CASE STUDY

Case Study

Case Study 1: Lascelles Fine Foods

Answer # 01

LFFL holds very less expertise in the acquisition of information. The problem is that there is/are no personnel in the company with expertise in this domain, neither there is a person hired on a temporary basis to cater the need of the information technology. On the other side, there are few human resource personnel who have little knowledge or skills related to information technology. They can deal with the design and development of the management information systems to support the end users, basically the main client of the organization, The organization is also in involved in a business with low level of innovation and uniqueness, and this is the aspect that raise the probability for LFFL to outsource the development of the information system or directly purchase it from an organization catering the need of information technology (Dashofy, 1999, pp. n.d).

The first method is to hire an information technology specialist to cater the demand of the information system. The best feature of this aspect is that the company can get rid of the independency in the domain of information technology. Another effective approach, which is also into practice in the current scenario, is that organizations outsource their information system development to a third party, which is mainly a software house. The intermediary charges a certain amount from the organization and design and develops a customized application or the information system for the organization. This method is relatively expensive as the information technology specialist will most probably charge an amount adding up to the expenses of the organization. Considering the progress and situation of the company this method can create various hazards for the organization. From the technological perspective, the staff can be also hired on a temporary or contractual basis; this will be for the time till the information system is being developed. They can take these services from a software house. A problem in hiring a new specialist is that it is a bit difficult to match up with the demand and make clear understandings with the new personnel in the organization. These things can fit into the daily practices and similarly the adoption of this method can help LFFL in finding an appropriate solution. The organizations may seek to go for external consultancy services. There are various organizations that provide consultancy service to other organizations will different available schemes. They either act as an intermediary to help them get the information system developed by a software house, most probably in their contract. The second thing in which they can assist is that they can provide with a staff which can act as the associated professionals of LFFL for a certain period time.

The main concern for LFFL must be that they effectively serve their end users. The software must be free from bugs, though there are bugs in even large information systems, but at least not the ones of the basic ...