Century Medical Case Analysis

Century Medical Case Analysis

MGMT5305

January 24, 2013

Sam Nolan is the Chief Information Officer at Century Medical. He has been working with Century Medical for the past 4 years and has taken initiatives and led projects to design and implement various systems for Century Medical.

One of the systems Mr. Nolan implemented was a benefits-administration system for the human resources department of the company. Another was a web-based purchasing system that improved the purchasing of supplies and capital goods. These new systems automated the various office processes which not only drastically reduced the time required to carry out the related tasks but also left the managers with more time for them to concentrate on value added activities. The projections showed that the system was to save Century Medical $2 million annually.

This technology upgrade was possible because Sam Nolan was successful in making the people in the company recognize the various benefits associated with the new technology. Benefits such as information and knowledge sharing, integrated business processes, and better team coordination.

Sam Nolan had proposed a new web-based job posting system for the organization. The idea was to ease the hiring of personnel from within the organization. The system would link Century's managers, recruiters and the job applicants. This would lead to a lot of savings in terms of recruiting and training cost. Sam Nolan also gathered a project team to develop the idea. Later the project got endorsed by the executive vice-president Sandra Ivey who gave Nolan the authorization to go ahead with the project. But then Sandra Ivey resigned and her replacement, Tom Carr did not show much interest in the project. Carr believed that the project was a "waste of time and money" and immediately disapproved several new features suggested by the company's internal recruiters (Daft, 2013).

The problems identified in this case analysis are pretty clear. Sam Nolan feels that the human resources department can be managed through technology. The new Executive Vice President, Tom Carr disagrees. Carr believes that human resources is a people business and doesn't need a high tech system (Daft, 2013). Nolan had already demonstrated his abilities by instituting a new system which had dramatically cut the time it took for purchasing managers to perform their work and felt that he could also support team based work and give people more control over their own jobs through technology in the area of human resources (Daft, 2013). Nolan, along with a long term HR employee, Ethel Moore, developed an idea for linking Century managers, internal recruiters, and job applicants using artificial intelligence software and an integrated web-based system (Daft, 2013).

According to our text, knowledge management refers to the efforts to systematically find, organize, and make available