Building Shared Services at Rr Case Study Case Study

Building Shared Services at RR Case Study

An analysis of the Building Shared Services at RR reveals that various challenges facing the company require immediate response. This will ensure that the company does not lose its customers and face closure at worse. This is the case because many customers have raised their concerns regarding these issues (McKeen & Smith, 2012). One of the pertinent issues is based on the decentralization of operations within the entire organization where each of the business operates independently. All the independent business units have the authority to develop and implement new projects besides making decisions without necessarily collaborating with the other business units or the entire firm (Cullen & Parboteeah, 2010).

Summary of Facts, Issues, Implications

With the decentralization of operations, the firm is currently facing various issues such as issuing customers with receipts of each of the four products that the company sells instead of issuing them with only one receipt to cover the entire transaction. Another issue facing the firm because of the decentralization of its operations is its inability to comply fully with the Sarbanes-Oxley standards. This may eventually attract some legal repercussions from the government. Its inability to comply with these regulations arises from the inability to account for all its operations (one of the requirements of the act) since the independent business units do not pursue a common goal or strategy. Therefore, it is imperative the general management puts in place a shared IT system, which is standardized among all the various units in order to streamline the firm's operations in all its business units (McKeen & Smith, 2012).

Several advantages come with the adoption of a shared service system of IT. A shared IT service system has the capacity to solve the issues identified above the face the firm. Since IT will be fully adopted in all the company's activities, it is important to put in place a single centralized and standardized IT operating system.Having a single customer service for RR communications, will enhance the firm's decision-making process by making them faster and more effective across all the business units and departments. This is because all departments will enjoy easy access to company information and in real time. Consequently, the system will ensure smooth running and sharing of information without having important information that may add value to the entire firm being restrained in a given department. In addition, having a single customer service will ensure that clients do not necessarily visit the different business units in order to access company information (Cullen & Parboteeah, 2010).

However, the firm will be able to record all the queries and purchases from a single site and provide customers with all the information they need from the company. Furthermore, this will enhance the company's ability to tackle some of the issues that its customers are facing. The single customer service center and the use of a centralized and standardized IT operating system are advantageous because of the relative ease when monitoring the units and their operations. In fact, their contribution to the entire firm will be evaluated easily. Furthermore, the company will now be able to monitor its financial operations easily and effectively since all its financial information will now be reflected in a single database centrally (McKeen & Smith, 2012).

In order to develop and effective strategy, it is important to ensure the support of the top-level management and in this case, the support of the division president. This appreciates the fact that the divisional president will manage all the company's units. The divisional president's willingness to ensure the successful implementation of the shared services will….....