The Main Objective for Maritime and Coastguard Agency - Case Study Example

Maritime and Coastguard Agency IS/IT Strategy Background Maritime and Coastguard Agency maintains multiple computer applications, hardware and middleware. The integration and maintenance of these systems is a major problem for the organization. The main objective for MCA is to be the maritime safety organization in the world. To achieve this objective efficiency in communication, data storage and access, system and data delivery to customers and efficient management is paramount. Business over the years has acquired new IT applications and systems to improve business delivery. This incremental approach in acquisition as led to the current situation where there are many applications that it has become too expensive for the business to maintain them. Management of the applications is complex and time consuming. Delivery of services is done from multiple pieces of computer applications which makes it difficult to reconcile the services offered. This multiple-application approach has increased inefficiency through complexity instead of reducing it. MCA’s engagements are a critical national function. The period required to coordinate, search, locate and respond to maritime distresses is minimal. The need for a system that ensures that the business is in a position to respond within the shortest available time is important. Developing an IS/IT strategy will detail the available resources, any added software requirements that MCA can adopt to improve their response time and other applications required to improve customer service. Organizational Influence on IS/IT Strategy To implement any strategy plan the organization need to be alive to the competing needs of the business. Investment in a new IT plan will cost the business cash flow that could be used in other areas to improve service delivery. Organization Behaviour is how individuals, groups and structure of an organization affects its business (French & Rayner, 2005). The Impact of the new strategy plan to MCA will be massive. Business intends to migrate most of its applications to the Cloud, this will have a major impact on how information is accessed within and outside the business. The reaction of the business owners is important. There are five key parts of organisational behaviour: Motivation, job satisfaction, organizational structure, Leadership and Power, politics and Authority. The company structure of MCA is not well suited to recommending changes quickly because of the number of levels that have to approve it. Structural organization of a company is a key component to the adoption of new technology (Placeholder1). The business Governance of MCA is very extensive. To make an appropriate appeal to this levels the presenter of the Strategic plan has to appeal to the high priority areas. MCA has over 1100 employees. Training and management of change is very important to ensure that the strategic plan will succeed. The challenge of replacing most of the current applications and replacing them will cloud managed applications and the replacement of the hardware used to access information within the organization is very fundamental. The champions of change in the organization will need to engage in several training programs to ensure that the IT plan has succeeded. In the strategic plan, it is noted that change management is one of the key challenges of the new implementation. The identification of this challenge helps the planners to tackle it during implementation. It is important to understand if the employees have sufficient motivation to carry out the changes that will be needed. Changes in the IT plan most certainly will mean changes in business processes. This shift will require the staff to be supportive of the project. Staff Motivation is a key quality that will determine the willingness of the staff to adopt the new technology and the changes to processes that will follow. Power, politics and Authority has been mentioned by behavioural scholars are a key to effective organizations (Placeholder2). MCA like all other organizations has to deal with power brokers in the organization to make sure that the new IT strategy is well aligned with the needs of the organization. The Chief Executive Officer and other members of the organization have a critical role in ensuring that the organizations plan is implemented successfully. Leadership is a key part of organizational behaviour. The leaders set and maintain the culture within the organizations. This is without doubt allots a big responsibility to the leadership to ensure that the IS/IT plan is successfully implemented. Competitive Analysis We will look at the competiveness of the current plan by use of three methods. We will look at Potter’s five forces, SWOT and PEST. a. Potter’s Five Forces Michael Potter listed five key evaluation points for competitiveness i.e. Customer, Competitors / Industry, Substitute products, New entrants and Suppliers. In the case of MCA the competitors are regional Maritime organizations who want to keep themselves well ahead of MCA in safety. This said MCA in many ways is a monopoly as they are the sole-government funded organization in the UK charged with the responsibility of Maritime safety. Competitors – the Strategic plan that is presented does not take into consideration the efficiencies of other European Maritime bodies nor does it consider the small private maritime organizations such as diving clubs or the Navy. The strategic plan should list several other factors that would enhance or hamper implementation of the strategic plan based on the strengths and weakness of other Maritime safety bodies. New Entrants: MCA is not under any threat from new entrants. The organizations mandate and structure insulates it from risk from any new entrants as they are the sole regulators and monitors of maritime activities nationally. Suppliers: With the proposed migration to cloud, MCA need to consider the cost of support from the suppliers. One of the reasons for the revision of the current IS/IT Plan is the high cost of maintaining several pieces of software applications. While it is argued that cloud applications are cheaper to maintain, choice of the correct supplier is important. Cost in cloud will include the cost of hosting the applications. With the proposed acquisition of additional storage facilities it is important for management to review the cost of third party hosting services and that of Software-as-a-service provided by several cloud providers. Replacement of the existing desktop computers with Windows 8 laptops will offer a key business to Microsoft. The power to negotiate a favourable deal with the supplier of the equipment is critical. Acquisition of new hardware can and will be, very costly to MCA. The organization need to up its negotiating ability to reduce the cost burden. Suppliers of the new applications and hardware clearly will play a major role in the success of the IS/IT plan. Substitutes – support of the IT systems today is very high. The exploration of substitutes such as the adoption of SaaS and outsourcing the support of the systems is important. MCA can reduce its burden of support by acquiring few applications especially for administrative purposes, integrating the management of the core functions especially the OSIS and CSIS. One integrated communication system will enable MCA to cut its communication cost, while reducing the time and effort required to collate the information from multiple platforms. Customers – MCA’s customers have been the main reason for the need of a new application. With access to information being very difficult, the efficiency of the agency has been waning. To improve efficiency, the new IT plan intends to have e-Forms that will be accessible online. This will cut down the cost of customer management and filing of data. The access to information by the customers will be easy and fast. The adoption of the new IT Plan is clearly a positive to improving customer satisfaction. It is important to monitor the type of customers and the needs they have. b. SWOT Evaluation of the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats of MCA in light of the IS/IT plan is important. The Strengths that MCA has is the existence of a current IT plan and two, the presence of existing applications and infrastructure. This infrastructure will help the organization in case of any changes. It will provide a business continuity platform. The management of the applications that are currently operating has not been mentioned as a key issue in the current plan, MCA only seeks an improvement. The other strength that MCA has is the business structure. While its structure is a weakness in some cases, the availability of lobbying opportunities to enhance the amount of funds available is strength. Weakness – the biggest weakness is the legislation. The organization is dependent on change of the current legislative framework to access the funds that are required for the implementation of the Plan. Many competing interests affect political decisions. This means that unless there is a plan to source for alternative funding this structural organization will remain a key challenge to the organization. Another weakness is the lack of training facilities. The implementation of the organizations IT Plan will be impacted by lack of training facilities. With the size of the organization internal training is important. It is important to change the organization’s image and the way it responds to incidences. Opportunities – the opportunities that MCA has to grow its operations in future are enormous. The successful implementation of this plan will lay sufficient ground to rollout 15 new locations, two new data centres and other applications that will improve the efficiency of MCA. Threats – the organizations staff are a major threat to the implementation of the IT Plan. The need to change the attitude of staff is important. New technology is always resisted and this is a real threat to the organizational plans of MCA. c. PEST This is an acronym for Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors. Political challenges that MCA has to deal with include the need to change the legislative framework and the need to get approval for funding by DOT (department of Transport). These factors need to be considered to evaluate if they are a threat to the successful implementation of the plan. Economic – to get approval for funding or expenditure of more than £1 Million requires changes to the existing law. Careful consideration of the extent of influence of MCA to the legislative bodies, Parliament, is critical. If MCA does not succeed in convincing parliament of the need to change the law to allow them to invest/ spend more than one Million Pounds it will be difficult to fulfil this IS/IT Plan. Social – the key areas to evaluate are the areas of service delivery, motivation of staff. MCA’s work affect the community. The services they offer range from rescue to registration of boats and ships. The new IT plan need to be detailed in the operations that will create a social environment. Technological – the implementation in discussion is change of technology. It is important for MCA to evaluate the shortcomings and strengths of the new technologies they wish to adapt especially, cloud computing before they implement a cloud platform. The ease of access of information on cloud is commendable but its cost and data availability in case of infrastructural failures need to be considered. Impact of Proposed Strategy to MCA’s Business The impact of the IS/IT plan to MCA’s operations ranges from implementation of new operating systems, reduction of operational and support cost of the applications, easy access to information from a common point and the reduced cost of paper products. Training – the IS/IT Plan that has been proposed will require enormous training for the staff. This type of overhaul will require the organization to invest a lot of funds in training alone. This might not be possible because of the large budgetary needs that it will require. The changes will also affect service delivery. Access of documents from one common online portal will assist the business to improve its delivery mechanism. It is important to note that currently all applications produce printed documents that are not easily transferable electronically. The changes in the IS?IT plan will greatly change the way customers access information. Enhanced IS/IT Strategy My recommendations will entail staggering the implementation period of the IS/IT plan. Implementation of an integrated portal (E-forms) is necessary and should be fast-tracked. The rollout of new hardware changes in should not be included in this plan but a plan to phase out the desktop computer should be in place. Replacement of desktops with laptops is nothing but a ‘big-bang’ many things will need to be implemented - sitting areas, security, monitoring and distribution of the new laptops. This will challenge the IT department if it is done without the necessary breaks of phases. Read More