Disadvantages of a Poorly Implemented Management System - Term Paper Example

Name Instructor’s Name Management 5 November, 2013 Present and Discuss the Disadvantages of a Poorly Implemented Management System 1. Introduction The increasing trend of globalization poses different challenges for modern organizations’ functions and operations. Competition is on the rise and companies are been pushed to operate more effectively, least they are driven out of businesses. Management systems are therefore been used to optimize performances, production and enable the organization’s general improvement. This affects diverse areas dealing with customers, employees, products and services, and their qualities to achieve the firms’ objectives and goals. There are various types of management systems: some of which manage specific activities, others control relevant areas of operations, or integrate into a single management system. A management system is perceived as a framework of continuous developing and managing policies, processes and procedures of a firm. Similarly, “a set of interacting elements to establish policy and objectives and to achieve those objectives” (CQI, thecqi.org). The systems could be manual or automated like the modern software applications used in businesses. The implementation factor is one of the basic elements of a management system, which could have adverse effects in an organization’s operations and activities, if poorly handled. 2. Damage of relationship, motivation and satisfaction in the workplace The human assets in each organization are the fundamental drivers that enable business results to be realized. That can only occur when they are well motivated and satisfied among other factors, which may make them to improve performance, for both their benefit and the organization in general. Poor implementation of systems to manage performance could result to a system that may not work as intended. This would spur employees’ reduced motivation when the system fail to correctly identify and reward exceptional performances, dissatisfaction when fairness is not delivered, and poor relations within the workforce (employee verses employee/managers) when wrong people are allowed to benefit at the expense of others (Arguinis 25). While it is designed to enable organization manage talents and human resources, it may end up failing to accomplish its effectiveness and multiple purposes. For example, wrong implementation or performance management (PM) system that remain operational despite its faults, may continually fail to capture certain employees’ performances and attributes, while it may identify others. Employees have different abilities: if some are good at bringing customers for the business and are not identified, as others make numerous small quantity sales and are recognized, the former may end up less motivated and perhaps quit to what seems unfair system to them. Similarly, if PM system is poorly implemented and results in none standardized operational system, the results expected for employee could be erroneous; hence, the system provide opportunities to fabricate information on the workforce performance. Managers or supervisors may need to fill in their hypothesized details that concern an individual’s actions and responses, where the system misses such sensitive information. At times employees are rated the same, which could not be a true reflection of their performances, due to the effects of poor implemented system. Hence, some people end up gaining at the expense of the others, yet they do little to achieve it. Distrust of the system from both the managers and employees may occur when the results of the performance assessment are discovered to be invalid or unfair to raise too many complaints from the workforce, fail to make explicit the workforce contribution to the company’s objectives, and cause increased frustrations and demands of the management time, operations and resources. 3. Reduced product quality With the product as the key element of enhancing competitiveness in the industry and market, organizations may suffer due to the declined capacity to compete successfully, when their end product or service is of low quality. When the management systems for quality are developed inappropriately and the testing parts miss essential functions of the system, the compliance of the production with the stated requirements may fail, resulting in defective output or products that do not meet the set standards. In the end, the consumers of the products get dissatisfied with the low quality and seek other options that please them. Through this, the organization not only deals with customers’ shortage, but end up harming their reputation and most appropriately their brand. Other effects arising from poor quality services and products could be the costs of replacement and wasted materials where recycling is not an option. If the customers had made orders and the contract between them and the organization allows replacements, those unsatisfied by the outcome of the paid for goods or service are refunded. Poor implementation of such management systems consumes many resources in costs, waste products and in developing others that meet the desired quality. 4. Lack of legal and requirements compliance with regard to the social environment and business Organizations and especially the industries dealing with manufacturing and processing, like chemical, pharmaceuticals, agricultural and oil and refineries industries have invested heavily in management systems for their emissions and waste control. However, poor implementation of such systems may fail to consider the interests of the stakeholders in the context of the business and its environment, and effectively their commitment that limit the accomplishment of the main objective of the system. All these factors are central for achieving business and environmental benefits, but when neglected may in the certification process fail to prove that the environmental management system fulfils the legal and standard requirements, like the ISO 14001(DIFD and Irish Aid 4). In certain cases the amount of emission passing out into the environment ends up been higher than the permitted range, or the company allow greater waste to be discharged by the system failing to properly treat or reuse, as some of the ways recommended in the legal framework to control population and manage environment effectively. Implementations done in a rush would also end up skipping important procedures in the development of the programs, intended to achieve the environmental goals, and essentially failing to determine correctly how the management system would interact with the general society, business and the environment. 5. Unplanned revisions and modifications The numerous automated management systems under development require keenness and active participation of the stakeholders (end users, customers and developers) to result in a system that meets their needs. Many lawsuits are brought fourth after the system are developed and completed, only to realize that certain functionalities, however minor they are, were not incorporated and resulted in reducing the effectiveness of the entire systems. According to Kugler, the implementation team of the project management and the customer organization abilities determine the achievements of the implementation phase (1). Hence the type of group and the experience of people the organization and the developing team bring together for implementation, determine their seriousness and objectivity in comprehending how critical the automated management system in development is to the business. Poor implementation will result when the user involvement and participation is limited, denying the organization employees/team an opportunity to fully verify the system, and generally enhance the perceived control so that the missed out requirements and specification of the management system can be pointed out. Certain mistakes are the effects of poor testing and integration part of the system, which could have been uncovered if the implementation was executed in order. Due to this, chances to reform redundancies and errors established later, when the system is already in operation, would call for extra improvements, modifications and revisions. The business may have to quit using the system to create more time for evaluation and reviews, then separating the functionalities/modules to establish where the new module would be integrated before re- engineering. Basically, it takes extra resources to formulate the new and integrated designs required by the revision of the implementation phase, training the users, testing and verifying again before its use. 6. Risks of re-organization and disruption Change is of necessity to the organization improvement. Nevertheless, certain changes result in poor implementation of the management system that distorts the organizational culture, and creates a new burden for the management and employees to adjust to. When companies make a move to acquire new management systems, the type of hardware and software they choose, and their installations, especially on the kind of the platform selected determine the security and usability of the system. Therefore, poor implementations would not only risk service disruption, but would also affect security when less reliable/secure platforms and poor implementation methodologies are used. At times, the poor implementations of the system may end up incorporating another functionality, verified but fortunately unclear for the users and organization, such that unfamiliar or new business practices are introduced through the system. Their overall effect is a dire and radical change in the organizational units and functionalities, which can bring down the organizational performance as the employees and management try to adjust, to reflect the system’s perspective. Because they were initially not part of the firm’s corporate culture, nor had the workforce engaged with them before, the rapid change becomes a potential problem that can take time and extra resources to stabilize. 7. Data and information loss Management systems that are developed to handle sensitive records of companies need to place emphasis on the implementation phase, but more so, even on the logical and physical designs programmers use to develop the automated systems. Poorly designed systems will automatically lead to poorly coded systems, especially where they are not easily detectable. Wrong coding of the system end up generating errors in the manipulation of data and information: this may render the system impractical while in operation. Database management systems (DBMS) poorly programmed could even proceed to retrieve and manipulate wrong data, or records for different users, who cannot be able to detect the accuracy of the details, because they are totally convinced with the calculations of the system. In other words, capability of the system to perform even under poor implementation does not mean that its calculations and operations are valid. DBMS need to be more than just usability, and allow implementation of security measures into the system, to avoid tampering of sensitive information and data that may generate profound effects to the customers and organization in general. Such management systems designed and coded without proper security measures could lead to a system incapable of restoring its data upon a failure, with high vulnerabilities to attack and compromise (“security Measures” webcoder.biz). These insecurities pose a threat to data and information access, use and manipulation, and at most theft, which violates privacy and costs the company. 8. Difficulties in improving the system Management systems are sometimes documented with ambiguity, rather than in specific details over its internal structure and functionality. This becomes a challenge to comprehend in times of technological improvement, because the upgrading team cannot successfully understand the documentation of the system. Unless the documenting individual/professional of the management system exists, it can prove incapable of improving an existing system accustomed to an organization’s needs. On worse cases, system use may be halted for a period to review the documentation and clarify with the system (based on how it works or runs), uninstall it or replace with a new system all over again in desperate time, even if it was not planned for. The other difficulty is generated through poor installation and changeover of system. Moving from an older system into anew, or advanced system calls for prior considerations of the new platforms, issues of compatibility, future manipulation and upgrades. For example, inadequate implementation strategy of a DBMS could result into “backed out upgrade release due to incompatibility with the interfacing software,” and failures in performance level owing to applications incapability of utilizing the upgraded functionalities (CGI, cgi.com). Another case was experienced in the South Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), when replacement of the new system led to typical conversion errors, ranging from incorrect country codes, names on vehicle titles, addresses and lost tax records of the customers (Loughry and Thatcher 34). If purchasing of the platforms to be used by the system is poorly selected, it would also limit compatibility with other systems the company intends to integrate. 9. Financial losses and cost The extra costs occur due to the unexpected procedures, following the negative effects generated by the management system, where problems are detected to stem from the implementation phase. Generally, revision and modifications of actions require more resources (time, personnel and money) to re- engineer the implementation part of the system. Poor consideration in acquisition of hardware and software for the management system, may call for expensive upgrades and changes to keep the system functional, effective and up to date. Due to the breach of security caused by poor implementation methods, and conversion plans of the system and its content, companies may loose valuable assets (customer’s confidential records), which can be manipulated to solicit benefits on behalf of the original record owner. Examples are the financial and medical identity thefts, when sensitive information gets into the wrong hands. This may be ignored by corporations and organizations that do not deal with direct cash and indirect monetary factors, because they feel they have nothing to loose, but the fact is that information and data are substantial for execution of crimes. Inadequate management and security, resulting from weak implementation of the systems managing such records could transpire into financial losses for customers, and organizations in specifics, through lawsuit verdict. If organizations are found guilty of negligence or other claims, they end up spending too much to cater for the damages, which they could have prevented suppose there were proper implementation plans of their system. 10. Other risks Training is essential in the implementation of a new or improved project. It affects the overall performance of employees using the system and effectively in production. Poorly, or less allocated time for training the end users of the system during implementation, could result to delayed performances, reduced organizational effectiveness and improvement. The effects are generated to the second parties dealing with organization’s products and services. Customers may have to wait for longer period in the queues to be served, while the system operators take more time to learn and seek help from experts, when stuck in operating what seems a complicated management system to them. Ineffective implementation of the management systems, like those in healthcare sector could risk management of human health, while others in the workplace, would lead to impaired hazard identification, and its control in the environment, to ensure safety. The devastated operations of such systems can cause more health damages in the overall. 11. Conclusion Poorly implemented management systems cause both tangible and intangible negative effects to the organization and even to the associated partners. Therefore, effects ranging from lowered production and its quality, financial costs, data and information loss, insecurities, revisions and modifications, challenges in improving the system or the contents, risks of inadequate legal and requirement compliance, re-organizations and disruptions, and workplace damage of employees’ morale, satisfaction and relationship with the organization may be generated by weak and inappropriate systems implementation. Implementation is also affected by the prior activities, which shape its organization and development of procedures, installations, conversions, testing and maintenance among other activities involved in implementation of the systems. The resources: instrumentation, hardware, software, labor, time and finances allocated to the implementation could influence its effectiveness, either leading to positive or negative effects in the end. Works Cited Aguinis, H. “Performance Management” Ebsglobal.net. 2005. Web. 4 November 2013. CGI. “Database Upgrade.” Cgi.com. 2010. Web. 11 November 2013. CQI. “Management System.” Thecqi.org. 2013. Web. 4 November 2013. DIFD and Irish Aid. “Environmental Management Systems.” Environmental-mainstreaming.org. n.d. Web. 5 November 2013. Krugler, J. “Four Common ERP Implementation Mistakes.” Ifsworld.com. n.d. Web. 5 November 2013. Loughry, M. L., and Thatcher, J.B. “Lessons Learned For Technology Implementation: $40 Million Frustration at the DMV.” Journal of Information Technology Management XV.1-2 (2004): 34-38. Web. 11 November 2013 “Security Measures for Protecting a Database Management System.” Webcoder.biz. n.d. Web. 5 November 2013. Read More