Dissertation, tough job definitely, …after struggling with it in 2 months, work has finally done…Thanks for all who give me invaluable advice, and special thanks to Wei who provided me a living space and be with me all the time. And good luck for every classmate, be happy and have good future.
By Yiming Luo 27/05/2008
1. Introduction
This report aims to evaluate two web sites (Wikipedia and Encarta) that have same on-line encyclopedia purpose but have different user interface designs. The evaluation will analyze their usability and aesthetics issues and interpret related data has been collected before. The first section will discuss the usability errors I encountered in the experiments, followed by the two sections that talk about the content issue and aesthetics issue of both sites respectively. The last section gives a overall preference and a conclusion of this experiment.
2. Usability
Usability is one of the most important issues within website design. It can be definied as quality of interaction in terms of parameters (HCI lecture notes, 2008). According to ISO (1998), there are three components consist in usability: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction. In order to evaluate these two on-line enclyopadia, a experiment has been carried out: Search keywords “Usability”, “User experience” and “Website design” in both website separately. Figure 1 shows that several usability errors I encountered in this experiment, followed by illustration of each errors.
Figure 1
Wikipedia Encarta
Different errors
1) Lack of rich search results 1) Too many advertisements
2) Lack of interactive material 2) Lack of multi-language supporting
3) Some repeated links 3) Unclear search results
4) Some useless links
Similar errors
1) Not designed for everyone
Errors of using Wikipedia
1) Lack of rich search results: Encarta’s well-designed search engine could provied users range of informaiton related to their search filed. For example, after I tried to seach “Website design” in Encarta, I recived various feedbacks from its search engine, form articles and definition of website design to books and colleages related to websites design. Inaddition, it also provides external search results from Live.com which is famous search engine run by Microsoft. On the other hand, Wikipedia only explained what website design was with one article and some reference links, which unable to lead me to the further research.
2) Lack of interactive information:
Unlike Encarta gives users various options ranging from articles to quizzes and photos to map, Wikipedia only provides text information with a little graphic information, which is hard to draw users’ attention and put them in front of screen for a long time. By text “User experience” in both site, Encarta gave a bunch of information from website prototype picture to some website design companies maps. Wikipedia just gave a poor eye-attractive context article.
3) Some repeated information and external links: In Wikipedia, due to the idea of “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (Wikipedia, 2008), there are some repeated information and external links in some article. For example, When I searched for “User experience”, after I entered the article page, I clicked the link to User Experience Design by Peter Morville And User Experience Design - Semantic Studios, the two different links in the same page led me to a same article in same website.
Errors of using Encarta
1) Too many advertisements: Encarta shows a lot of advertisement on the pages, which let users unable to concentrate on the information what they are looking for. By contrast, Wikipedia with ads-free police give users a very comfortable reading environment.
2) Lack of Multi-language supporting: For multi-language support aspect, Encarta more looks like a dictionary that can only support some simple words translation, such as English to Spanish or to Italian. By contrast, Wikipedia enable users to read the article in more than 20 languages. However, Wikipedia is still struggling with some translation accuracy issue.
3) Unclear search results: The information showed by Encarta wasn’t all on the exact right topic, sometimes users have to choice the topic again after search key words. For example, after I typed keyword “Usability”, Encarta showed two topics on the articles part: one was Usability (quotations), which was not what I was looking for at all. The other article was Software: usability as ease of learning to software, which was what I needed. So, I had to click the later article link again in order to enter the page I wanted. This feature is supposed to give user some additional information about keywords, unfortunately it makes web pages more complex compared with Wikipedia. For Wikipedia, it also provides this kind of feature but only when users try to search some unclear keywords that related to different areas. There will be a clear guiding page which enable users enter right page easily by getting rid of misunderstandings. In this case, Wikipedia directly led me to the right page.
4) Useless results and links: As we mentioned above, by searching keywords on Encarta, users are able to get range of results. However, some of these results are seen as useless information for the users. As figure 2 shows below, after I search “Website design”, the results category of photos displayed some other design issues like Givenchy design, Type design and Costume design which are not relate to the keywords. Moreover, the Live.com’ results also showed some irrelevant information about my search, such as design marketing companies and small business marketing. So, it is hard to say that those features Encarta provided are all useful for the users.
Figure 2
Errors encountered in both websites
1) Not designed for everyone: Neither of Wikipedia and Encarta is designed for everyone on the Internet. Encarta has been specifically divided its users into three groups: Kids, College, and Adult and provided different attraction for them. However, for some people who have reading barriers still are unable to use it efficiently. Wikipedia provided some help for those people with a function called as spoken articles system. Within this system, these people can also gain knowledge from on-line encyclopedia by listening the articles. However, not every articles on Wikipedia supports this function, the information provided are limited.
3. Content Quality and Functionality Assessment
Concept of “Anyone can edit” makes Wikipedia works with worldwide contributions. With huge numbers of article contributors, Wikipedia provids much more collective and detail information on each articles compared with Encarta’s. However, when it comes to content reliability and accuracy, there are some concerns raised from some experts’ arguements. Timmer (2006) points out that the report from an expert-led investigation showed there are numerous errors in this on-line encylopedia. On other hand, Encarta with restrictive prefesional atricles provides much more reliable information for the users. According to to data collected by Content Quality and Functionality Assessment questionnaire (Appendix C), in terms of accurate and reliable issues, Encarta had better prefermance than Wikipedia From information satisfaction perspective, Wikipedia seems to be better than its rival.
As mentioned above, there are two ways to look things up in these two on-line encyclopedia: by searching or by browsing. Encarta takes the lead by a large gap because of its rich search results and user groups oriented browsing which have been briefly discussed in above section. Multiple categories search results lead users to further research, and certain group of users also are able to find their interest information easily once the get used to the navigation systems of Encarta which might takes them some time. Conversely, Wikipedia is not as good as Encara at those aspects. However Wikipedia provides articles spoken system that makes it more useful for preple who have reading barriers.
4. Aesthetics
Besides the usability, website Aesthetic is also a key element which will affect people’s feeling and mood when they use on-line encyclopedia. The aesthetics questioner (Appendix A) has the most consistent results during the whole experiment. In general, the aesthetic of Encarta is better than Wikipedia’s. This section will discuss the aesthetics issue of Encarta and Wikipedia.
The aspects both of Wikipedia and Encarta did well
The background colour of Encarta is blue and white which shows its professional and decent style that the gateway for interactive learning on the Web. On the other hand, Wikipedia uses grey and white colour as the background colour that is clean and clear thus can give people a feeling that writing on a blank paper. This is also how Wikipedia defines itself, “A free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. Encarta utilizes the horizontal menu that is consistent with its home page format. Furthermore, the content of its menu is user-oriented that includes the most popular categories like dictionary, atlas and adult learning. In addition, the menu is put on very top just below the search bar, which can make people notice that easily. Although Wikipedia did not design its menu by popular categories, it also has a convenient menu that is categorized by subjects, such as history, arts. This kind of menu design provides clear field focuses so that people can find large amount of same subject information easily.
The aspects Encarta did better
On Encarta’s home page, there is a big size rolled pictures board at heart location, which presents in the title pictures of selected featured articles in turn. It is very eye catching design. If people want to know the details of them, can just click on the pictures and then read the full texts. By contrast, Wikipedia presents a large part text of one featured article on its home page, which makes the whole page full and crowned. If some people are not interested in this article, the big space the article occupied is useless and a waste to them. Therefore, compared with Encarta, Wikipedia does not use its home page space efficiently. When people entry Wikipedia’s home page, it can be found that the home page is quite bursting while Encarta is clear and comfortable. Basically, it is because Wikipedia puts a lot of information and texts on the home page and uses single line space between text lines whereas Encarta uses 1.5 lines and less text. Besides this, Wikipedia put columns in both horizontal and vertical ways. This kind of mixed format style makes its home page quite disordered.
It is obviously that as an on-line encyclopedia search is a key function. Comparing Wikipedia, Encarta did better on search entry design. They put searching bar on the top of their home page and make it noticeable. However, Wikipedia only gives a small left space for the search bar that is very obscure. As Hemispheric resource theory assumes that there are at least two unique resource pools that can support the formation of a mental representation based on the preattentive feature analysis (Allen, 1983). One resource pool is better suited for holistic, inferential processing and is associated with the right hemisphere, while a second resource pool is better suited for analytic, sequential, repetitive processing and is associated with the left hemisphere (Alwitt, 1981). Therefore, Janiszewski (1988) found that pictorial information were more liked when placed in the left, as opposed to the right, because this layout encouraged the viewer to use the holistic processing resources of the right hemisphere to initially perceive it. Therefore, it is better to put title pictures on left as MSN Encarta did while Wikipedia puts them on right.
The aspects Wikipedia did better
Encarta uses blue titles and black font colour on white board; it is most visually clear, but problems for people with dyslexia. Wikipedia use blue titles and black font colour on soft blue board, which is also visually clear and more comfortable to read and will not make people’s eyes feel tried easily. The icon of Wikipedia is an earth jigsaw that is composed by different fields’ parts. That reflects the features of Wikipedia, wide range and knowledge ability. Since Encarta belongs to MSN, they continue using MSN’s icon. However this icon could not convey the features of Encarta as an on-line encyclopedia. In addition, compared to Encarta, there is little advertisement on Wikipedia, which can build a more academic website image, quite like a real book not a magazine. On the other hand, Encarta leaves 1/3 home page space for advertisements.
The aspects neither of Wikipedia or Encarta did well
Both of Wikipedia and Encarta use small size font on articles’ titles which are for catching people’s notice. If the font size of title is small, it is hard for people to read and sometimes, people will ignore them. For example, when I entered Wikipedia and Encarta, I seldom got information on home page. Because the small size of font is annoying and make my eyes feel sour even though they used bold font style.
5. Conclusion
Even though the overall preference questionnaire (Appendix D) shows a very close rating for both on-line encyclopedias, the rating of Wikipedia just lead Encarta a little bit. However personally I still strongly prefer to use Wikipedia who has less usability errors with and better rating on content quality & functionality assessment questionnaires (Appendix C). The aesthetics issue is not big problem for me if the website provide better user engagement and various contents. Wikipedia is kind of place where you can easily start you works with up-to-date and in-detail information. I don’t mind if these information may be a bit unreliable, because I will also use another additional sources for fact checking. By contrast, the professional and additional information provided by Encarta is more useful for academic purposes. Thus, even if Encarta has better performance on the aesthetics questioner (Appendix A), but user like me who only concentrate on the exact information I am looking for and not too much care about reliability of these information will choose Wikipedia. Moreover, another reason I use Wikipedia more frequently is that famous search engine Google shows the related Wikipedia pages in its first results page when user search on google.
Reference:
Allen, M. (1983), Models of Hemispheric Specialization. Psychological Bulletin, 93 (1), 72-104.
Alwitt, L. F. (1981). Two Neural Mechanisms Related to Models of Selective Attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7 (4), 324-332.
Encarta (2008).
Available at: http://encarta.msn.com/
HCI lecture notes. (2008). Human Computer Interaction lecture. Manchester Business shcool.
ISO 9241. (1998). ISO. Available at: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=16883
Janiszewski, C. (1988). Preconscious Processing Effect: The Independence of Attitude Formation and Conscious Thought. Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (September), 199-209.
Timmer, J. (2006). Britannica begs to differ on Wikipedia’s accuracy, the are of technology,
Available at: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060323-6442.html
Wikipedia. ( 2008).
Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
After 3 years , you finally leave us.
Hope you have great career in Fiorentina.
We will miss you forever
By yiming luo 07/01/2008
ABSTRACT
Successful implementations of large-scale IS (Information System) are crucial for sustaining and enhancing the competitive position of enterprises. However, these large-scale IS implementations are often complex and time-consuming. In last decade, due to resistance of new systems and not perfect relationship between business integration and systems integration, many IS implementations effects fail to meet stakeholders’ expectations and project deadline even with huge numbers of investments. Organizations realized that alignment between business and IT strategies is an important part of IS implementations. By using Mckinsey 7S Framework and taking both successful ERP system implementation in Cisco and failure IS implementation in BP Chemical as examples, the paper aims to demonstrate the difficulties of large-scale IS implementations.
Introduction
Last several yeas spawned various innovations on both business and technology side, such as business process reengineering, supply chain management, XML language and client-server computing (Markus, 2000). Those innovations create numerous opportunities for organizations to gain more profits by changing the way of doing business though IS implementations. According to Hawking and Stein (2003), the implementation of large scale IS software is a very important issue facing businesses. However, example of successful implementations is rare.
Literary Review
There are four principles are shown below to measure whether a IS implementation is success or not:
1. Whether make the expected return on investment in the promised time.
2. Whether the implementation start in time.
3. Whether run over budget by unconscionable variances.
4. Whether generate problem in production.
According to this principle, industry statistics show that over 60% of ERP system (Enterprise resource planning) implementation starts historically fail. The reasons of this issue are vary. Trepper (1999) suggests that if a project team did not possess the required business, interpersonal and technical skills then the project implementation is hard to success. In the meantime, Maxwell (1999) proposes that there are several factors might to cause the failure of the implementation. Some factors can be attributed to the complexity of large scale IS systems, others can be attributed to the management change which will cause confusion, resistance and redundancies. A further factor is that some organizations ignore the internal politics surrounding a large-scale implementation. As result of these factors like poor project management issues, poor contingency planning and cultural issues, many IS implementations incur a significant cost and time overrun.
By reviewing the recent cases of IS implementation failures, organizations recognized that in order to successfully achieve the goal of IS implementations, they not only need to connect electronically different divisions and further to automate the order processing procedures, but also need to redesign business processes and change the structure of the organization.
Both business strategy and IT are more and more equally important to many organizations. The senior managers should understand IT discussion, meanwhile the technologist should learn to speak the business language and manage the enterprise. For example, business teams, on one hand, create enterprise strategy and assign business unit objectives. Then they discuss with IT team in order to look for technology enablement at a cost and level of service that achieve those objectives. On the other hand, IT teams create and deliver services and technologies for the business processes. However, because it is very hard to measure whether those services and technologies achieve business goals without using business acknowledges. So, the IT members must know some business word to measure and assert the value of IT to the business. For example, they need to reduce cost to make sure the financial security of IT and show IT investments are increasing the business value.
Deep Analysis
In order to make the reasons of Large-scale IS implementations difficulty more clear, it is better to combine the theory with practice case to analyze this issue. Thus, the Mckinsey 7S Framework and two different cases have been chosen. In this section, through analyze the relationship between each element, to show the reasons why large-scale IS system implementations always seen as tough job for the organizations.
Mckinsey 7S Framework
According Peters and Waterman (1982), for an organization to perform well, there are seven aspects of an organization that need to harmonize with each other. So, if an organization wants to implement Large-scale IS system in order to align business with IT strategies, they should pay more attention to all the aspects of 7S model. The components of 7S Framework are shown below.
Figure 1: The Mckinsey 7S
The seven interdependent elements can be divided into two groups: Hard and soft. Structure, Strategy and Systems belong to former group, in contrast, Skill, Style, Staff and Shared values are part of Soft group:
Strategy: the plan or course leading organization to build competitive advantage and achieve identified goals.
Structure: the way the organization is structured and its interconnections.
Systems: the routine activities and procedures, including the way of information moving around the organization.
Shared Values: the key concept that an organization imbues in its inside.
Style: the style and characterization of key manager behave.
Staff: the person and their capabilities, such as academics and technicians.
Skills: the actual capabilities and competencies of the person working for the organization.
Case analysis
The analysis depending on two cases, which consist of a very successful IS implementation from Cisco and an unsuccessful implementation from BP Chemicals. Analysis shows what kind of barriers the organizations are supposed to encounter when they try to align the business with Information Technology, and illustrates the methods that the organizations try to overcome these barriers.
One of the two cases, Cisco try to use ERP system, which is one of the largest areas of information system (IS) implementation in small, medium-sized and large-scale organizations, and always be used for enterprise integration. The Ciscos’ ERP system implementation started at June 2, 1994 and went live at January 30,1995. It very short time compared with time of BP Chemicals CSP (Commercial System) implementation, which continued from mid-1984 to 1987. The process of Ciscos’s IS implementation seem to be more successful than the process of BP Chemicals. Because BP Chemicals IS project incurred a significant cost and time overrun, by contrast Cisco completed the project in time with reasonable cost, gained a competitive advantage and increased stockholder value. Table 1 shows that the products revenue and market share of Cisco in 1999 (Four yeas after the ERP implementation):
Table 1: Cisco’s Internet products Revenues and Market Share (1999)
Products Revenues Market Share
Shared Hubs and LAN Switches $4,800,000,000 1st in market;
41% market share
WAN Switches $873,000,000 3rd in market;
22% market share
Remote Access $1,100,000,000 1st in market;
21% market share
High-end Routers $2,000,000,000 1st in market;
88% market share
Mid-range Routers $1,400,000,000 1st in market;
80% market share
Low-end Routers $1,800,000,000 1st in market;
72% market share
In order to show the reasons why is difficult to use IS system in organizations, this section will compare the main different between the two companies’ Implementation process. The comparison, based on 7S model, will summary the main differences between two companies IS implementation in terms of strategy, structure, systems, style, shared values, staff and skill. By separately analyze each component of 7S model, we can have a view the relationship between each other when organization align business with Information Technology. Thus the explanation of difficulties can be generated. Table 2 summaries the main difference between two organizations.
Table 2: Differences between two companies.
Factor BP Chemicals CSP implementation Cisco ERP implementation
Strategy
Not clear vision,
Reactive,
Directionless.
Clear vision of future direction,
Well-developed action plan
Alert to influence of external factors
Structure
Confusion duties of each person,
Poor Communications,
Conflicting targets
Clear understanding of purpose and functions,
Flexibility,
Well communicated
Systems
Linear system develop
Standardization,
Appropriate system application
Style
Sub-cultures and work independently,
Different approaches to results and customer experiences
Commitment to sharing and co-operation,
Open and honest communication,
Buy-in at all levels
Shared values
Internal conflict,
Unproductive competition,
Lack of sharing
Collaboration,
Common culture,
People working in a supportive fashion
Staff
Business-oriented,
No plan to develop everyone
Appropriate processes for employee selection,
Right people in right position,
Commitment to sharing and cooperation
Skill
Lack experience of project management
High-quality project management
Strategy: Needs of Clear Plan, Adequate Requirements and Reasonable Expectation
There was a belief within Cisco that consistency of strategy, goal, organization, and management provided a strong stabilizing benefit to a fast-growing and fast-moving company. Cisco’s CEO Chambers believed that if he could successfully execute on the four-point plan, Cisco would be the lead architect and provider of technologies for the new Internet-based infrastructure.
1. Assemble a broad product line so Cisco can serve as one-step shopping for business networks.
2. Systematize acquisitions as an efficient business process. (Cisco made more than 70 acquisitions and key strategic alliances since 1993 to fill out its product line).
3. Set industry-wide software standards for networking. IOS (Internetwork Operating System)
4. Pick the right strategic partners. (Worked with Microsoft, MCI, HP)
When Cisco noticed the old systems were on the brink of total shutdown, the CIO of Cisco Peter Solvik suggested Cisco should implement the new IS system in order to meet the needs of faster action in aspects of order entry, finance and manufacturing.
The ERP product selecting strategy was very clear as well as its plan. Because of the very clear functional requirement, Cisco can choose the most appropriate ERP package and vendor from various suppliers. One reason that Cisco chose Oracle, is the project focused on the manufacturing and Oracle had better manufacturing capability than other companies. The other reason is Cisco can get long-term development in the Oracle package.
By contrast, the CSP of BP Chemical ran over several years. This is because the performance of the CPS in terms of anticipation and planning the long-term organizational changes is very poor. From the case, before the CPS implementation, BP Chemicals is not clear about what will happen and what changes will be made. The other reason make BP Chemical implementation seems to be so difficult is the unrealistic expectation. The project team oversold the benefit of CPS to the top management, thus created the high expectations about this system in both top management and customs.
Structure: The needs of good internal communication
The structure of BP Chemical is very complex due to it consists of several subsidiaries around world and each of them has different business processes and culture. Based its own process, these subsidiaries feedback project team with several change requests that were mismanaged and had disastrous consequences on the implementation of the CPS. Different from BP, the CEO of Cisco suggested that a centralized functional structure is very important for the organization when they want to implement the large-scale IS system. The firms like BP, decentralized too quick and did not appreciate the great ability of the functional organization structure. In BP Chemical case, the project team also ignored the importance of clear and consistent communication with interest groups and the need for achieve user assistance. This is also main factor of the unrealistic expectation of the benefits.
The structure of Cisco is more suitable for IS implementation. 1993, Peter Solvik points out that, Cisco’s Information Technology department was too traditional in being viewed as a cost center reporting through the finance department, and it was too internally oriented. Because of this, the potential value of IT to the business was much smaller than it could be. So, in order to avoid the conflicts between different divisions during the ERP implementation, Solvik made some change: First of all, the IT-reporting relationship was changed from accounting to the Senior Vice President of Customer Advocacy. Secondly, the IT budget pertaining to the functions were returned to the functions, leaving just a small portion in the G&A (General and Administrative) account. Finally, central IT was disbanded and replaced with a structure whereby IT investment decisions on application project, which still executed by central IT. Meanwhile the different department’s participation was very good. From the case, the project team didn’t cost much like BP Chemical did to get the sponsorship from both the manufacturing department and finance department. With all departments’ participation, the project did very well.
Systems: Fit application software with business processes, Standardization.
With the significant development of Cisco, the old systems seems to be hard to support Cisco’s fast growth and meet the management requirements. The old system environment failed so dramatically, thus the shortcomings of the existing systems could no longer be ignored. Cisco decided to design a single integrated replacement of all the applications instead of taking a longer time to do separate projects. The replacement included ERP and web-enablement. According to Lynch (2005), corporate should make the processes that involve customers as user friendly as possible. However Cisco did more, they not only built the web application for the customers, but also built it business processes on its own global intranet, so that Cisco employees around world can exchange the information of the business issues. Noticeably, the cost ERP was just $15 million account for 13% of the total IS project implementation, the rest of money invested on those web-enablement.
Meanwhile, the Cisco IT platform architecture was standardized throughout organization. For example, 100% UNIX at the server level, 100% Windows NT at the LAN level, 100% Windows Toshiba and HP PCs ate the client level, and 100% Oracle at the database level. The standardization enabled Cisco to accomplish the complex ERP systems implementation in the short time with low cost.
By contrast, CSP didn’t notice the importance of Standardization and the project team didn’t realize the size and complexity of international IS implementation, thus they ignored to adopt prototyping and didn’t decompose the project into sub-parts. They adopt a more traditional linear way to system building, which can’t help to reduce the problem of change request at later stage of development like prototyping do. This tradition linear system development approach is not desirable for large project like IS implementation. Normally, it is very hard to predict the size, complexity and scope of large-scale IS project before actually execute it. The problem of CSP is that the project team failed to handle the size and complexity of the system, which result in time overrun.
Stuff: Inadequate Training and Education, Appropriate processes for staff selection
Another of the main causes of IS implementation failure is inadequate education and training, which are almost always underestimated. IS-related training is an important issue. James (2002) suggests that all the relevant employees must learn new system interfaces and business processes which affect the operation of the entire enterprise. The successful organizations like Cisco put extraordinary emphasis on hiring the best staff, providing them with rigorous training and mentoring support, and pushing their staff to limits in achieving professional excellence, and this forms the basis of Cisco’s strategy and competitive advantage over their competitors. Moreover, Cisco always put right people in the right position. 1988, Cisco hired John Morgridge as CEO, who is an experienced executive in the computer industry and immediately began to build a professional management team. 1991, Morgridge hired John Chamber as CEO, who continued to execute a plan. 1993, Peter Solvik joined Cisco as its new CIO, who wanted to make some change in order to address the two challenges. For the aspect of project team, it is important for the project team to have a strong mix of business and technical skill. Cisco tried the best to put very best people they could find into project.
For the BP Chemicals project, the project team paid much more attention on the business side rather than technology side. Indeed, this can help the project team to gain the commitment of board. However, project team put all technology side into external consultants, which is very dangerous. Like Cisco’s project team leader Solvik said that “We should not put Cisco’s future in the hands of a company”. Because no one understands the company like itself does. The project leader of BP Chemicals didn’t fully understand both business process and technology issue, and this lead to lots of change request from subsidiaries. According to the study, often a project manager who had reengineering experience, particularly system implementation experience and business analysis skills with the quality of a good politician should be employed. But BP didn’t choose the right in the right position. Because of this factor, the project teams mis-managed the technological implementation of the CSP, and lead to the overrun and over cost.
Skill: Needs of High-quality management,
Obviously, high-quality management should be treated as main skill in IS implementation, particularly in international implementation such as BP Chemicals CSP. From the fact that CSP was delayed by several years and ran several times over its initial budget, one thing should be put on the table. When organization faces such a large project, the rigid risk evaluation should be executed before implementation, the rigourous controls and schedule should be well planned during the implementation. The Cisco’s project management did very well and all the aspects of the project were organized well during the ERP implementation.
Style: Needs of Top management support, Open and honest communication
Jing and Qiu (2007) also point out the commitment of top management has been widely recognized, which is called as “the head engineering”. There will no investment decision and no resource to use for the project, once the project lost the support from top manager. Without commitment of resources from upper management, the ERP system is hard to achieve. In the two cases, both project teams got the continuous support from the top managers. Even though the BP Chemicals CSP without so successful plan of project, however it finally implemented. That is because the management always shows the supportive attitude for his system.
Open and honest communications are also importance to satisfy the information needs of users and to prevent the circulation of unfounded rumors. From the analysis of Structure we can also see this point. Messages must be consistent and effective two-direction communication must exist.
Shared values: Needs of Collaboration
The lack of a change management approach as part of the program can prevent a IS implementation from success. According to Hawking and Stein (2003), the resistance to organization change is quite often by a failure to build a case for change, Lack of involvement by those responsible for working with changed process, Inadequate communication, and Lack of visible top management support and commitment, and Arrogance. For the international IS implementation case like BP Chemicals CSP, with various subsidiaries, it is very difficult to get common agreement.
This comparison above, based on 7S model, has shown the main differences between two companies IS implementation in terms of strategy, structure, systems, style, shared values, staff and skill are complex. The BP Chemical CSP implementation, from the inside of organization, can tell us why the large-scale IS implementation always difficult. One the other hand, Cisco ERP implementation gives us a successful experience of IS implementation, in order to guide organization how to overcome those difficulties.
Conclusion:
Success for the business needs very close relationship between the business need and the technical solution. So, organization should pay more attention on the alignment between the business processes and technologies through IS implementations.
However, these large-scale IS implementations always seen as tough job for organizations. In order to successfully implement large-scale IS, organization should consider about all technology issues, management issue, strategy issue, and all aspects of organization (7S) alignment. Even though it’s very difficult to plan all those issues well before the actually implement. However, if organizations want to gain the competitive advantages from the IS implementations, they should try their best.
Reference:
1. Hawking, P. and Stein, A. (2003). E-skills: the next hurdle for ERP implementations, System Sciences, Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on 6-9 Jan, Page(s): 7.
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3. Jing, R. and Qiu, X. (2007). A Study on Critical Success Factors in ERP Systems Implementation, Service Systems and Service Management, 2007 International Conference on pp.1 - 6
4. Lynch, R. (2005) “Corporate Strategy” (4th edition), Prentice Hall, UK.
5. Maxwell, K. (1999). Executive study assesses current state of ERP in paper industry, Pulp & Paper, 73(10), pp. 39-48.
6.Markus, M., L. (2000). Paradigm Shifts - E-Business and Business/Systems Integration, Communications of AIS, Vol. 4, Article 10.
7. Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1982). “In Search of Excellence”, New York, London: Harper & Row.
8. Richard G., L. (2004). The 12 Cardinal Sins of ERP Implementation, available at http://rockfordconsulting.com/12sinart.htm
9. Trepper, C., (1999). ERP project management is key to a successful implementation, ERP Hub, accessed at www.erphub.com/stratgey 990816.html.
10. Waterman, R. Jr., Peters, T. and Phillips, J.R. (1980) “Structure Is Not Organisation” in Business Horizons, Vol. 23(3), pp.14–26.
May 16, 2008
by Richard Waters
From FT
Quincy Smith has carved out a reputation as one of the leading digital visionaries among old media execs. Since joining CBS 18 months ago as head of digital efforts he has made a show of disdaining tired old Web 1.0 ideas in favour of Web 2.0 thinking (In a comment to the Wall Street Journal, he recently accused the video site Hulu of “arguing to be a premium destination in a time when nobody wants a destination.”)
This has not always made him popular in media circles. A senior figure at a big CBS rival I spoke to recently bristled at Smith’s apparent rejection of the traditional model that has typified the mass media business from the beginning: create your own destination (be it a TV network, newspaper or website) and attract as big an audience to it as you can.
So it seems highly ironic that Smith has just led CBS into a $1.8bn purchase of that icon of Web 1.0 internet media, CNET. Clearly the overriding online need for CBS right now is online reach and scale, Web 2.0 niceties be damned.
This is what my colleague Johsua Chaffin had to say after talking to Smith only a matter of weeks ago (full article here):
As CBS tries to catch up, Wall Street has been bracing itself for a big digital acquisition. When he took the job, Mr Smith said his goal was to find “the next YouTube” - only a year earlier in its development and considerably cheaper than the Dollars 1.6bn paid by Google.
After scouring the Valley, he now reports that there is a dearth of candidates that can add meaningful revenues right away and would not entail big integration headaches because of old technology.
“Every media company is gunning for properties in this space,” Mr Smith says. Then he asks rhetorically: “Has the next YouTube come in the last 18 months?”
We should light some candles for people in that horrible disaster, shall we?
I think you already knew what was happened in southeast China, which has killed at least 12000 people so far and the number is still increasing. I’v suffered from what i saw since when i waked up and switched on the SKY news yesterday (UK time 2 hours early than Chinese). I made several phone calls to my families and friends who live around that area make sure if they were all right (Fortunately they’re all fine). Still, my heart can not calm down a bit after i saw tons of massive pictures from Internet. The collapse of at least half a dozen schools with hundreds of children inside has appalled, those children who are the most vulnerable people are still suffering the pain and cold as i sitting down from my laptop……I can not say any words but hope God stop raining and give a way for rescuers to reach them as soon as possible……God bless everyone…China cheer up!!!
This is very good illustration of what web 2.0 exactly is. I remember i’v watched the old version several years ago in college when i were doing my computer science bachelor degree. Now the “new version” is released last year, let’s enjoy it^^
These posts are all for the testing purpose. The website and blog are still under construct…
The AJAX technology will be used for the website building.
Blog part will utilize wordpress and php.
The whole project aims to support my e-Biz Msc dissertation and the job hunting in the mid of this year.
The questionnaire will be design for the demographic information investigation of second life residents.
In addition, i would like to use Google adsence to make some extra money and have fun!
So thanks very much indeed for coming if there is anyone coming to see me
