[MBA] Case Study: Honam Petrochemical's Quest for Better Management Reports

1. List and describe the information requirements of HPC's new management system. What problems were the new system designed to solve?

HPC is requiring reports that are more accurate and optimized. The optimized information should measure performance with increasing sales and reduced costs. 

The management wish more control over data. The information of their interest be cost of manufacturing plant, cost of transportation, storing materials and price trend globally. 

The problem is removing outdated system with precise reporting system. The individual manger wished to have control over data and real picture of market progress should be visible to them. The report should be real-time rather than periodically seeking it.

2. To what extent were "people” problems affecting management decision-making at HPC? What were some of the management, organization, and technology issues that had to be addressed by the new system? How did the system's designers make the system more "people-friendly”?

Prior any new system is implemented there are quite more factor be considered. We can segregate the factors into management, organization and technologies. Management are used to manually see data prior analysis. The senior management should be technologically sound to understand possible pro and cons along with pre-required skills. The organization persons wanted access to timely data i.e. real-time. Organization wished enterprise-wide data accessible geographically. Technology is major factor that is pronounced when switching from one system to another. The technology compatibility should be concerned and involvement of more technically sound guys will obvious sharpen the efficiency of organization.

3. What role did end users play in developing HPC's new system? How did the project team make sure users were involved? What would have happened to the project if they had not done this?

Once popular quote is "customers have capacity to drag top to bottom employees from their position to street, simply rejecting their product." The end user play discuss the pro and cons with development team. Starting to use new system to test it, make feedback so that better product is obtained. Compare the product with other companies. 

The project team collect requirements from more technical guys and the broad area of users so that the proposed system matches everyone's interest. The more time and concern team gives for any project, the more efficient and widely accepted result be. Development team should visit other companies to learn their system and import crucial ones.

Failing of end users to choose better alternative and feedback HPC developer and management will obvious lead for failure in proposed system. Organization if not concern well on efficiency and effectiveness project team won't perform well and match better customer interest. So the proposed system becomes failure.

4. What other steps did HPC take to make sure the system was successful?

The HPC should look for goal achievement. The approach includes Phase approach suggests implementation phase wise so that the feedback is included in final version more well. Emphasizing benchmark against other companies makes more sense. Training the management and staffs along with loyal customers for new system is really useful. The evaluation and review after system implementation should be done for periodic improvement on it.

5. What types of system-building methods and tools did HPC use for building its system?

HPC should use SAP business object dashboard, internet intelligence and software packages for system building. It should make well concept before building about contemporary market trends and what other organizations are tackling the same situation in the case. HPC should collect information from customers for periodic system improvement. Updating with technology and time is mandatory task.

6. What were the benefits of the new system? How did it change the way Honam ran its business? How successful was this system solution?

The new system will be beneficial to HPC for many sense. The new system provide unbiased information and have better control over data. Use of outdated traditional system is not suggested. The new system will find lead and lags on the company currently existing. The company can compete against possible errors and situation getting out of control. The new system is helpful to view real-time picture of business progress.

The system have features to personalize information to extract concrete decision making points rather than decimal and floating point numbers. The management decision are based timely. The information be accurate and enable compare against other competitive organization.