Issues in Case Study
IT department employers have lack of knowledge what is going on in business section of the company. Cheryl O’Shea, VP of retail marketing, said that IT staff always talks in a way that is not understandable to her, mostly in technical words. She assumes that they do not know what to do with Savvy Store program. She needs IT’s help to improve the customer experience. However, IT workers continue talking about the technology staff and issues which are not related to business.
IT staff is not familiar with basic business functions of business department. Glen Vogel, the COO, complains whether they are getting value for investing millions to IT. IT staff is not aware of how their warehouse operates. Therefore, when a new technology does not operate properly, they easily ignore and ask them to add it to the list for the next release.
Glen thinks that IT is not providing new business value for Hefty. Even though IT installed new ERP system, which is very helpful to function month-end and bench-making reports, as well as although reliability and cost-effectiveness for hardware and systems are reasonable, business staff believes IT is not helping to improve the Hefty’s business strategy.
IT leaders are not on track what are happening on business side. They do not participate in strategy meetings; do not always keep in touch with them. Only IT accounts manager Jenny Henderson has a connection and is aware of new comings of business. Glen encountered that his communication with IT department is not very comprehensible.
Since Hefty’s stores operate differently than head office, Glen thought it would be better to see the real situations and to investigate what is happening on store operations. Thus, he invited Jenny, Cheryl, the Marketing IT Relationship Mnanager Paul Gutierez, and the CIO Farzad Mohammed as well as a couple of the IT architects. But, Farzad did not want to go to investigation.
IT department do not take