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Our Cases
BTC: Developing Call Center Capability
BTC is a well known retail brand in the UK, comprising businesses operating principally in retailing, manufacturing and marketing health and personal care products. Close to 12.5 million people visit the 1400 BTC stores throughout the UK every week, making BTC one of the most accessible brands with a presence in virtually every town, shopping center and major transport interchange in the country. Before 1996, customer service for BTC stores was performed by disparate customer service units located within store clusters known as Business Centers. A “Customer Service Complaint Handling Review” conducted in 1996 found that the decentralized structure was inadequate in supporting BTC’s operations.
LG Electronics, Inc.: Implementing an e-HR System
LG Electronics, Inc. (formerly known as Lucky-GoldStar) was a subsidiary company of LG Group that was established in 1958 by developing the nation’s first radio, as the pioneer in the Korean consumer electronics market. By 1965, LG Electronics was producing transistor radios for export to Latin America. In 1967, the company became a pioneer in the energy sector in South Korea when it established Honam Oil Refinery and the company was the first in the country to produce refrigerators.
NS Portal: Transforming the Public Services of the Ministry of Defense of Singapore
As a serviceman transitions through his NS lifecycle, taking on the roles of a pre-enlistee, a NSF, and an NSman in succession, he will require the administrative services provided by the various agencies of MINDEF. These services may include registration for NS, notification of overseas travel, the booking of dates for the annual Individual Physical Proficiency Tests (IPPT) and application for deferment from NS. Yet, with hundreds of different transactions provided by over 60 different agencies available, coordinating the administrative processes that underlie the needs of the servicemen was complex, paperwork-intensive and tedious.
UKC: Escalation and De-escalation of Commitment in an IS Project
UKC is a UK municipal borough with an elected council that serves a local population of 221,000 residents and provides a large range of services. The idea of e-government originates from the UK central government’s 1999 white paper, Modernizing Government which challenged all public sector organizations to achieve "citizen-centered services", by integrating policies and programs, "joining-up" delivery, harnessing the power of IT, and getting the best out of staff. The White Paper committed the government to the "use of new technology to meet the needs of citizens and business and not trail behind technology development".
The Chio Lim Stone Forest: SAGE ACCPAC System Upgrading
Chio Lim Stone Forest's (CLSF) strength is to provide the highest quality professional services to its clients. Owing to its reputation, CLSF has not only managed to expand its clients profile locally, but also recently expanded its business to China riding on the opportunities arisen from the country's liberation of economy. To better support its fast-pace business activities, CLSF adopts the strategic use of organizational resources to outperform its rivals. Operating as a small-and-medium enterprise (SME) under the influence of rising fuel prices and inflationary pressure, CLSF has to be very cautious of its strategies for sustainable future expansion and developments.
BMBC: De-escalation of Commitment to an Information System Project
Metropolitan borough council, referred to with the pseudonym of BMBC, is a UK municipal borough with an elected council that serves a local population of 221,000 and provides a wide range of services. The borough is divided into 19 wards and is represented by 57 councilors. The council aims to maximize the wellbeing of the people at the borough in the following areas: education, the local economy, transport, the environment, health and social care, housing, crime prevention and control, and leisure.
E-government Implementation in South Korea
South Korea's Supreme Court Registry Office (SCRO) has 49 district registry offices incorporated in the 13 district courts. The core function of SCRO is to manage the nation's land and residency registration and related legal issues. Each registry office has three divisions: 'Administrative', 'Correction and Investigation', and 'Public Access'. The Administrative Division provides application services and serves as a public contact point. The Correction and Investigation Division evaluates the legitimacy of application documents. Finally, the Public Access Division handles public requests for registry documents. The rationale behind the initiation of the e-government project at the SCRO is to provide efficient public services to the citizens.
DSTA: Singapore’s IT Capability Development Process during the Asian Tsunami Crisis
"After the SARS crisis, we conducted debriefing sessions to evaluate the key factors of managing crisis and documented the lessons learned. In terms of the involvement in the Defense Technology Ecosystem, we participated extensively in several collaboration projects, and leveraged our partner organizations’ expertise. Such collaborations are important in helping to bring our IT expertise to the next level." - Manager from the Defense Science and Technological Agency (DSTA)
Maxima Inc.: Enterprise Resource Planning Project Failure
Maxima Inc. (a pseudonym) is a Singapore-based holding company started in 1993 by the CEO, Mr Chen and six of his associates. It started off as a seven-man start-up company, and over the years, it has grown to a successful business with staff strength of 280 by 2000. Maxima’s primary business revolves around the distribution of electronics and the provision of solutions for IT industries. Maxima Inc. has five subsidiaries under its corporate umbrella, namely, Maxima Components, Maxima Technology, Maxima Electronics, Maxima Investment Pte. Ltd., and Maxima Networks Pte. Ltd.
TechCo: Integrating and Sharing of Knowledge during ERP Implementation
TechCo was a multinational organization with businesses in the financial services, oil, transportation and manufacturing industries across 190 countries. TechCo supported its international operations via global Intranet and IT infrastructure. However, TechCo soon realized that is existing IS were no longer on par with worldwide e-commerce developments. A decision was thus taken to adopt ERP to integrate the diverse needs of its fast changing and growing business.
Australia's Online Property Auction Site
Property Co was founded in Australia in July 1991 to manage industrial estates for tenancy and maintenance matters. The company managed approximately 4,000 industrial tenanted properties. Property Co's online auction site was an example of a successfully designed customer-centric IS application because the entire design process focused on the aim of developing customer-centric capability. The transformation from a traditional bidding system to the new online auction system resulted in time savings, enhanced service quality and generated major financial benefits such as reduced loss of revenue due to vacant premises. The rapid turnover of vacant units translates into early realization of rental revenue, conservatively estimated at AUD$14 million per annum. In addition, the project achieved positive Return on Investment (ROI) within 13 months of its set-up.
Web Assimilation at Hardwarezone.com
Hardwarezone.com (HWZ) is the most popular IT media website in Singapore. Its business centers on providing localized news and information on the latest IT products, as well as numerous services; which includes consolidated price lists of the major IT vendors in Singapore, a classified ads directory and an online discussion forum. HWZ attracts 330,000 unique browsers and more than 32 million page visits every month, a considerable achievement given that Singapore; with its small domestic market, is a country that has seen little success in the e-commerce arena. The unprecedented nature of HWZ's success even prompted the most widely circulated business newspaper in Singapore to compare its two founders to Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, enthusiastically proclaiming HWZ's founders as "Singapore's very own Google Guys". By 2004, it was estimated that HWZ controlled 29.7% of the Singapore IT publications industry. In comparison, CNET Asia, in second place, only had a 9.9% market share.
Singapore E-Government Initiatives: Engaging Users
In 2000, the Singapore government initiated the e-government Action Plan to make all government services to be available online. The government provides funding to its agencies to support their efforts to implement e-government systems. Here, we describe the implementation of 2 separate e-government systems by a single Singapore government agency. For reasons of confidentiality, the identity of this agency and the two e-government systems are assigned the pseudonyms of SINGA, SINGA-ALPHA and SINGA-BETA, respectively.
The Accounting & Corporate Regulatory Authority's BizFile System
The Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) was formed as a new Statutory Board on 1st April 2004 through the merger of the Registry of Companies and Businesses (RCB) and the Public Accountants Board (PAB) with the mission to "provide a responsive and forward looking regulatory environment for companies, businesses and public accountants, conducive to enterprise and growth in Singapore". Simply put, the BizFile System is the flagship IT system of ACRA as it incorporates all the major transactional e-services as well as the backend enterprise database of ACRA. Primarily, the BizFile System supports the operational functions of ACRA in terms of the registration and renewal of businesses and companies licenses as well as the selling of these business and company information. Correspondingly, these operation falls under the purview of the Business Unit, Company Unit and the Information Resource Division in ACRA. Although other divisions in ACRA do utilize the BizFile System in their daily operation, their utilization is mainly for administrative purposes.
China's E-Government Initiative
The Shanghai government initially merely had several specialized stand-alone information systems and a basic online presence. Thus, when the central Chinese government advocated the use of IT in the public sector in the late 1990s, the Shanghai municipal government jumped at the opportunity to implement more dynamic and interactive systems, and concurrently boost the municipality's economy and position in China's transformation efforts. Their initial aim was to implement an all-in-one municipal-wide social security card system. The Shanghai project began in September 1998 and would last three years. The Shanghai Municipal Informatization Commission championed and coordinated efforts during this project, via an empowered project team, with support from the mayor and vice mayor of Shanghai and the Chinese central government. They also collaborated with one of China's top universities and a prominent local electronics company to implement the system. The project began with the streamlining of back-office processes and exploration of feasible technological solutions. An administrative institution was even set up to manage the system, while policies were laid out as part of the legal and regulatory framework guiding the project. Subsequently, information was disseminated as required in a top-down fashion throughout the municipality, and the project team adopted a modular approach in rolling out the system. Finally, this e-government system and model was replicated across other municipalities and provinces in China.
LTA's ONE.MOTORING Portal
The LTA was officially established on September 1, 1995 through the merger of four public sector entities; namely the Registry of Vehicles, the Mass Rapid Transit Corporation, the Roads & Transportation Division of the Public Works Department and the Land Transport Division of the former Ministry of Communications (now renamed as the Ministry of Transport). It is currently a statutory board under the Ministry of Transport and is tasked to spearhead land transport development in the island state of Singapore. It oversees the long-term land transportation planning in Singapore and it also looks after the transportation needs of all road users, including those who drive and those who take public transport. The ultimate goal of LTA is to ensure 'a smooth and seamless journey for all'. LTA aims to deliver a land transport network that is integrated, efficient, cost-effective and sustainable to meet the nation's needs. It also targets to plan, develop and manage Singapore's land transport system to support a quality environment while making optimal use of the transport measures and safeguarding the well-being of the traveling public. The other objective of LTA is to develop and implement policies to encourage commuters to choose the most appropriate transportation mode.
Republic Polytechnic: Facilitating Feature-Function-Stakeholder Fit in Enterprise System Implementation
"Not only is technology central to our campus, administration and learning, it is a way of life at Republic Polytechnic... if we don't do, it is going against the potential of technology. We have no choice. It's just a question of when we do it." - A RP Top Management Staff
The Singapore government saw the need to cater to a projected increase in the local population and offer greater variety in terms of education. Consequently, the Republic Polytechnic (RP) Act was passed by the Singapore Parliament on 8 July 2002 and RP was officially established on 1 August 2002. RP had one year to put together their infrastructure before they took in their first batch of students in July 2003. From the onset, two key pillars were formulated to guide RP. Firstly, RP went completely paperless, mobile and wireless. Staff and students owned laptops, and everything from daily lessons to exams were done electronically. Secondly, RP employed a problem-based learning educational pedagogy that was unique in Singapore, as a means of differentiating itself from other local tertiary institutions. This led to the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system called the Learning Environment Online system (LEO). LEO went on to become an integral part of education in RP.
The Alexandra Hospital: Implementing Healthcare Information Systems
"We are a relatively small hospital with a big vision. We aim to improve health and reduce illness via providing a patient-centered quality healthcare system that is accessible, seamless, comprehensive, appropriate and cost-effective to everyone" - Director of Projects in Operations (DPO), Dr. Wang
In the early 2000, after Alexandra Hospital (AH) had been taken over by the National Health Group (NHG) the hospital, it was tasked with the challenge of restructuring its processes and relocating its premises to a new site in the northern part of Singapore in 2009. The process restructure includes introducing new ways of working as well as redesigning healthcare services around the patient's needs. Essentially, one could expect a paradigm shift in the delivery of healthcare as a result of transformation into a hassle-free hospital.
National Library Board (NLB): Mediating IT-Enabled Transformation through Users
"The entire organization has played an important role in achieving this transformation. The staff believed in the vision we presented to them, and they were active participants in this process, making it their own, and helping the organization provide the kind of services that are available today. We are not just providing a knowledge-enriching environment to Singaporeans, our organization is a learning organization that constantly relooks at its services and improves itself constantly." - CEO of NLB, Dr. Christopher Chia
Singapore identified its National Library as one of the organizations that can equip Singapore's population in the quest to be a knowledge society. In 1992, a committee was established by the government to study the state of public libraries in Singapore and formulate a vision for its development in line with the needs of the nation. In particular, the committee focused on developing Singapore as an international information hub, in addition to providing library services to foster a knowledge society in Singapore and preserving Singapore's literary heritage. The committee tabled its findings in 1994 in a report titled Library 2000.
Taiwan Teleservices & Technology (TT&T): Dynamic Capabilities Development in a Call Center
Taiwan Teleservices & Technology (TT&T), which was formerly the customer service department of Taiwan Cellular Corporation (TCC), a leading telecommunications service provider in Taiwan. TT&T expanded its range of clients from solely telecommunications companies to organizations in the insurance, airline, government, transportation and information technology sectors. Furthermore, several new service products, such as debt collection and telemarketing, were included to satisfy the diverse needs of its clients. TT&T categorized its service products into four types: inbound sales, inbound services, outbound sales, and outbound services.
DSTA: eGovernment Capabilities and Crisis Management in Combating SARS
"Our national strategy against SARS has three prongs: First, to detect and isolate SARS cases as early as possible. Second, to ring-fence detected or suspected cases, hospitals and clinics and personnel treating SARS cases and adopt robust screening and infection control procedures. Third, to contain the spread of the virus and guard vigilantly against outbreak in the wider community." - Wong Kan Seng, Minister for Home Affairs, Singapore
Singapore's e-government systems have been highly rated for their extensive strategic and innovative use of information technology (IT) in delivering government services. Since the early 1980s, Singapore has continually introduced new information technologies to improve its government business processes. The result has been IT-knowledgeable human resources, as well as an IT infrastructure that provides citizens with a popular electronic channel for communicating and interacting with the government. Modernizing its vast government infrastructure using IT has been difficult. The process has involved redesigning services, introducing over 1600 e-services, and learning how to tailor and deploy electronic services. The result has been transformed public services. These investments proved crucial in 2004 when Singapore was hit with the outbreak of SARS.
Tzu Chi: Managing Crisis Response in Tsunami 2004
In 1966, Venerable Master Cheng Yen founded the Tzu Chi Merits Society in Hualien, Taiwan as a local charity fund to provide relief and assistance for the poor. Tzu Chi works in missions of Charity, Medicine, Education and Culture with the spirit of sincerity, integrity, trust and honesty. The four missions of Tzu Chi, Charity, Medicine, Education and Culture, represent the Four Immeasurable Minds Buddha spoke of which are Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Giving. The four corresponding trends are Charity internationalization, Medicine generalization, Complete Education development and Culture depth development. The objectives of Tzu Chi are to bring purity in people's minds, peace in the society and a disaster-free world and its principles are kindness, compassion, joy and giving through helping the poor and educating the rich. The goal of helping the poor and educating the rich is further developed into "One step, eight footprints" which consists of four missions together with Bone Marrow Donation, International Relief, Environmental Protection and Community Volunteering.
Wipro Technologies: Implementing Knowledge Management in an Outsourcing Organization
Wipro Technologies is the global IT services and products division of Wipro Limited, headquartered in Bangalore, India. Wipro Technologies generated revenues of US$943 million for the financial year ended March 31st 2004 and at the time of preparing this case employed more than 30,000 people, from 18 nationalities. Wipro Technologies operates as an autonomous entity headed by a CEO, who reports directly to the chairman of Wipro Limited. Wipro Technologies has more than 350 global clients, offering them a host of IT solutions including software application development and maintenance, research and development services, package implementation, systems integration and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. Organized into a number of strategic business units called verticals (defined, based on the industry segment of the customer, e.g., Retail, Manufacturing etc.) and horizontals (defined, based on the technology focus, e.g., Microsoft technologies), Wipro Technologies has software development centers and sales and marketing offices spread across countries in Asia, Europe and North America. Between the years 1998 and 2000, Wipro Technologies more than doubled its employee strength (5000 to 10,000+) and with rapid growth and complex projects, demand for access to information increased dramatically. The organization felt it necessary to create a formal structure to manage the growing knowledge resources and to ensure that the organizational business units tap into each others' expertise which would lead to shorter delivery periods for the customers.
India Inc.: Implementing Knowledge Management Systems
India Inc. was an IT services and products firm headquartered in India. India Inc. generated revenues of more than US $1.5 billion and employed more than thirty-five thousand people from more than twenty nationalities. India Inc. had more than three hundred and fifty global clients, and offered them a host of IT solutions including software application development and maintenance, research and development services, package implementation, systems integration and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. With rapid growth and complex projects, the demand for access to information increased throughout the organization. India Inc. thus felt that it was necessary to create a formal structure to manage the growing knowledge resources and to ensure that the organizational business units tap onto each others' expertise.
Satyam Computer Service: Sub-cultures and KMS Implementation
Satyam Computer Services Limited (Satyam) is a global IT services and consulting company. It employs about 15,000 people across development centers in 10 countries, in addition, its sales and marketing offices are in 45 countries. Satyam which was incorporated as a private limited company in Hyderabad, India in 1987, became a public limited company with its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 1992 and is currently listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Revenue-wise, Satyam has grown more than 500% over the last 10 years and is recognized today as one of the top 5 Indian companies in the IT Industry. In terms of personnel, Satyam which had only 75 employees (also known as associates or members) in 1993 has grown more than 200 times in a span of about dozen years to its current strength of over 15,000.
The British Council: Implementing Knowledge Management in a Geographically Dispersed Organization
"We're a hugely distributed organization with a 126 offices in a 110 countries. We, at any one point, will have several thousand programs running across the world. Although the headquarters is here [UK], all of the activities take place on the ground in the countries. With an organization like that, unless we are quick and efficient about sharing our experiences, sharing our information about our projects, sharing information about each other, there is a danger that we duplicate and replicate. It is not efficient financially; it's not efficient just from the point of delivery. So it's recognized in the organization that effective knowledge management is critical for us to achieve our strategic aims." - A Senior British Council Staff
In January 1999, Mr. Roman and Mr. Edwards, two members of the senior management team (SMT) within the Information & Services Management (ISM) department, authored a position paper in which they proposed the idea of formally managing the organization‟s knowledge. This paper emphasized the importance to the British Council (BC) of managing their knowledge and called for creating a knowledge management (KM) strategy for the organization. Mr. Roman and Mr. Edwards had been influenced by the KM efforts that had been taken at the World Bank, as well as pressures for a new approach to promoting the UK from the UK government.
Asian Development Bank (ADB): Implementing Knowledge Management
"Yes, we are a bank and we provide loans, financial assistance but we started to realize that we can often have more of an impact through a study than through a loan. And particularly, the combination of sort of financing and sort of expertise is what makes ADB unique. Head commercial banks are not interested in providing expert advice. And people who often provide advice have very little leverage." - A Member of the Top Management Team of the ADB
Chemxlog: Knowledge Management across Organizations
"On that part, the basic directions are quite different. ChemXlog is very eager to solicit business, trying to put everybody on board the system. The freight forwarder's basic attitude and direction are just like me. We don't see immediate interest or savings. On the contrary, we incur more expenditure, more manpower and more work. So we are actually trying to bring each other down, they say: please come on board and we say: please give us more savings. Of course there will be some argument and some conflicts in terms of charges." Director, Haulier
In early 2001, Simon, the logistics manager of PhotoChem, started to explore the idea of a web based collaborative logistics system. He wanted a system through which he could interact with PhotoChem's logistics service providers online. Simon realized that it was inefficient to continue interacting with them the traditional way, i.e. through faxes and phones. After successfully convincing his management he started looking out for suitable vendors that could help him in his plan. He selected ChemXlog, an IT firm as the vendor. ChemXlog specialized in providing collaborative logistics systems for chemical companies. Ron, the account manager and Terence, the business development manager of ChemXlog were now to assist Simon in getting the service providers on board the system. Simon knew this was not going to be an easy task.
BankCo: Managing Knowledge Transfer in Outsourcing
BankCo is a multinational bank with 30,000 staff located in 50 countries. In 2001, after a review of its IS global technology business development and support organization, it decided to progressively switch its predominately more expensive 'onshore' locations in United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore, to its 'offshore' lower cost India and Malaysia locations. There were three main reasons for this move, as cited by its Programme Director. Other than to lower cost, the second objective was to reduce the risk of shortage of technology resources in its onshore locations, which was plaguing the technology industry in 2001. The third objective was to improve productivity and quality through centralization in the two offshore locations. By centralizing its operations in two key offshore locations, BankCo wanted to improve its cost of production through economies of scale.
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