Midsouth Case Study

Introduction

The MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (MSCC) was an organization that began in the 1900s when a group of business people joined together to form the organization to lobby for legislature on issues of transportation. MSCC then grew to become one of the most powerful advocacy organizations and chamber of commerce in its area. As the organization grew, so did its need to use computer technology to streamline its business.

This paper examines both the failures that occurred when MSCC decided to upgrade their information technology infrastructure from the custom software to a specialized program called UNITRAX.

UNITRAX

Leon Lassiter, the President of Marketing and Membership, decided that integrating and automating manager’s work and marketing support activities would reduce overall labor costs. Lassiter believed that small firm called UNITRAK and its software would be able to fulfill the needs of MSCC based on current and future needs. The UNITRAK system software was purchased and the troubles began as there were delays and implementation issues with the new software.

MSCC made several mistakes before, during and after the UNITRAK system was implemented. Prior to the implementation, Lassiter did not receive input on the needs and requirements of the individuals who would be using the system the most, the staff and employees. Also, several individuals where hesitant to support the new system such as Simon Kovecki, who states that, (Brown, 14) “Yeah, the software has its strengths and weaknesses and it probably would save some of my time. But I don’t like the idea of staff having uncontrolled access to so much data. It’s not clear what they’ll do with it”. During implementation, Kovecki had not studied the documentation for the UNITRAX system and was not supportive of the new system. Also during implementation, the system was not user friendly as had been discussed and several of the functions that were available in the old system were not available in the UNITRAX system. As the old system was not documented, transferring data from the old system to the new system led to data loss and data corruption.

Sage Niele was hired as the Vice President of Operations and Chief Financial Officer and was tasked with the cleanup post UNITRAX