[Solved] CIC Case Study Chesapeake IT Consultants

Chesapeake IT Consultants (CIC) is a successful Information Technology consulting services firmthat utilizes proven IT and management methodologies to achieve measurable results for itscustomers. Its customer base includes small to mid-tier businesses, non-profit organizationsand governmental agencies at the local, state and federal levels. CIC feels strongly that itssuccess is dependent on the combination of the talent of its IT consultants, the best practicesCIC employs, and a dedication to delivering truly beneficial IT solutions to their clients.Corporate ProfileCorporate Name: Chesapeake IT Consultants, Inc.Founded: May 2004Headquarters: Baltimore, MarylandSatellite Locations: Herndon, Virginia; Bethesda, MarylandNumber of Employees: 400Total Annual Gross Revenue: $80,000,000President andChief Executive Officer (CEO): Alvin MorrisonBusiness AreasCIC provides consulting services in the following areas: Business Process Consulting – Business process redesign, process improvement IT Consulting – IT strategy, analysis, planning, system development, implementation,and network support IT Outsourcing Consulting – Requirements analysis; vendor evaluation, due diligence,selection and performance management; Service Level AgreementsBusiness StrategyCIC’s business strategy is to provide extraordinary consulting services and recommendations toits customers by employing highly skilled consultants and staying abreast of new businessconcepts and technology and/or developing new business concepts and best practices of itsown.Current Business EnvironmentCIC provides consultants on-site to work with its clients, delivering a wide variety of IT-relatedservices. CIC obtains most of its business through competitively bidding on Requests forProposals issued by business, government and non-profit organizations. A small but growingportion of its business is through referrals and follow-on contracts from satisfied clients. CICanticipates it will win two large contracts in the near future and is preparing proposals forseveral other large projects.CIC Case Study 3/18/2017 2CIC, as a consulting company, relies on the quality and expertise of its employees to provide theservices needed by the clients. When it is awarded a contract, the customer expects CIC toquickly provide the consultants and begin work on the project. CIC, like other consultingcompanies, cannot afford to carry a large number of employees that are not assigned tocontracts. Therefore, they need to determine the likelihood of winning a new contract andensure the appropriately skilled consultants are ready to go to work when needed. CIC relieson its HR Department to find and hire the personnel that the line managers need for upcomingcontracts. It is very much a “just in time” hiring situation.The Headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, houses approximately 300 employees. Satelliteoffices have been opened in the last two years in both Herndon, Virginia and Bethesda,Maryland to provide close proximity to existing clients. It is anticipated that new pendingcontracts would add staff to all locations. The management team believes there is capacity atall locations, as much of the consultants’ work is done on-site at the customers’ locations.Strategic DirectionAs a small to mid-size business (SMB), CIC recognizes that it needs to carefully plan its futurestrategy. Considering the competitive environment that contains many very large IT consultingfirms, such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), and Science ApplicationsInternational Corporation (SAIC), as well as numerous smaller companies with various skill sets,market niches, and established customer bases, CIC will be evaluating how best to positionitself for the future and recognizes that its ability to identify its core competencies, move withagility and flexibility, and deliver consistent high quality service to its clients is critical forcontinued success.One area that is critical to a consulting company is the ability to have employees who possessthe necessary knowledge and skills to fulfill current and future contracts. With all thecompetition in IT consulting services, CIC is planning to incorporate consultants in othercountries to provide remote research and analysis support to the on-site teams. Since CIC hasno experience in the global marketplace, the Director of HR has begun examining internationallabor laws to determine where CIC should recruit and hire employees.ChallengesThe two contracts that CIC expects to win very soon will require the hiring of an additional 75consultants very quickly. The Director of Human Resources (HR) is concerned that the currentmanual process of recruiting and hiring employees will not allow his department to beresponsive to these needs. He is looking for a near-term solution that will automate many ofthe manual hiring process steps and reduce the time it takes to hire new staff. He is alsolooking for a solution that will allow CIC to hire employees located in other countries aroundthe world.CIC Case Study 3/18/2017 3Additional business plans include adding help desk support as a provided service. This mayinclude partnering with another vendor offshore to provide economical competitive services inthis area.Management DirectionThe management team has been discussing how to ramp up to fill the requirements of the twonew contracts, and prepare the company to continue growing as additional contracts areawarded in the future. The company has been steadily growing and thus far hiring of newemployees has been handled through a process that is largely manual. The HR Directorreported that his staff will be unable to accommodate the hiring of the 75 new employees inthe timeframe required. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) then recommended that thecompany look for a commercial off-the-shelf software product that can dramatically improvethe hiring process and shorten the time it takes to hire new employees. The Chief FinancialOfficer (CFO) wants to ensure that all investments are in line with the corporate mission andwill achieve the desired return on investment. She will be looking for clear information thatproposals have been well researched, provide a needed capability for the organization, and canbe cost-effectively implemented in a relatively short period of time to reap the benefits. TheCEO has asked the CIO to work with HR to recommend a solution.Your TaskAs a business analyst in the CIO’s department, you have been assigned to conduct an analysis,develop a set of system requirements, and propose an IT solution. The CIO has set up a seriesof interviews for you to collect information about the current hiring process and therequirements for a system. He has asked you to produce a Business Analysis and SystemRecommendation Report (BA&SR) as your final deliverable.InterviewsIn the interviews you conduct with the organizational leaders, you hear the comments recordedbelow.CEO: Alvin Morrison“While I trust my HR staff to address the nuts and bolts of the staffing processes, what iscritically important to me is that the right people can be in place to fulfill our current contractsand additional talented staff can be quickly hired to address needs of future contracts we win. Ican’t be out in the market soliciting new business if we can’t deliver on what we’re selling. Ourreputation is largely dependent on having knowledgeable and capable staff to deliver theservices our clients are paying for and expect from CIC.”CFO: Marianne Cho“So glad we’re talking about this initiative. As CFO, obviously I’m focused on the bottom line. Ialso recognize it’s necessary to invest in certain areas to ensure our viability movingCIC Case Study 3/18/2017 4forward. Having cost effective technology solutions that improve current processes and enablefuture functionality is very important to CIC’s success. We must consider the total cost ofownership of any technology we adopt. CIC is run as a lean-and-mean organization and supportprocesses must be effective but not overbuilt. We do want to think towards the future as welland don’t want to invest in technology with a short shelf-life. Along those lines, we currentlyhave a timekeeping and payroll system, but what is lacking is the ability to track skills andcertifications of the current staff so we know who has what capabilities when certain expertiseis needed on a project. A capability like that would really help our bottom line financially, as wecould put the right person in the right place at the right time. I know this is beyond the scope ofa hiring system, but when we choose our hiring system, it should be able to provide employeeskill and certification data either in an additional module or by exporting it to another system.”CIO: Fadil Abadi“As a member of the IT Department, you have a good understanding of our overall architectureand strategy; however, let me emphasize a few things I want to be sure we keep in mind for thisproject. Any solution needs to be compatible with our existing architecture and systems asappropriate. Obviously, we have chosen not to maintain a large software development staff sobuilding a solution from the ground up does not fit our IT strategic plan. Our current strategyhas been to adopt Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions that can be deployed relatively quicklyand leverage industry best practices. In addition, our distributed workforce means we are verydependent on mobile computing – this brings some challenges in term of portability,maintenance, and solutions that present well on mobile devices. We’ve been expanding at arapid rate and are seeking to expand internationally so any solution will need to be viableglobally. And last, but certainly not least, CIC’s success is largely dependent on our ability tosatisfy the requirements of our clients and maintain a reputation of high credibility, reliabilityand security. Any security breach of our clients’ data would have a devastating effect to ourability to compete for new business as well as maintain current clients.”Director of HR: William Bradley“Thanks for talking with me today. I see this effort as very important to the success of CIC. Therapid growth to date and future plans for expansion have pushed our recruiting staff, and werecognize we can no longer meet the hiring and staffing demands with manual processes. I’malso interested in solutions that are easy-to-use and can interface with our existing systems andenhance processes. I’m willing to consider a basic system that can grow as CIC grows andprovide more capabilities in the future. I’m sure Suzanne, our Manager of Recruiting, canprovide more specifics.”Manager of Recruiting: Suzanne Rodriguez“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to begin the process of finding a technologysolution to support our recruiting processes. In addition to myself, there are 2-3 full-timerecruiters who have been very busy keeping up with the increased hiring at CIC. It goes withoutsaying that a consulting company is dependent on having well-qualified employees to deliver toCIC Case Study 3/18/2017 5our customers. We’re in a competitive market for IT talent and want to be able to recruitefficiently, process applicants quickly, and move to making a job offer to the best candidatebefore the competition snaps him/her up. When I talk with my colleagues in other companies,they mention software applications for hiring that have enabled them to reduce their hiring timeby 15-20%. I’m so envious of them and look forward to having our new solution in place beforethe next set of contracts are won and we need to hire 75 (to as many as 150) staff in a 3-monthperiod. I do not think my team can handle such an increase in an efficient and effectivemanner. It really seems like there would be a rapid return on investment in a technologysolution to support and improve the hiring process.”Recruiters: Paul O’Brien (along with Mac Thompson and Juliet Jackson)“This project should have happened 2 years ago but glad it’s finally getting some attention. Asa recruiter, I’m sort of the middleperson in this process. On one hand, we have the job applicantwho is anxious to know the status of his/her application and fit for the advertised position. It’simportant that the recruiters represent CIC well, as we want the best applicants to want tocome to work for us. Then we have the manager in one of our business areas who has issuedthe job requisition and wants to get the best applicant hired as quickly as possible. Obviouslyrecruiting is not a manager’s full-time job so we’re always competing for time with other jobresponsibilities so we can keep things moving as quickly as possible. They look to us to screenresumes and only forward the best qualified applicants to them so they can quickly identify theirtop candidates. Working with Ted, our administrative assistant, we need interviews to bescheduled to accommodate everyone’s calendars. After the hiring managers makes theirselections, it is our task to get the job offers presented to the candidates – hopefully for theiracceptance. Everything is very time sensitive and the current process is not nearly as efficient asit could be. Applications and resumes can get lost in interoffice mail or buried in email; and,when a hiring manager calls us, we often cannot immediately provide the status of where anapplicant is in the process. This can be very frustrating all around. Speaking for myself and theother recruiters, I have high expectations for this solution. We need to really be able to deliverworld-class service to CIC in the recruiting and hiring areas to meet the business goals.”Administrative Assistant: Ted Anderson“I support the recruiters in the hiring process. After the recruiters screen the resumes and selectthe best candidates for a position, my job is to route those applications and resumes viainteroffice mail to the respective functional/hiring manager, receive their feedback on who theywould like to interview and who should be involved in the interviews, schedule the interviewsbased on availability of applicants and the interview team members, collect the feedback fromthe interview team and inform the assigned recruiter of the status of each candidate who wasinterviewed. Then, after a job offer has been made, I coordinate the paperwork for the new hirewith HR and Payroll to ensure everything is ready to go on the first day. As you can imaginewhen hiring volume is up, I’m buried in paperwork and trying to keep all the applicants and theirresumes straight, track their status in the process, and ensure everyone has what they need isvery challenging. Any tool that would help the workflow and enable many steps in the processto be done electronically would be wonderful.”CIC Case Study 3/18/2017 6Hiring Manager (in functional area):“While it’s a good problem to have – new business means new hires — the current method forscreening applications, scheduling interviews, identifying the best qualified applicants, andgetting a job offer to them is not working. My team is evaluated on the level of service weprovide our clients, and it is very important that we have well-qualified staff members to fulfillour contracts. Turnover is common in the IT world and that along with new businessdevelopment, makes the need for hiring new staff critical and time-sensitive. I confess thatsometimes I’m not as responsive to HR as I should be but this is only one of several areas I’mresponsible for. I look to the recruiters to stay on top of this for me. In the ideal world, I’d likean electronic dashboard from which I can see the status of any job openings in my area,information on all qualified candidates who have applied and where they are in thepipeline. Electronic scheduling on my calendar of interviews would be a real time saver. It’simportant that we impress candidates with our technology and efficiency – after all we are an ITconsulting company—and using manual processes makes us look bad. And, this system must beeasy to use – I don’t have time for training or reading a 100-page user’s manual. Just need toget my job done. One last thought is that when we are preparing proposals to bid on work, weare often required to submit resumes of employees who can fulfill the needs. Having a way toquickly identify key skills and experience of the current workforce would facilitate this process.”