Hitachi Consulting Moves Human Resources to the Cloud

Hitachi Consulting Corporation is an interna­tional management and technology consulting firm headquartered in Dallas, Tfexas and a sub­sidiary of Hitachi Ltd. based in Tokyo, Japan. Hitachi Consulting currently employs approximately 6,500 people in 22 countries, including the United States, Japan, Brazil, China, India, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, the UK, Germany, and Vietnam. Because the company

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What are the objectives of project management, and why is it so essential in developing information systems?

There is a very high failure rate among information systems projects. In nearly every organization, information systems projects take much more time and money to implement than originally anticipated, or the completed system does not work properly. When an information system does not meet expectations or costs too much to develop, companies may not

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What methods can be used for selecting and evaluating information systems projects and aligning them with the firm’s business goals?

Companies typically are presented with many different projects for solving prob­lems and improving performance. There are far more ideas for systems projects than there are resources. Firms will need to select the projects that promise the greatest benefit to the business. Obviously, the firm’s overall business strategy should drive project selection. How should managers

How can firms assess the business value of information systems?

Even if a systems project supports a firm’s strategic goals and meets user infor­mation requirements, it needs to be a good investment for the firm. The value of systems from a financial perspective essentially revolves around the issue of return on invested capital. Does a particular information system investment produce sufficient returns to justify

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What are the principal risk factors in information systems projects, and how can they be managed?

We have already introduced the topic of information systems risks and risk as­sessment in Chapter 8. In this chapter, we describe the specific risks to informa­tion systems projects and show what can be done to manage them effectively. 1. Dimensions of Project Risk Systems differ dramatically in their size, scope, level of complexity, and

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Pennsylvania’s Unemployment Compensation Modernization System: Unfinished Business

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) is responsible for the admin­istration and operation of the state’s unem­ployment compensation program, which provides temporary income to replace lost wages for quali­fied workers. DLI employs over 500 people and has approximately 200 offices statewide to serve Pennsylvania’s 6.4 million workers and nearly 300,000 employers. Unemployment

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Developing an International Information Systems Architecture

This chapter describes how to go about building an international i nformation systems architecture suitable for your international strategy. An international information systems architecture consists of the basic information systems required by organizations to coordinate worldwide trade and other activities. Figure 15.2 illustrates the reasoning we follow throughout the chapter and depicts the major

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The Global Environment: Business Drivers and Challenges

Table 15.1 lists the business drivers in the global environment that are leading all industries toward global markets and competition. The global business drivers can be divided into two groups: general cultural factors and specific business factors. Easily recognized general cultural factors have driven internationalization since World War II. Information, communi­cation, and transportation technologies

State of the Art

One might think, given the opportunities for achieving competitive advantages as outlined previously and the interest in future applications, that most inter­national companies have rationally developed marvelous international systems architectures. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most companies have inherited patchwork international systems from the distant past, often based on outdated concepts of

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Global Strategies and Business Organization

Four main global strategies form the basis for global firms’ organizational structure. These are domestic exporter, multinational, franchiser, and trans­national. Each of these strategies is pursued with a specific business organi­zational structure (see Table 15.3). For simplicity’s sake, we describe three kinds of organizational structure or governance: centralized (in the home country), decentralized (to

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Global Systems to Fit the Strategy

Information technology and improvements in global telecommunications are giv­ing international firms more flexibility to shape their global strategies. The con­figuration, management, and development of systems tend to follow the global strategy chosen. Figure 15.3 depicts the typical arrangements. By systems we mean the full range of activities involved in building and operating information systems:

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Reorganizing the Business in Global Environment

How should a firm organize itself for doing business on an international scale? To develop a global company and information systems support structure, a firm needs to follow these principles: Organize value-adding activities along lines of comparative advantage. For instance, marketing/sales functions should be located where they can best be performed for least cost

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What are the challenges posed by global information systems and management solutions for these challenges?

Table 15.4 lists the principal management problems posed by developing in­ternational systems. It is interesting to note that these problems are the chief difficulties managers experience in developing ordinary domestic systems as well. But these are enormously complicated in the international environment. 1. A Typical Scenario: Disorganization on a Global Scale Let’s look at

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What are the issues and technical alternatives to be considered when developing international information systems?

Once firms have defined a global business model and systems strategy, they must select hardware, software, and networking standards along with key system applications to support global business processes. Hardware, soft­ware, and networking pose special technical challenges in an international setting. One major challenge is finding some way to standardize a global computing platform

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