CASE STUDY 2

1. Why did the IT group at Royal Caribbean have such poor performance and business status in the company?

-They have poor performance and business status because the people working under IT departments work on their own and do not mingle with the other IT groups like the Cuban and African American groups. Another thing is, their infrastructure is very old and cannot catch up with the customers’ needs.

2. What are the top three factors in Tom Murphy’s turnaround of the IT function at Royal Caribbean? Explain the reason for your choices.

–The top three factors could be first, the system used by the company; second, the working environment; and third, the status of the company in relation to IT.

1. System – Tom discovered that one reason why the IT function was a disgrace because of the traditional or old system they were using.
2. Working Environment – He noticed that the company’s departments/groups were just working on their own and not eager to work with the other groups.
3. Status of the company – One factor could be the poor status of the company especially in line with IT that’s why he wanted to change the business structure of the company.

4.Visit the website of Royal Caribbean. Evaluate the effectiveness of the website and the services being offered to attract and serve the travel needs of customers and prospective customers. What could be improved? Outline the business impact of your idea.

Since their site is well made, I only got one suggestion to improve it and that is their web pages’ design. Maybe they could make use of much more attractive welcoming page so that it would really reflect their business. Business impact would be, a lot of e-surfers or anyone who could at least access their site, will be impressed, or, at the first sight on their page, you would really say that it’s an elegant company for cruising.

CASE STUDY 1

1. How well is IT supporting the business goals of BellSouth? Explain.

• The IT is supporting the company very well by assisting in customer service operations through websites and also in making their business more productive and useful than ever especially now that we are in the information age.

2. Is BellSouth’s technology transfer map a good way to determine IT investment priorities? Why or why not?

• Yes it is because BellSouth's technology promotes the usefulness of telecommunication and since their company is also well-known for being a good internet service provider, many people would like to have that service too. Possible reasons are to be easily updated, to access communication, or to stay in trends.

3. What else could BellSouth do to guarantee the strategic business value of a potential IT investment projects? Visit their website for ideas. Defend your proposal.

• Maybe, putting up a forum for its clients can be one of the good ideas so that its customers can communicate to each other or allow them to send comments and suggestions via email for them to know what the customers would like to experience in their service. They may also put at least an advertisement in their site for additional income since they're well-known.