Ecom 500 - Business and Information Technology - Long Term Plan for the Clarion School

Long Term Plan for the Clarion School

Saleh Alghamdi

ECOM-500: Business and Information Technology

Colorado State University- Global Campus

Instructor: Richard Morse, PhD

November 28, 2015

Long Term Plan for the Clarion School

Introduction

In 1989 the Clarion School for Boys Inc. was founded in Milwaukee by a group of investors. The background for the investors was basically in homes constriction. The intention of the investors was to create a better environment for boys who got into trouble and make special diagnose and treatment for them with a sufficient and corrective measures to transform them into better citizens. The school was a private facility and residential. There are a huge number of admissions at the school and facility offering services has a high expenditure. In this paper I will develop a detailed plan for Clarion school for modernizing its Information System platform.

Objectives

         The proposal for the IS modernization is meant to be for next financial year as per the direction from the school management. We have to assess the current situation and initiate new   project with adequate budgeting along with the need to have more enrolments.

The main objectives are:

• Simplifying the company  business processes for achieving higher efficiency
• Automate operation process for improving the productivity and reducing labor cost.
• Prioritizing the capital investments to ensure maximum return coming back from IT investments.

The objective of the investment in the platform hardware & software is for saving the employee time and to make current process faster. The demand was to advance the existing system and study the current requirement for information system so that it will be part of the modernization plan.  Therefore the main and important requirements for the employees should be provided. For the Clarion school to meet its objective and goals they need to develop a strategy to enhance and renew the current information system environment. The school needs to convert it’s IS to Microsoft product.

Current and Future Environment Analysis

Current System: currently the system used by the organization is the IBM AS-400. This system is already obsolete long time ago and it is not capable of handing the computing needs for the school. The system was not always available and the staffs have been complaining about this. That staff communication using electronic mail was based on this system but it was not fulfilling their requirements. When there is system backup running in morning the users can not access to the system. The billing sheet was done with more manual intervention most of the time. The operation expense to operate this system is becoming very high. The management is faced with budget constraints for making the needed upgrade for this system. Current system is using software programs that are flexible and the software documentation are available but the there is no Self-paced tutorial software available for users. “Even the task force members were not well educated in the field of information systems” (Nelson & DeHayes, 2010). The evaluation for this system is required.

Future System: The organization management desires to invest in long term strategy that is scalable and flexible. The main objective for the organization is to keep track of the changes to meet business needs. In the coming future, the organization is planning to change the system platform servers to windows platform. Also another plan is to use the ERP over could platform. Finally the management wants to have the Wi-Fi coverage in all buildings across campus.

Information Technology Action Plan

The proposal includes the upgrade for the IBM AS/400 system platform beside the need for building the network and provisioning of the software and the computers. They need to provide machines with MS Windows. Planning assistance is needed to assist for planning. The support service for the hardware is needed through a third party hardware support company. The support for the current operating system has to be done by experts. “Self paced tutorial software is needed” (Burger, 2010). There is also a need for personal computers for staff to use it while they are at home.