Troubleshooting Information Systems at the Royal Hotel

Case Study: Troubleshooting Information Systems at the Royal Hotel

Tongchen An

Information Systems Design and Development

24/2/2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Case Overview 2

Discussion Question Answers 3

Question 1 And Answer 3

Question 2 And Answer 3

Question 3 And Answer 4

Alternatives Analysis 4

Conclusion 5

References 6

CITING INTERNET SOURCES 6

Case Overview

Blake Cantera, a master student at Very Famous University ,just finished his first year in the master degree’s program and attended an internship with a famous IT company in summer. FC is a local IT consulting firm with high reputation, it serves clients ranging from hotels to international grocery chains. After receiving a brief introduction and only two week training program, Blake was assigned to his first job which is to consult the Royal hotel in New York. This is the first project Blake did independently, he is willing to perform well.

The Royal Hotel is a relatively small but luxury hotel mainly serving business people around Manhattan. As Blake arrived at the hotel for a one week task, he met with the general manager and had a basic understanding of the situation. The GM required a high standard for this hotel and he thought some situations like a clogged toilet are unacceptable. So he need Blake to make sure such situations never happen again. Though Blake is a junior consultant without too much experience, he had confidence to solve this problem.

After examining the hotel and interviewing a number of people, Blake recommended the hotel to purchase and install M-Tech’s Espresso! Rapid Response Solution. He presented four mainly advantages of the information system to the executive team: Rapid response, Quality control, Preventive maintenance and Reporting. He also help the hotel set up the information system like license, configuration and one week training. However, before he completed all the project, he was called by FC to assign another project. He turned over all the work and information system design to his classmate Jack Scarso and notice him to be careful about the GM’s impatience.

While he was away from the project, he thought the project was going well because he had not heard from Jack anything major problems. However, after a month and half since Blake had gone, he got a call from his boss to inform him that the information system got worse and did not work as expectation. Since Blake is the main consultant in this project, he should take responsibility. Upon returning back, he noticed that no one used the machine running Espresso! And employees preferred to use the old system. The old GM thought it was waste of money to buy the software and required him to carry out his promises in presentation. Blake need to figure out the problems. And the words of his information systems professor at VFU: “Focus on the information system design, not the technology investment!” “Therein lay the solution,” Blake thought with a tinge of hope.

Discussion Question Answers

Question 1 And Answer

Despite having relatively little specific information about why the system failed, what do you think are the main reasons for such failure?

The information system is a combination of software, hardware, data, people and procedure. It is not solely depending on the technology, interactions between people also counts. And I didn’t find some problems about the technology. So conflicts between three roles (Blake, GM, employees) lead to this situation. In this case, multiple reasons have caused the situation: First, assigning an inexperienced student, who has two weeks consulting training with little project management knowledge, was a mistake. Blake may be familiar with new technology of Information systems but he was still an intern. From the case I know Blake was blind to managing employees. He ignored the real situation: The new technology may meet the needs of the hotel. However, the task stated by the GM can be done in a much easier and cheaper ways. And the employees positively disliked the new information system. Because they were not familiar with it and the new information system