Covisint Technology (CT) is a medium sized developer of electronic parts for the automotive industry. Over the past 5 years, CT has grown from a small operation in Ottawa, Ontario with less than 10 employees, to their current size of 1,000 employees located in 10 offices and manufacturing facilities across Canada. The owner of Covisint Technologies is Mr. Bart Simpson.

CT has grown dramatically over the past few years, mostly through small mergers and acquisitions. These mergers and acquisitions have helped the company grow, but at the same time have caused tremendous stress and pressure on the systems used at CT. In particular, there are now over 50 different transaction processing systems (TPS) used at CT, many of which are redundant or are unable to communicate and share data with other necessary TPS. Many of these systems run on different hardware and software platforms, and some of the systems are very old. This overall situation has caused several issues at CT, including missed payroll, and most recently, the publication of financial statements that later turned out to be incorrect. In addition to these problems, CT has had tremendous difficulties in their abilities to access quality data to help them make decisions.

In addition to the inability to gain access to quality data to make decisions, Mr. Simpson realizes that even with good quality data, CT has no infrastructure or capabilities to use data to help them make decisions. Mr. Simpson realizes that he needs something to help CT make quality decisions, or they risk the future growth of the company.

CT has always been at the forefront of the design and capabilities of their automotive electronic parts. However, in getting to the stage that they are at, much of the design and manufacturing of their products has been rather low-tech and somewhat manual. Mr. Simpson realizes that very little has been done at CT to take advantage of some of the emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and capabilities that could be used to help him run his business, including on the manufacturing and assembly line, in the design process as well as in the management aspects of CT. Mr. Simpson knows very little about AI and he needs your help in better understanding it.

In addition to the lack of AI, Mr. Simpson realizes CT is very far behind in its use of eCommerce. While CT does not currently sell directly to the public, they do sell their products to auto manufacturers and they purchase items from suppliers, but they do not use eCommerce. Mr. Simpson is wondering if there are ways that eCommerce could be utilized in their supply chain. Finally, a new product line that is launching next year is targeted at end consumers rather than their traditional automotive manufacturer customer and therefore CT needs to be ready to be able to sell online, directly to customers.

CT had, to date, never followed any formal project guidelines or processes. All projects that were undertaken at CT were simply ad-hoc groups of people put together to try and complete the projects. Unfortunately, many of the projects undertaken were unsuccessful, in that they went over time and/or over budget. In addition, many of the completed projects were considered by management to be failures, as the desired end product or service was usually not what was expected. Of key concern was the fact that most of the IT projects that occurred at CT were overwhelming failures, and Mr. Simpson knows that if CT is going to continue to grow, they must improve their abilities in projects overall, and certainly IT projects.

Recently, CT has realized that they do not have the in-house resources to handle new projects, both in general but more with respect to IT projects. Without these in-house resources, CT has found itself unable to complete, and in many cases start needed projects. More concerning is that in many cases even when CT has people that could be working on projects, they often do not have the knowledge, skills and abilities to complete the project work, as it is not an area of core competence. In addition to the issues around projects, CT was having difficulties running their IT operations and their IT resources were starting to be stretched to the limit. Mr. Simpson was unsure if he wanted to invest in any more in-house IT infrastructure and software development and wondered if there was a solution for this problem.

CT was in desperate need of a new Accounting Information System (AIS). The old system was experiencing issues and there were growing concerns that the output from the system may not be reliable. CT had done some preliminary planning and analysis for the new system, and discovered that some of their requirements were general ones that would be features and functionalities in most AIS, but they also had some very specific needs that may not be contained in an AIS that they could purchase. As an Accountant, Mr. Simpson has asked you to help guide him through the acquisition process for the new AIS.

Mr. Simpson needs help in determining the acquisition process for the new AIS, but he is also concerned about the implementation process. In the past, CT had experienced many issues during the implementation of new systems, and he wants to be sure that this does not happen for the new AIS. CT did not have many employees who were familiar with the systems implementation process and in the past, many users avoided getting involved with any systems projects, and in some cases refused to use the systems once they were implemented.

After many successive years of fast paced growth at CT, Mr. Simpson realized that the company has left itself vulnerable to IT risk and in fact has no IT Risk Management plans in place. Given the sensitive and proprietary nature of much of its data and information, Mr. Simpson realized that something must be done soon to make sure the company was ready to deal with the IT risks that it faces. As an example, recently there appeared to be some suspicious activity on one of their network servers, and the IT staff could not determine if any data was altered or stolen. Knowing this happened, Mr. Simpson wondered what other IT risks his company has been or could be exposed to and needs a plan to manage these risks.

In another incident, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) reported to Mr. Simpson that an employee accidentally left their laptop open and unsecured on their desk when they went for lunch, and all of the accounting data for the company was most likely accessed. The CIO did not know who accessed it, but they could tell that someone had opened the main Accounting Information System (AIS) and copied some or all of the data. It appears that no data had been changed, but still a breach like this could have devastating consequences for CT.

Mr. Simpson needs your help for all of the issues they are having, and has asked you to answer the following questions.

Q1: Justify to Mr. Simpson why he may wish to consider outsourcing and specifically IT outsourcing to help solve some of the project issues they have been facing at CT. Be sure to discuss the pros and cons that CT may face if they choose to outsource some of the project work. Finally, beyond outsourcing of projects, what other things could CT consider outsourcing, specifically in the area of IT. Could the use of cloud computing help CT in any way, and if yes, describe to Mr. Simpson how cloud computing could work at their organization, including the different types of cloud computing they could take advantage of.