Timberjack Parts: Packaged Software Selection Project Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Timberjack Parts: Packaged Software Selection Project Case Solution

Introduction:

Timberjack is the leading manufacturing of heavy equipment for the professional logger, the company formed through number of acquisition during 1980s and 1990s. The overall market share of the company is about 25%. In 1995, the total sales of the company were $627 million with the net profit of $88 million, and about 1,600 employees working in this company. Timberjack operated two services part operations to service its equipment worldwide. One is in Marsta and other one is in Sweden. Both facilities were opened in 1994, and each facility had approximately 35 employees and sales around 35 million USD.

Problems

Sweden’s system is failing:

The current operation of the company in Sweden is unstable, the reason is heavy modifications of their software source code, which has led to frequent system crashes.

Global boundaries:

Culture and geographic caused struggle between the Swedish and Atlanta teams, so that the project delays and incurred extra costs.

Conflicting Interests

The Atlanta team was in no hurry to implement a new system causing delays in implementation.

The RFP process frustrated the Swedish team, as they didn’t find it necessary to have a 200-page RPF proposal.

Both have their own idea of what would work best for company

Both teams were not able to make a mutual decision about which vendor they preferred.

Desired Future State:

As the both operation of the company were similar in every terms such as terms of sales volume, employees but existing system was unstable because of heavy modification, so Timberjack wants a to acquire a new computer software in order to run their parts operations, and the company want to select “best of breed” software to run the various units within their operations, they felt a strong distribution company package would be the best serve parts, and a separate manufacturing system would be best suited the factory. Along with that one financial package help to solve this problem by integrated system implemented worldwide which make easier to send employees overseas for a few years, since they wouldn’t need to learn a new computer software. Along with that the company request for proposal RFP in order to eliminate the all problems such as Instability of the existing system, Heavy modifications led to frequent system failures, Lack of user reliability, Future need for integrating manufacturing, dealer network, part and service, HP’s unwillingness to provide further support to it aging software MM3000 and Issues with integration of financial data.

RFP (Request for Proposal) process

The process is linear and it is encompassed these steps: go through vendor list, narrow down vendor list by evaluation of what they offer and its link to Timberjack’s needs, visit sites where various products are used, and use of implementation consulting for the final two vendors in order to select one who will fulfill the needs both operations most closely.

Vendor selection

The list of the potential vendors was developed by Coopers and Lybrand. There were several Constraints limiting the potential suppliers. First of all, the System to be UNIX based, as specified by DSI, DSI group is made up of mangers of various information systems department. Secondly, DSI group stated preference of Oracle Database as corporate standard.

The Package also had a presence in both Europe and North America there were strong distribution packages used in Sweden but not in Marsta. In order to presence the both markets, the list of vendors were narrowed to manufacturing system with secondary strengths in distribution and service..............

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