The IS Core-IV: IS Research: A Third Way

Historically, the IS community found little difficulty in producing rigorous research, but its relevance for the practitioner community is frequently questioned. While agreeing with the need for a sharper focus for IS research, this paper suggests that past problems with relevance can be avoided by engaging the academic and practitioner communities in setting a research agenda using an open source approach. Such an approach would assure that academic researchers remain focused on relevant issues in a fast-moving field, and offers an opportunity to draw the academic and practitioner communities closer together for their mutual benefit

Disintermediation and Reintermediation in the U.S. Air Travel Distribution Industry: A Delphi Study

Observers of the Electronic Commerce (EC) landscape often comment on the prospects for disintermediation. Other observers note that the nature of EC will create new kinds of intermediaries, termed cybermediaries , who would occupy positions in Internet channels between producers and consumers. The word coined to describe this is reintermediation . In either case, traditional retailers would be threatened by new EC-enabled competition. This investigation was launched to predict the occurrence and impact of disintermediation and reintermediation in the US air travel distribution industry. A group of industry experts was assembled as a Delphi panel and asked to predict the effect that EC would have on the major channel players in each of five major market segments. The panel forecast that major disintermediation and reintermediation will occur and that there will be a sharp reduction in the number of traditional travel agents five and ten years in the future. The panel also identified a number of strategic threats and opportunities for the channel players

Coors Brewing Company Point of Sale Application Suite: Winning Mindshare with Customers, Retailers, and Distributors

Coors Brewing Company is the third largest company in the highly competitive U.S. beer industry. The primary target market for its products is young adults, who demand innovative approaches to marketing from brewers, including relevant and creative point of sale (POS) materials in retail outlets. Coors depends upon the cooperation of distributors and retailers to place Coors\u27 POS materials in ways that will give their products greater visibility. Since all retailers and most distributors of Coors products also sell competitors\u27 products, Coors realized that it must win the battle for mindshare with its distributors and retailers who are in a position to influence what the retail customer buys. For many years, Coors was at a competitive disadvantage with its POS deployment process. The distribution of POS materials was costly and time-consuming, involving paper-based procedures for ordering and fulfillment. In 2001, Coors created an e-Business Department to address enterprise-wide opportunities such as the POS process. As one of their first efforts, members of the e-Business Department created a portal-based POS Application Suite that proved to be highly effective in addressing the needs of its distributors and retailers for POS materials in support of Coors marketing campaigns. As one element of the POS Application Suite, Coors partnered with HP to create an e-POS system . The e-POS system contains embedded innovative technology that permits distributors to customize POS materials for their specific needs while, at the same time, letting Coors maintain central control over what is permitted to be used under an important new national licensing agreement with the National Football League. The POS Application Suite gives Coors a first-mover advantage over its larger competitors

Colorado Benefits Management System (C): Seven Years of Failure

In September 2004, the State of Colorado implemented a large information system it called the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS). Its purpose was to replace six aging legacy systems supporting various state-administered welfare programs with a single system using current technologies. The expected benefits from CBMS were better service to clients and assurance that the state’s welfare programs were being administered properly. The conversion was a disaster, and, as of early 2011, CBMS is still not working properly. Since 2004, there have been a series of promises and attempts under two separate administrations to fix CBMS so that it meets performance requirements. Nothing has worked. This case chronicles events since late 2006 until early 2011. It lays the groundwork for class discussion of how and why public sector managers could fail to focus on fixing the problems with CBMS for almost seven years, and now will simply “kick the can down the road” to the new administration that took office in January 2011

Colorado Benefits Management System (B): The Emperor\u27s New System

This case is a follow on to Colorado Benefits Management System: Decision Time (McCubbrey and Fukami, 2005). It chronicles the events in the two years that followed the ill-advised conversion of the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS). CBMS was converted over the objections of the user community and after the expenditure of approximately $100 million. The results were both predictable and avoidable. The system was fraught with errors, and the fallback plan was never implemented. Clients, principally the poor and elderly, suffered as a result of the system\u27s errors and poor performance. An audit conducted by the State of Colorado found that millions of dollars had been misspent after conversion. As of August 2006, CBMS remains a troubled system and has received a considerable amount of unfavorable publicity in the local and national media. Colorado counties are struggling to use the system and worker morale is suffering. A lawsuit against the State is pending. The case concludes by asking: Who is to blame for this mess? Why is it taking so long to fix? What could have been done differently to avoid the resulting chaos? What should be done to repair CBMS? How can progress be measured

ERP at the Colorado Department of Transportation: The Whistle Blower’s Dilemma

The case takes place in the Information Technology Office (ITO) of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) from 2001 to the present. Driven by the wishes of CDOT’s executive director, and in a response to aging information systems, CDOT decided to install an Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP). The case focuses on Bill Cron, an employee in the CDOT ITO, who was very concerned about not only the need for an expensive ERP, but also about the way the project was being executed. He voiced his concerns using as many channels as he could identify, but they seemed to fall on deaf ears. The decision focus of the case concerns which of three options Bill should pursue: being quiet and falling in line as directed, continuing to voice his concerns internally (internal whistle blowing), or going public and divulging his concerns in the local press (external whistle blowing)

Colorado Benefits Management System: Decision Time

The project to develop the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) was begun with high hopes and the best of intentions. Its vision was to replace six aging legacy systems supporting various State administered welfare programs with a single system using current technologies. The expected benefits from CBMS were better service to clients and assurance that the State\u27s welfare programs were being administered properly. The bulk of the development effort was outsourced to a large systems integration firm, and a comprehensive project oversight structure was put in place. Despite these actions, the project was troubled from the start. Nearing one more projected conversion date, the two executive sponsors of the project were faced with a decision of whether or not to implement the system despite protests from the user community that CBMS was not ready to be put into operation

Disintermediation and Reintermediation in the U.S. Air Travel Distribution Industry: A Delphi Reprise

A group of industry experts was assembled as a Delphi panel in 1997-1998. They were asked to predict the effect that Electronic Commerce technologies and disintermediation and reintermediation would exert on the major firms in the U.S. air travel distribution industry in each of five major market segments. The panel forecast that major disintermediation and reintermediation would occur and that there would be a sharp reduction in the number of traditional travel agents five and ten years in the future. The panel also identified a number of strategic threats and opportunities for the channel participants. This paper compares the panel\u27s predictions to what actually occurred and describes technology-related developments that the panel did not foresee. In particular, the panel predicted a major reduction in the number of travel agent entities between 1997 and 2002, as well as in 2007. By the end of 2002, the panel\u27s forecast was very close to what actually occurred. Our overall conclusion is that the Delphi method worked well as a predictor in this instance

The Global Text Project

The Global Text Project is intended to create global free textbooks for students in the developing countries. We argue that two key technological and social developments offer an opportunity to create a new model for textbook publishing. First, the Internet is a low cost channel for distributing information products in digital form. Second, global digital communities have created the platform for collaborative creation of content. Through this model a free and open content library will be developed for students covering all major subjects for an undergraduate education. This project is a contributory measure to the global efforts to address the educational resource constraints in resource poor environments in the world

USA Swimming: The Data Integration Project

USA Swimming (USAS) is the National Governing Body for the sport of swimming, one of more than 40 National Governing Bodies for amateur sports in the United States. Their mission is, in part, to administer competitive swimming in accordance with the Amateur Sports Act , and to provide programs and services for our members, supporters, affiliates and the interested public The USAS membership community consists of athletes, non-athletes, and clubs. One of the most important functions USAS performs is to gather and maintain information on members in all categories. Maintaining individual swimmers\u27 times in sanctioned meets, for example, forms the basis for swimmers to be ranked nationally. The responsibility for the gathering of data is relegated to 2,800 clubs and 59 local swimming committees scattered across the US. In their previous system, data needed for the USAS master databases was gathered by the clubs and sent to the local swimming committees, which consolidated the data and forwarded it to the national headquarters in Colorado Springs. Unfortunately, by 2002, it became clear that the hodgepodge of different hardware platforms and software used by the clubs and local swimming committees made the data gathering process ripe for errors, which resulted in unreliable data in multiple database systems at USAS headquarters. This case describes the process USAS management followed to establish and manage the development of a new system whose principal features include a new centralized database with a pre-posting holding tank for data cleansing as well as a Web portal providing valuable new functionality to the user community. The project involved significant risks, not the least of which was the widely dispersed user community. Risks were mitigated by the development of a prototype and by engaging an independent verification and validation firm. The new system achieved the benefits that USAS projected when the project was first conceived. The complicated technical infrastructure was replaced by a Web-based architecture that provides faster and more reliable service to the USAS community at a lower cost. The problem of inaccuracies in the data caused by data being stored in multiple databases was eliminated with the establishment of the new centralized database and the holding tank\u27s data cleansing capabilities. Users at USAS headquarters and in the field embraced the new system because it simplified the data gathering process and greatly improved the reliability of the information they obtain from the centralized database. Further, the Web-based portal provides a stable operating environment for day-to-day operations and a platform that allows adding enhancements easily to the system