Despite Having Relatively Specific Information About Why the System Failed, What Do You Think Are the Main Reason for System Failure?

1.  Despite having relatively specific information about why the system failed, what do you think are the main reason for system failure?

There a couple of possible reasons regarding why the system could have failed. First factor I will look into is the systemic effects. Did Blake take into consideration the 4 key components (Technology, People, Process, and Structure) of an Information system? I think one key component that may have been ignored is the people component.  I think that Blake should have studied the members of staff at the Royal Hotel to understand their skills, motivations and interest. This will have helped him to predict how open they will be to using the new system to be implemented.

 Another possible factor contributing to the failure of the newly presented Information System may have been poor communication and change administration. How well were the staff of the organization carried along with the project?  Were they aware of the objective and goals of the new Cappuccino system? The staff at the Royal Hotel should have been educated on the issues that the Hotel was facing and the impact of those issues, this will have helped to align the staff with the need for a change in the current system,  the importance and objective of the project and also to serve as motivation or encouragement on why they have to adopt the new system. I also think that Blake should have involved the staff more in the requirements gathering phase of the project. The staff are the actual end users of whatever solution will be implemented and they are the best people to communicate the present solutions and limitations to Blake. If Blake had gotten the requirements right from the end users of the system, it will have helped with picking the best system possible to solve the business need of the Hotel and the staff as well as giving the staff a sense of ownership of the project too.

2. How could you fix this problem?

The first action I will take is to find out where it all went wrong. I will take feedback from the managers and end users of the system at the Hotel to find out why the new system is not being used and why they prefer the old system to the new system. The feedback I get will bring exposure to the problems associated with using the system and potential solutions for the Information System. As highlighted in the text book for this class there are so many different reasons why end users may not use a system. It may be the type of people in staff and management, they may not be equipped to make the transition to this type of system which requires a more tech savvy work force, in this case we will have to focus on the people component and analyze the situation to determine if the necessary point of action is to turn over staff and replace them with younger tech savvy people. It may also be an issue with staff’s resistance to change which in my experience is a quite common problem with introducing new systems. I think an appropriate solution to this will be to offer incentives to staff who use the new information system. Another common problem may be the quality of the user interface and friendliness of the software in general. In this case, I will contact Cappuccino to modify the user interface to be more friendly and easy to use for the end users. This can tremendously improve use of the system. Also from my experience in business, Information Systems are implemented in different ways. Some systems immediately replace the old system forcing users to use the new system and this usually has its risks. My recommendation will be migrate to the new system gradually, starting from replacing the less important activities and gradually migrating to the new system till the new system fully takes over and the old system is completely replaced.