Ecom 500 - Business and Information Technology - Long Term Plan for the Clarion School

...

Resource and funding needs justification

The fund rising is the responsibility of the Department of Development at Clarion Milwaukee. The school has spent about $80,000 a year for the software and the hardware support maintenance agreement. The required support will be done under the Annual maintenance agreement. As per the LTM consulting the cost for professional services is estimated to be $42,500.The Phase 1 budget which include the operating system licenses will cost $6000, the client licenses and professional services is costing about $54,000. For the second phase, the required budget is estimated to be in the range of $62,000 to $122,000.

Implementation plan

The IS Task Force will need to assist to develop the needed assessment. The LTM consulting intervention has recommended what is a required in term of the needed enhancements for hardware, software, databases, and the network needs. Need to conduct the planning by small teams and more involvement from the leadership and make the necessary feedback in regular bases for assurance. They have to consider all project related to information system, the entire system needs to be involved. They have to appoint new Manager who would need to look into the issues that have greater impact. The master IS plan is set to identify the school strategic problems and to develop the right planning for future infrastructure. “The recommendation of System Lifecycle Methodology for use on each application system for establishing timetables would help in proper implementation” (Nelson & DeHayes, 2010).

Organizational change

The Clarion School had a significant growth. The total number of students is about 120 students and there are new staff positions added to meet the growing number of students. There are 30 present growths in the number of part time and full time staff. The created permanent positioning for new staff was put under effective managerial level. All the new IS Managers who will be hired are having computer Science background and will report to the IT leader.

Training

“The staff needs to be trained on usage of Calendaring Software Products for enhanced scheduling and serves as a great automation tool” (IBM, 2015). The training is needed for the users to be able to adapt to the new change in technology. The training is also required for the task force members who do not have background about Information System. The staff who deals with the accounting system need to get proper training for this system and how it is used. There is also a need to enhance the quality of dictated memos.

Conclusion

The Information System at Clarion Milwaukee is needed to be improved. The system needs to be more effective and this needs system enhancements. The upgrade for AS/400 machines cannot be doe due to budget constraints which is the bottleneck that organization is facing. The LMT consulting has come up with a recommendation and implementation plan which will take care for the related concerns in the current system and will make it more effective. The school will see a lot of benefit after upgrading the system along with the introduction of Microsoft platform. This requires changes in the applications and hardware. The LTM consulting has put and an effective implementation plan which would include changes in the current system and build up the efficiencies along with the objectives of Clarion Milwaukee being met.

References

Burger, D. (2010). Do you upgrade or trade in that old AS/400. Retrieved from:

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh120103-story03.html

IBM (2015). Automate composite workloads according to business policies. Retrieved from:

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/tivoworksche

Nelson, S., R. & DeHayes, D., W. (2010). The Clarion School for boys, Inc. - Milwaukee Division: Making Information Systems Investments. Managing Information Technology. Seventh Ed.

Brown, C. V., DeHayes, D. W., Hoffer, J. A., Martin, W. W., & Perkins, W. C. (2012). Managing information technology (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.