List the advantages of a single customer service center for RR Communications
Answer: Information technology has the potential to establish and coordinate a single customer service center in the company, which will take up the tasks that multiple customer service centers (Webster and Robins, 2006). Although this is quite difficult to establish and maintain, the following advantages are associated with a single customer service center;
- It provides management with an easy way to handle customer details, orders, and issues in a coordinated way.
- With a single-center, it is easy to handle customer information in a coordinated way.
- A single service center allows the organization to provide similar services and information to all customers rather than providing different services to customers (Reynolds, 2009).
- A single customer service center makes it easy to monitor the trends of service delivery through information and data management
- Moreover, single customer service makes it possible to hire a few persons at the customer care center, which in turn reduces the cost required to provide customer care services (Shelly, Cashman, Vermaat, and Walker, 2009).
Devise an implementation strategy that would guarantee the support of the divisional presidents for the shared customer service center.
Answer: to implement a single customer service center that will be shared among the departments at RR Communications, it is important for the IT management to consider an in-depth implementation plan or strategy that will not only allow a complete implementation of coordination of services at a single center but also maintain a coordinated way of handling customers. The company needs a four-step plan to implement the IT system for the center as flows.
Strategic focus: this is the first step and involves refining the committing the strategy. Here, the company will have to consider what it wants of the new system, focus on its existing tasks and pieces of information that will have to go into the new system. Besides, it has to consider the types of problems it experiences with the current system and how it would like the problems to be solved.
Assessment: This section involves three steps as follows:
- Audit measures- RR Communications will have to assess the fit between the strategy and the existing measures in customer service delivery. If data are available, then a link analysis between the employee measures and the measures of customer satisfaction or financial measures will have to be assessed.
- The company will have to examine the measurement process for the customer service deliver
Developing new driver and performance measures: RR communications will work to develop new measures for customer care as required. This must include a survey of employees, which involves questionnaires that will make use of the employee survey indices on certain issues that predict the outcomes of the new service delivery. Secondly, the company will select modules that will be tailored to the business activities and the issues affecting customer care services.
Apply new balanced scorecard measures- RR communications will apply the new information technology, using the tools that will make it easy to understand and implement the new system.
Continuous assessment and maintenance will be the last section and will allow the company to continue assessing the progress of the new system, identify and report errors and problems, and continue improving the system.
Is it possible to achieve an enterprise vision with a decentralized IT function?
Answer: It is certainly impossible to achieve the vision of the organization with a decentralized IT function for various reasons. First, it becomes difficult to manage company information because different persons have different ways of doing things. Secondly, it is difficult to identify the areas of weakness, opportunities, and threats, which then becomes difficult to improve. Thirdly, a decentralized system cannot allow organizational management to identify and follow customer trends. Finally, different people have different interests in the company, and a decentralized system will allow some employees to do some tasks for personal gains
What business and IT problems can result from a lack of common information and entrepreneurship IM Strategy?
- poor communication channels
- poor information handling
- inability to identify problems and strengths
- inability to coordinate customer care services
- inability to develop a common way of solving customer problems and thus poor customer handling
What governance do mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure common customer data and a shared customer service center? What metrics could be useful?
Answer: first, the company needs a common platform that will allow the management to make decisions on critical areas of customer service provision (Allen & Morton, 2004). The management needs to ensure a coordinated way of the information provided to the employees. There is a need for a standardized way of data handling (Proctor, 2011). However, this must be executed from a centralized position. The management needs to conduct business analysis for all departments to determine their potentials and problems and find a better way of solving these problems.
References
Allen, T., & Morton, M. S. (2004). Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Proctor, K. S. (2011). Optimizing and Assessing Information Technology: Improving Business Project Execution. New York: John Wiley & Sons
Reynolds, G. (2009). Ethics in Information Technology. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning,
Shelly, G., Cashman, T., Vermaat, M., & Walker, T. (2009). Discovering Computers 2000: Concepts for a Connected World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Course Technology.
Webster, F., & Robins, K. (2006). Information Technology—A Luddite Analysis. Norwood, NJ: Ablex