The key players in the case include Leon Lassiter, Ed Wilson, Ted Vassici, and Simon Kovecki. Leon Lassiter was the VP Marketing and Membership. Lassiter’s roles included marketing and sales management. Later, other roles of communication, graphic arts, and printing operations were also assigned to him. Ed Wilson title was VP Public Affairs, and he was in charge of environment and energy issues of the company, coordination of legislative teams, office systems management, and reception. Ted Vassici was a hardware and software consultant; his duty was to review MSCC’s system, propose additional changes and update the custom software. Simon Kovecki, a systems analyst, had the task of monitoring and maintaining the organization’s system to ensure it ran efficiently.
Simon Kovecki was the one who was the most responsible for the systems conversion crisis at the company. Kovecki did not do proper research concerning the old system before starting the conversion process resulting in some of the company’s data getting corrupted. Proper research would have allowed him to make the necessary preparation to perform the system conversion successfully.
Ed Wilson introduced the MSCC to computers and database management systems and hired a programmer to develop custom software to meet the organization’s needs. He is the one who hired Ted Vassici to upgrade the system yet Vassici did not leave any software documentation or contacts when his business closed down. He is also the one who still hired Simon Kovecki who had no experience in membership organizations or accounting software that the MSCC’s custom software was based. Leon Lassiter pushed the organization to implement a new system called UNITRACK that he had identified as befitting the organization’s growth needs for the next five years. Lassiter also ignored complaints from Kovecki and other staff regarding the disadvantages of the system he had proposed. Simon Kovecki took a job that he clearly was not familiar with and had to work for long hours in his first three months trying to understand the system and organization. Kovecki was also incompetent in doing his work as we can see he had not backed up the system for over three months and also forgot to order the modem that could have enabled UNITRACK to offer remote support (Dehayes, 17).
The role of deciding the best system that could fit the organization’s expansion needs could have been left to the system expert who at this time was Simon Kovecki. Also, the conversion of the system could have been done by either Ted Vassici, who updated the old system or UNITRACK who developed the new system.
UNITRACK software corporation role was to assist MSCC with all the necessary support to implement the new system. This was a very appropriate role or UNITRACK since the company was the one that had developed the software and knew everything concerning it.
UNITRACK acted responsible and professionally in performing its role by sending two of its employees to act as project managers during the training exercise at no extra cost. We can also see that UNITRACK had devised a way of offering remote assistance and would have tried to help out had Kovecki ordered the modem necessary for remote assistance.
Works cited
Dehayes, Daniel. W. “MidSouth Chamber of Commerce (A): The Role of Operating Manager in Information Systems.”2013: n.pag. Print.
