Recommendations for MDCM Corporate Board - Research Paper Example

MDCM (B) Write up Table of Contents Introduction 3 Recommendations for MDCM Corporate Board 4 Appropriate IT Projects for MDCM 4 Projects Scorecard 8Recommended Sequence For Proper Execution Of The Project Initiatives 9 Conclusion 9 Works Cited 9 Introduction MDCM is recognized as one of the leading contract manufacturers of medical devices. It had been leading name in this sector for a considerable period of time, however primarily due to inappropriate IT usage in its operations faced hard times while executing its business operations. In the paper, the task of defining and prioritizing the top IT projects along with suitable initiatives that would support MDCM’s strategic business goal is the main concern. Moreover, the paper also focuses upon the various recommendations made for the most important initiatives that MDCM necessitates in order to revoke its losses during the last five consecutive years (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Along with defining, prioritizing and framing useful recommendations, the paper also constitutes a score card in order to evaluate each prioritized projects and also comparing the prescribed projects using the Portfolio Application Model Matrix (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Recommendations for MDCM Corporate Board The MDCM corporate board should keep prime focus upon defining, initiating and prioritizing top IT projects that should support or help MDCM’s strategic business goals in order to compensate huge losses that the organization faced during the last five successive years. In this connection, the MDCM board should assess their prioritized projects initiative that would ultimately provide high value and low risk towards the business organization. Moreover, the corporate board of MDCM should lay emphasis upon the long-term competitive advantage of the organization along with tackling the risk issues that are mainly associated or related with them (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Appropriate IT Projects for MDCM The most appropriate IT project initiatives that MDCM analyses can become a part in order to improve its global IT. The organization took the initiative on unifying its methodology and technical values. The corporate team of MDCM wanted to eliminate the numerous different standards and IT methodologies that are prevailing across the company. This approach would help them to reduce the project sequence and encourage information distribution across IT development teams. This initiative was very much essential for MDCM in order to improve the future system development capability of the organization (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). The other significant project initiative of MDCM is the implementation of ‘enterprise resource planning’ (ERP) which eventually improves the reorganization of the production facilities along with the activities of the suppliers. ERP is an enterprise wide information system which incorporates and controls all the business methods in the organization. It also enables an organization in order to control the well-organized and proficient use of resources by providing an entire and incorporated solution for the organization’s information processing requirements (Fawaz & Et. Al., “Critical Success Factors In ERP Implementation”). Implementation of ERP project was found to be delayed in MDCM due to certain difficulties faced while coordinating among the different local IT groups. However, the corporate team of MDCM recognized that the ‘ERP’ execution is one of the essential cornerstones for MDCM but the organization was not very much certain about the achievement of this implementation due to high costs of consultants. But the organization felt the necessity of this initiative and started to work accordingly for proper execution of ERP (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). In this connection, apart from the ‘ERP’ execution the organization also took a major initiative towards the accomplishment of “e-procurement system”. Over the past years, MDCM had continued to aggregate all purchasing materials in order to take full advantage of buying power from its scale. This feature of MDCM created huge savings. Certain additional savings could also be realized if the local managers of the organization can effectively manage their internal purchases and for this smooth functioning an “e-procurement system” can be used which is exactly applicable for MDCM. Instead of phone calls, e-mails and faxes, this e-procurement system would provide an easy way for the organization to save costs further by consolidating its internal purchasing (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Moreover, MDCM also took an initiative in order to improve the group effort systems like e-mails, discussion boards, calendars and knowledge based applications among others even though the ‘return on investment’ (ROI) was difficult to quantify. In order to consolidate globally along with running these collaboration systems, MDCM would need a strong commitment especially from IT since it would require a lot of internal resources (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). The other vital initiative of MDCM lies in managing the supply chain with its key suppliers. In this connection, MDCM reduced the number of suppliers from thousands to a few hundred. As a result, the organization realized to be more connected and emphasized with its key suppliers. The organization conducted various programs on vendor selection by the proper implementation of ‘ERP system’ (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). The other project initiative taken by MDCM is the standardization of its server hardware operations. Numerous hardware operations are running within the organization. The corporate team of MDCM saw a potential as well as fruitful opportunity in order to standardize its server hardware and platforms. By standardizing the server hardware platforms, it would eventually decrease the maintenance and operation costs. The organization seriously took this initiative in order to cope up with the losses that MDCM propounded during the last five consecutive quarters (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). In this connection, MDCM also took initiative upon creating employee intranet portal in order to cope up with the increasing costs relating with the human resource point of view. The cost of supporting human resource administration, especially the factor of employee’s advantages had risen dramatically as MDCM grew internationally. Many of these functions could be easily automated, available and accessible for “self-service” to the employees on an intranet website. The advantage factor of creating an employee intranet portal in relation with HR administration is to enable increased efficiency and potentiality among the employees within the organization (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Moreover, the MDCM’s project initiative upon its customer portal on the internet eventually reduces the administrative expenses that are related or associated with the customer services. Through the introduction of this portal, the customers of MDCM could communicate with their account managers, place the orders, inquire about order status and also act as a learning guide about how MDCM could better serve through the particular site (Jeffery, M. & Norton, J. F., “MDCM, Inc. (B): Strategic IT Portfolio Management”). Therefore, these are certain project initiatives that are recommended as well as appropriate for MDCM. Projects Scorecard Read More