for the benefit of all the divisions and organization as a whole. Risk mitigation will arise from security of information through monitoring by one entity in a standardizedway, while regulatory will be concerned with abiding to set accounting rules of the Sarbanes Oxley act which the company has been having problems with (Schwartz, 2007). The next step would be to lay out the vision of the company and show why it cannot be achieved with division of operations among the divisions. This will impart some reasoning among the leaders, and support fore all divisions should be ensured.The main necessitate is to make everybody in the divisions aware of the role they will play and their stake to ensure thee is compliance and acceptance of the strategy to build a one services center (McKeen Smith, 2011). One of the problems that could arise after implementation of a shared service center is ease of adoption. Some employees who have been used to the old system will require to be trained how to work harmoniously with a single service center. Many will be required to handle more information concerning not only their divisions, but also other divisions. Hence, there will be need to have them trained to provide a central service to the customers. Another problem would arise for the culture set by t he independent divisions prior to the implementation of a single service center. The current culture is of rivalry among the divisions considering they have been competing among themselves. Killing the culture will be a little hard. To deal with the problem the company will have to start early through brining people together and coming up with tasks that can be incorporated in all divisions that allows all members to interact. The shared tasks will enhance cooperation among the different divisions. ConclusionRR is having problems because of lack of a common service center. All divisions are held with their own operations that aim at achieving divisional goals at the expense of corporate goals. The company is lacking a strong unified brand to sell to customers since all divisions are accounted for independently. This has made it obvious that a shared service will be the best for solving these issues. RR needs to put in place an alignment of their IT services with the business units. Transparency must be encouraged and joint responsibilities of IT ad businesses to achieve shared service center (smith McKeen, 2007). The company should also have a common enterprise vision for their systems. All the departments should be included with emphasis on joint business opportunities and risk mitigation. The topmanagement should be in question to creating an atmosphere of improvement continuously with a key focus on customer service to ensure the shared service center is successful.ReferencesMcKeen, J. D., Smith, H. A. (2009). IT Strategy Issues and Practices (2nd Edition ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson Education, Inc. McKeen, J. D., Smith, H. A. (2011). IT Strategy transnational edition (2nd Edition ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ Pearson Education, Inc. Moss, L., Brodie, M. (2002, July). Data Rich, but Information Poor? Retrieved October 26, 2011, from Information Management http//www.information-management.com/issues/20020701/5341-1.html Schwartz, K/D. (2007). IT Governance Definition and Solutions. Retrieved from http//www.cio.com/article/111700/IT_Governance_Definition_and_Solutionswhat Smaltz, D. H. (2011, July/August). Are You Leveraging Your Data or Is Your Data Leveraging You? HIT Exchange , pp. 8-9. Smith, H. A., McKeen, J. D. (2007). Shared Services at RR Communications. Queens School of Business. Symantec. (2011, May 2). Deduplication and businesslike Data Storage. Retrieved October 26, 2011, from PR Newswire1. List the advantagesA single customer service center will fork up both financial and human resource savings for RR Communications by eliminating the allocation of duplicated resources to the multiple divisional and regional customer service centers. With valuable resources freed from these multiple customer service centers, the company will be able to allocate more resources to its value added activities and improve operational efficiency. RR Communications run four divisions, each with a distinct but a complimentary produ ct. They are internet, mobile, landline, and cable TV service. There is a deregulation in the telecommunications industry and its becoming a norm for competitors to offer multiple services like RR Communications. RR Communications customershave been complaining about double billing because the four divisions have no working collaboration and thus, no way of knowing when the other division may already have sent the bill. A single customer service center will consolidate the data of the customers of all divisions and by addressing the problem of inaccurate billing, it will potential save the loss of dissatisfied customers to the competitors.A single service center will also yield growth opportunities by marketing the companys other services to customers that they may not already have and offer discount incentives on the purchase of multiple products. A single customer service center will allow comparison among the companys divisions in terms of product quality, customer satisfaction, and retention rates so that more resources could be allocated to troubled areas. A single customer service center will also make it easy to realize data about the companys divisions and store them in standard formats for management analysis. By having access to all the relevant information about the customers, the customer service center will be better able to address customers questions and market companys products which would not have been possible with separate customer service centers. It will also be convenient for the customers to call only one place for all their questions and thus, will increase goodwill for RR Communications.1. Is it possible to achieve an enterprise vision with a decentralized IT function? The break up to this question really depends on what the meaning or intention is behind the idea of an enterprise vision. If this simply means of having certain departments existing and able to complete their tasks and accomplish their goals, basically that the enterp rise is functioning, than the answer is certainly. As demonstrated in the case study, there were multiple divisions for IT that were each doing their own thing, and while it wasnt pretty, compatible or optimal, everything did, technically, work allowing each department to function. As soon as the vision of an enterprise expands to a desire to work more efficiently, unify tools and platforms, have stronger compatibility or be one company a decentralized IT function becomes a massive hindrance.Turning to the case study again, each department was replicating the efforts of the other departments by finding their own software/data vendors, creating unique database systems and having their own support staff. This not only made it difficult for clients whoneeded sufficeance, but meant there was excessive spending, and an unfitness for multiple departments to come together to function as a a single entity within the enterprise.2. What business and IT problems can be caused by lack of commo n information and an enterprise IM strategy? There are numerous business and IT problems that can arise from the lack of common strategy. In terms of IT there can be duplication of efforts, systems and tools tether to not only multiple expenditures to yield the same results, but this may mean there is no strong outline of how systems are set up or designed, there may be no map detailing the hardware and software in place, which makes it far more difficult to not only run inventory, but ensure that new expenditures are needed and not (again) duplicating tools that have already been purchased or implemented.When different software and hardware solutions are used across departments, this also leads to difficulties in compatibility. When the organization wants to implement something new, it would be difficult if not impossible to determine if it can be integrated into the existing tools, or this may result in unanticipated technical errors arising from compatibility issues. Business pr oblems stem primarily from an inability of data to be effectively shared across groups, thus limiting the ability of various departments to work together. not only could this cause rifts to form between various groups, but it also means that there could be issues with data consistency. This is especially troubling for client data, as a change in one department may not be updated elsewhere due to data being stored in different databases, the inability for data to be updated across databases, and even opens up the potential for technical errors causing data that is ordinarily consistent to suddenly become disparate from similar data elsewhere. Additionally, when the business requires technical assistance it is likely to be difficult to find the correct person with the knowledge needed to resolve a particular issue if that department is using specialized systems that are not consistent across the organization.3. What governance mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure common custo mer data and a shared customer service center? What metrics might be useful (think service level agreements, etc.)? vulgar customer data will require a standardized database, as well as unfaltering auditing procedures to ensure that data is only being modified/updated by those individuals who are supposed to have access, as well as verifyingaccuracy for these modifications. Customer service really depends on the objectives of the company. I worked on an inbound phone line at a call center for 3 years while this was technically brokerage service, arguably it was a cutomer service center. Training had to be farily comprehensive so we could assist clients with almost any issues they had, and on top of that reps have to know what departments specialize in certain topics in case they need help figuring out what happened or resolving a complicated problem. On top of that, there is prescribed review and QA of random calls to ensure representatives are giving correct informaton and assi sting the client based on the standards and expectations set by the organization. Call reviews are calculated on a collection plate where there are certain objective actions that are required on every call, then measured more subjective terms such as professionalism.I work with a tremendous amount of shared customer data, and everything is monitored, recorded and subject to audit procedures. There is always the abilty to find out who did what, when, and every phone call is recorded and maintained for a period of time. This of course protects the client as much as it helps protect the firm. As far as data is concerned, I dont know if there are specific service level agreements in place, but I do know that there is regular testing of what is referred to as host fallback where all the primary systems are taken down for a period of time, then brought back up. While this is frustrating for reps and clients who need access to the data, the very small fall of times I experienced an unsc heduled outage the backup systems performed well, all reps knew how best to work within the control of the backup system, and the discussion with clients about why certain things could not be done went far more smoothly than if regular testing was not performed.The case study this week describes the classic example of an organization which is heavily decentralized into distinct lines of business (each with its own IT group) that realizes their need for a flexible and responsible IT function, a common view of the customer, and the elimination of redundant systems