About the company

Craven Books is a distributor of specialist comics, especially horror comics. By the late
90s, Craven was at the peak of its success. It was one of the leading players in the
market, selling books as well as magazines. In a bid to cater their expanding business,
Craven Books planned to computerize their warehouse management system, which
included all business operations of the company, from ordering, to processing,
accounting and warehousing. However, this was just the start of a downward slope for
the success of Craven Books.

What went wrong?

The management team thought that having a new IT system implemented would
transform the business, but the team opted for the “big-bang” approach. As stated by a
member of the staff, the IT system was “overambitious”. Hence, instead of creating a
system, which would perform the task step-by-step, they tried to do it all at once. Having
an overambitious system as well as depending too much on consultants was two of the
biggest issues, which led to this new system’s failure.

When the old system was in place, members of staff would manually pack customers’
orders individually as opposed to the new system where all orders were collected
together in batches – this allowed room for errors and more risk. The new system
computerised every function.

Craven Books used a standard package and tailored solution combined together to
develop the system, this is another reason why the IT system failed. The electronic map
on the system showed the new stock in 2 places, when it should have showed the
newer stock towards the front of the warehouse and the old stock towards the back. All
the books and magazines were disorganized. However; the computer didn’t
acknowledge this. Members of staff weren’t shown how to fix this computer error, as
they weren’t correctly trained on how to use this new type of technology. As a result of
this, customers were receiving the wrong stock and the incorrect amount of stock.
Causes of Failure

As mentioned, due to its goal of having an efficient distribution system, the management
of Craven Books opted to implement an IT system. The new system was expected to
provide effort and time saving for the company. However, the opposite happened. The
following can be considered as the reasons for the failure of the new implemented
system:

 Lack of strategic planning prior to implementation of the system and inability of

the management to determine the most effective system: No prior testing was
done as a part of the implementation. Every software must be tested in a test
environment prior to its implementation which was missing in this case
 The company relied completely on the decisions of the consultants and suppliers
who provided the system and did not try to review or assess the system to test its
efficiency and effectiveness: The management team should have carefully
assessed the system taking into considerations the risks of its implementation
and chances of failure. This was missing from the management’s part.
 There was no team in place to monitor the new system and hence there was no
team to be held accountable to the requirements needed to make the project
successful

Steps that could have avoided the problem

 Selection of the most appropriate strategic model when facing a major

information system changed or innovation
 Perform a feasibility study of the new system to determine the possible outcomes
of the project, and to know if the resources of the company is sufficient to
continue the changes.
 Creation of the system design to make sure that the design adheres to the
problem that needs to be solved.
 Definition of proper roles and responsibilities with regard to the new system and
setting up of a dedicated team to operate the system