Mid-South Chamber of Commerce

Mid-south Chamber of Commerce

Introduction

The Mid-South Chamber of Commerce is a growing non profit organization founded in the early 1900's which originally focused on how transportation services affected surrounding businesses but now also supports industrial development, business taxation, as well as banking laws and assists in regulating how these factors are allowed to affect business in the Mid-southern regions of the country. Due to the increasing growth of MSCC, management has taken it upon themselves to determine as to where the IT information systems for the company may require major changes and upgrades in order to support an increasing demand of company resources for the branches and divisions of MSCC such as sales and marketing. Alongside of hiring new IT staff members as well as the transition and implementation of Unitrak software, a chain of poor management decisions concerning the development and improvement of the companies IT infrastructure have taken place. With a lack of vision of how a properly implemented and sustainable IT based solution is supposed to operate in relation to the needs and requirements of MSCC, numerous obstacles for the company to iron out and overcome have been brought into light regarding their information systems infrastructure.

Background Information

In December of 2000 a new Vice President of Marketing and Membership was hired known as Leon Lassiter who has some impressive qualities such as 12 successful years in sales management and marketing with a company known as American Brands. In his new role at MSCC, Lassiter decided to do a “thorough review” of departments, programs, and processes In order to determine the companies strengths and weaknesses. Lassiter discovered some significant flaws relating to the 1011 workstation computers equip with some custom software in conjunction with how the IT infrastructure of the company is relatively limited concerning it's information system. So far the company network has consisted of the individual workstations connected to a print server and any backups concerning changes in company data are scheduled every two to three days whereas Lassiter is hoping to get a system worked out in order to achieve a two hour turnaround on “member change activity.”

The operation division manager Ed Wilson is primarily concerned with the aggressive management of expenses which also has much to do with the companies personnel. Between the actions of both Lassiter and Wilson, a solid amount of financial growth had taken place in 2002 where MSCC quickly started to outgrow its current IS infrastructure. At this time it was in contest as to either hire a full time systems analyst or keep calling Vassici when certain tasks or projects needed his attention in the IT department.