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H.E. Butt Grocery Co. led the grocery industry in adopting many innovations, including category management, electronic data interchange, and continuous replenishment. They have also moved aggressively and profitably into newer applications such as Scanner-based payment and basket analysis.

Describes the situation faced by Nortel's Information Systems (I/S) department as the company tried to respond to changes in its environment. With the evolution and convergence in the telecommunications industry and expansion onto the global stage, the company saw the need to improve integration across business units. The I/S department was charged with helping the business units reengineer their process. Brad Taylor, director of I/S, is trying to reengineer the I/S department itself so that it could fulfill the new role. Unfortunately, the existing structure--a fragmented I/S group struggling to meet existing expectations--was poorly positioned for this role. Brad's dilemma was not only to change his own department, but to change the way in which it related to the rest of the company. Can be used to discuss the role and structure of an I/S department. Can also be used as the basis for a class on business process reengineering and/or managing organizational change.

Diana Sullivan, CEO of Lenox Insurance, thought she had done her job when, after three years of hard work, she had delivered Lifexpress on time and on budget. A sophisticated computer-aided system, it enabled Lenox's 10,000-plus agents to do everything from establish a prospect's financial profile, to select the most appropriate products from the company's myriad policies, to generate all the paperwork needed to close a sale. But now Sullivan's boss, CFO Clay Fontana, seemed to be holding her accountable not only for the creation and implementation of the system but for realizing its business goals as well. And Lenox's CEO, James Bennett, appeared to concur. In this hypothetical case study, Sullivan and the other top executives at Lenox must decide who should be responsible for realizing the business goals of information technology projects. Should Sullivan have gone about the project in another way? Should Fontana and Bennett be playing more active roles? In 97308 and 97308Z, commentators James K. Sims, Thornton May, Richard Nolan, Robert A. Distefano, and John King offer advice on this fictional case study.

Diana Sullivan, CEO of Lenox Insurance, thought she had done her job when, after three years of hard work, she had delivered Lifexpress on time and on budget. A sophisticated computer-aided system, it enabled Lenox's 10,000-plus agents to do everything from establish a prospect's financial profile, to select the most appropriate products from the company's myriad policies, to generate all the paperwork needed to close a sale. But now Sullivan's boss, CFO Clay Fontana, seemed to be holding her accountable not only for the creation and implementation of the system but for realizing its business goals as well. And Lenox's CEO, James Bennett, appeared to concur. In this hypothetical case study, Sullivan and the other top executives at Lenox must decide who should be responsible for realizing the business goals of information technology projects. Should Sullivan have gone about the project in another way? Should Fontana and Bennett be playing more active roles? In 97308 and 97308Z, commentators James K. Sims, Thornton May, Richard Nolan, Robert A. Distefano, and John King offer advice on this fictional case study.

Diana Sullivan, CEO of Lenox Insurance, thought she had done her job when, after three years of hard work, she had delivered Lifexpress on time and on budget. A sophisticated computer-aided system, it enabled Lenox's 10,000-plus agents to do everything from establish a prospect's financial profile, to select the most appropriate products from the company's myriad policies, to generate all the paperwork needed to close a sale. But now Sullivan's boss, CFO Clay Fontana, seemed to be holding her accountable not only for the creation and implementation of the system but for realizing its business goals as well. And Lenox's CEO, James Bennett, appeared to concur. In this hypothetical case study, Sullivan and the other top executives at Lenox must decide who should be responsible for realizing the business goals of information technology projects. Should Sullivan have gone about the project in another way? Should Fontana and Bennett be playing more active roles? In 97308 and 97308Z, commentators James K. Sims, Thornton May, Richard Nolan, Robert A. Distefano, and John King offer advice on this fictional case study.

Demonstrates how organizations can move toward creation of processes and information technology infrastructures for effective knowledge management in order to enhance performance and productivity. More specifically, describes the knowledge management strategy of KPMG Peat Marwick LLP in terms of its components: people, processes, and technologies. Traces the history of knowledge management at the firm and the facilitating role of the Internet and intranet technologies in executing the firm's knowledge management strategy.

Metalco is a large Australian mining company. It has a rocky history in terms of its effective use of information systems (IS), and there is widespread dissatisfaction in the company concerning IS and the IS department. The recent resignation of the chief information officer led to the decentralization of the IS function, to move closer to the operating departments. At the same time, one of the division heads has proposed that the company buy the SAP enterprise-wide system, to replace an earlier internal system that had been poorly received. The price tag for SAP is very high, $23 million. Implementing it would also require substantial changes in company processes. In light of its history, recent IS decentralization, and the high SAP price tag, the company is faced with making the decision of whether to go ahead with SAP. An appendix in the case provides extensive information on the procedure used to evaluate SAP and results thereof.

Prior planning prevents poor performance is the moral of this case about predicting bid prices on new personal computer display models based only on past vendors' bids. Students gain respect for a set of 71 data points that might be used to explore the relationships between bid price per unit and the specifications and quantities of previous displays. The case illustrates the importance of understanding the available data and circumstances surrounding its collection before using regression analysis to summarize relationships.

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV6210.

The conventional wisdom is that companies should never outsource core functions. This study of 34 large companies that outsourced for at least two years demonstrates that outsourcing can be successful even when information systems are viewed as core functions. However, outsourcing negotiations must reflect the role of the company performing the outsourced functions and the nature of the outsourced work. A critical key to success in outsourcing arrangements lies in having tight contracts, even when the outsourcing vendor is viewed as a strategic partner or the IS function is considered to be core. This article offers prescriptions for writing contracts and creating balanced arrangements to enhance outsourcing success.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Provides an overview of the future role of the IT organization, examining the business and technological changes that effect change in many IT units. The four major process changes in the way firms operate all have a major impact on the IT unit: reengineering operational processes, reengineering support processes, rethinking managerial information flows, and redesigning network processes. A distributed computing environment, new development software methods, capabilities like the Internet and other networks, new entrants in the computer industry, and outsourcing are the technological changes affecting the IT organization. The authors cite eight imperatives in which IT organizations must excel to succeed: achieve two-way strategic alignment; develop effective relationships with line management; deliver and implement new systems; build and manage infrastructure; reskill the IT organization; manage vendor partnerships; build high performance; and redesign and manage the federal IT organization.

Edmund's publishes an automobile price guide in books (600,000 units per year) and over the Internet (16,000 users a day and growing). The site can be visited at www.edmunds.com. In the marketplace, it makes money selling books. In the marketspace, they make their money on referrals--referring customers to Auto-By-Tel, a car-shopping service, and GEICO, an auto insurer, among others.

As a central component of its Vision 2020 strategy, the city of Wellington, New Zealand has developed preliminary plans to transform itself into a "wired city." The overarching project was called Info City. Info City actually consisted of a collection of sub-projects, each focusing on a different way in which the city could promote and foster the use of information technology to help move toward the "2020 Vision." One of the sub-projects was called City Link. The objective of City Link was to create a high-speed digital communications infrastructure for the downtown business district. Fiber optic cable was to be used to "wire up," simply and inexpensively, the city's downtown businesses, to provide a backbone network that businesses could utilize, however they wished, to make themselves more competitive. A company had recently been formed to bring together a number of parties interested in advancing the project. A telecommunications architecture was being developed, and plans for stringing cable were underway. While Richard Naylor, the project's champion, wasn't sure exactly how the city's businesses would use the cable, he was confident that once the infrastructure was in place, ideas for its utilization would readily emerge. This case provides a setting for exploring the issue of cities "competing," much as do businesses, and the ways in which IT can be utilized in the competition. Also raises interesting social policy questions about who should pay for such an undertaking, who should benefit, and so on.

The Internet promises a radical new world of business. But for many companies, it has yet to deliver. Although doing business in cyberspace may be novel and exhilarating, it can also be frustrating, confusing, and even unprofitable. Debora Spar and Jeffrey Bussgang argue that the problems companies face have little to do with a lack of technology or imagination. Their problems stem instead from a lack of rules. The authors explain why the informal rules that have developed on the Internet since the 1960s are no longer sufficient. Businesses thinking of allowing millions of dollars of transactions to occur on the wide-open Net need specific assurances. They require clear definitions of property rights, a safe and useful means of exchange, and a way to locate and punish violators of on-line rules.

In 1993 CIGNA Property and Casualty embarked on a full transformation effort under a new leadership team headed by Gerry Isom. This case presents progress through September 1995.

Explores the origins of reengineering; its evolution during the 1980s and 1990s; the current state of reengineering, which is prevalent in business today; and several possible futures of reengineering, specifically in relation to process management, knowledge work, and participative work design.

Describes the six steps included in most reengineering initiatives: selecting the processes for reengineering; identifying change enablers; developing a business vision of process objectives; understanding and measuring existing processes; designing and prototyping the new processes; and implementing the new processes.

Nokia faces the challenge of implementing the global network model: global R&D and production networks for global learning and control combined with local sales and customer service for a local market presence. It launches an international logistics project to provide integrated solutions delivery and after-sales service. This case describes Nokia's IT strategy study, which clarified the need for, and architecture of the new logistics system.

A proposal for reengineering the order management process of an HVAC products and services company receives only half the funding it needs. The proposal appeared to offer a very high return on investment, but would require substantial funding and dramatic changes in work processes and the information technology required to support these processes. The firm's president must decide whether to fully fund the reengineering effort and how quickly to roll out the new program.

Information technology now permeates every aspect of a business, requiring CEOs today to involve themselves in IT planning and decision making. Which IT investment responsibilities should the CEO delegate and to whom? When senior executives consider IT investment options, what should they look for? How do they learn what they need to know to ask the right questions? What role should other managers play in the decision? Six experts--Bob L. Martin, Gene Batchelder, Jonathan Newcomb, John F. Rockart, Wayne P. Yetter, and Jerome H. Grossman--share their views.