What Were the Primary Reasons for Changing the Current System
Part A
1. What were the primary reasons for changing the current system?
The primary reason for Butler wanting to change over to a VoIP system was that their existing phone system provider, Centrex, was not fully meeting Butlers needs. The older system did not provide modern features, and adding or changing phone lines was labor intensive. (Brown, Dehayes, Hoffer, Martin & Perkins, 2012, p. 144)
2. What role did Butlers IS department play?
Butlers Information Resources department had involvement in several stages of the project. In the beginning, they performed the initial research into the “telephony landscape”, and Butlers Telephony Evaluation Team was comprised of several members of the IR department. Later, this team attended the SUPERCOMM conference to “window shop” for VoIP solutions. The IR departments director, Joe Indiano, and the president of the consulting firm created the five strategic goals for the project (Brown, Dehayes, Hoffer, Martin & Perkins, 2012, p. 148). They created the request for proposal that was to be issued to prospective vendors, listened to the vendor presentations, performed interviews, etc. During implementation, the IR department director was assigned as the project coordinator. The new IP Implementation Team was also formed using staff from IR. The pilot program was coordinated by IR, as well as the cutover to the new system. Finally, in post-implementation, the IR department added an additional staff member to manage the new VoIP system.
3. What were the roles of the vendors?
The roles of the vendors was quite simple, to make presentations to Butler in response to their RFP. In addition to the presentations, vendors had to interview with the IR department, coordinate on-site visits with the vendors customers, etc (Brown, Dehayes, Hoffer, Martin & Perkins, 2012, p. 149).
4. List objectives of the pilot. Were any problems encountered?
The objectives of the pilot program were to help test features and gain user feedback. However, the main objective was to gain “buy-in” from the future users of the system (Brown, Dehayes, Hoffer, Martin & Perkins, 2012, p. 153). Some of the problems encountered occurred in what was referred to as the “week of hell”. These problems included a software bug that required all multiline phones to be manually activated one at a time, random server reboots, missing phone numbers that were needed for private voicemail, and two campus locations that had no Ethernet wiring.
5. Do you think Butler made the right decision to utilize this new technology? What implications does this decision hold for Butlers IT department in the long run?
I do feel that Butler made the right choice