Schidmt Co
Case Overview/Interesting Findings
I thought this was a very good case as it shows how important IT systems can be for small as well as large cases.
The ERP system is amazing in general. I am especially impressed with the Purchasing tools that forecast orders and demand among the thousands of SKUs that Schmidt Co. worked with. It was also neat to see that John admitted this was a critical part of the ERP system as well.
I am always surprised by what we don't know. We learned how specific DTech was with distribution but know nothing about the US company that has installed multiple options.
Key Issues
Schmidt Co. had a big project on its IT system the company's actual backbone. Currently, the IT new project is really late (3 months late) and already over $50,000 over budget. Eventually, the project got to be very late and they had spent over $600,000.
The company is small enough that they don't have strong people with specialty skills in IT given by the example that the manager doesn't understand how to convert the data. Therefore, the owner, John, has a hard time determining what to do as the project leader. He has all the power but no knowledge in this situation.
The current system has 2 major issues: inventory management and purchasing. Additionally, some of the other functions (such as Accounting) run completely separate.
Recommendations
I think they have laid this case out pretty well. First, I agree with DTech that they should hire a project manager. If they do not want to hire a full time employee due to concerns of not wanting to keep long term overhead, they could outsource someone. I think this would depend on the long term needs of the system.
Second, I agree that they should hire a key person to take over the IT department. While it seems like his friend David could do the job, I would recommend moving forward with a normal search and...
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