MBS538
ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
The Crisis
Everyone was scurrying when the mainframe at The Sanctuary General Hospital failed a
second time after it has been replaced. It didn’t help with the Southeast Asia Information
Technology Conference (SEA IT Conference) just hours away, where John the Senior Manager
of Business Services at Atom Systems has been invited to be one of the keynote speakers for
the event. Looking at his watch and at the email he received from Angela, the Group Director,
regarding the second incident of the malfunctioned mainframe, he is in despair…
The Merger and Structure
To synergise their businesses, Atom Systems and Beta Systems agree to a merger six months
ago. The name Atom Systems is retained in the process. Due to the merger, a major
restructuring has taken place. Some employees have been laid off and those who remained
were on thin ice, uncertain of their future, fearing another cycle of redundancy. Human
resources redeployment is extremely unpredictable. Yet in the height of all the uncertainty
and ambiguity, opportunities for promotion seemed not too far-fetched for some who have
managed to develop strong and wide networks in the organisation.
Originally, John is a manager from Systems and Technology of Atom Systems. Since the merger,
he has been promoted to Senior Manager and redeployed to lead the team at Business
Services. There were five members in his team, Gideon, Jason and Matthew were colleagues
with John at Atom Systems prior to the merger. Gary and Fei Li were from Beta Systems.
The Preparation for the Conference Presentation
Amidst the disruption, John has been invited to speak in the Southeast Asia Information
Technology conference (SEA IT Conference). He is elated and honored to be representing the
company for this event. This is a high-profile event where many global senior executives of
the IT industry would be attending. It is another good opportunity for John to expand his
network externally. Who knows he might end up being headhunted to join one of the region’s
largest tech companies. He is very determined to make good use of this opportunity to exhibit
his expertise, charm and charisma. His team was given a brief on the conference theme and
were told to come prepared in the meeting with ideas on the topic for the conference.
When the team convened to meet, Gideon started the ball rolling with ideas which he thought
were trending in the industry.
John told Gideon that the conference attendees are
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ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
conservative Senior Executives who might be more interested in topics that are down to earth
and practical. Gideon was disappointed at how quickly his ideas have been thrown out of the
window. He was hoping that John would be impressed. Afterall, he has spent the past one
week researching on the ideas and have gathered significant amount of information for the
meeting. The meeting ended without any conclusion on the topic.
One day, Gideon overheard Jason having a conversation with John in the pantry. “John, I think
the company has gotten the right person to speak in the conference. You are so experienced
and well respected in this industry.” John smiled gleefully and Jason continued, “I have been
thinking a lot after our first meeting and I thought you can consider ‘Data Integration’ in your
presentation...” Gideon was disgusted at Jason’s mentioned of ‘Data Integration’. This was
one of the ideas he proposed in the first meeting. Jason continued, “Let me show you some
statistics on this growing trend here… What do you think?” John was full of praise after
listening to Jason’s proposal and thought that was a great idea.
After this, Gideon went to Matthew and told him what happened. “The idea on ‘Data
Integration’ was mine and it was rejected. But just a minute ago, I overheard Jason proposing
the same idea to John and John accepted it. This didn’t feel good at all!”, Gideon sounded
very dejected. “I understand how you feel. Gideon, you are more than who you think you
can be. We don’t win all the time, but it is important not to give up on what you believe is
important to excel at work. What you can do is learn to be more effective in your
communication.” Matthew replied. Gideon felt better almost immediately after talking to
Matthew. Gideon really liked talking to Matthew. He has this calm disposition that draws
people’s attention, and his advice often stirs up positive emotion.
In the next meeting, John recognized Jason’s recommendation publicly to the team and he
was tasked to prepare a major part of the content for the presentation. Gideon felt the
lingering disappointment resurfacing as John continued to compliment Jason. John added
that Jason can go to him anytime to communicate the details. The rest of the members were
then assigned other tasks by John.
Just before John concluded, Gary protested with
aggression, “The tasks should be assigned based on role and skills compatibility as well as
experience. Furthermore, I can’t see how doing all the other research would help in preparing
for the topic. Don’t you agree, Fei Li?” Fei Li gave a fleeting and uncomfortable glance at Gary
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ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
and nodded her head timidly in agreement. John was quick to brush away the comment
without further elaboration and hastily moved on to the next agenda.
After the meeting Gideon was increasingly feeling more upset that Jason was given a major
part of the work for an idea that originated from him. He recalled Matthews’ word of advice
and determined that since he has been tasked to put together the visuals for the presentation,
it is another good opportunity to impress John with his creativity. He followed up closely and
diligently with the rest of the members to gather the information for the visuals, added his
own ideas, worked through the evenings and several weekends to prepare the visuals. After
completing what he thought was an exceptional piece of work, emailed it to John the night
before the agreed deadline.
Early next morning when Gideon arrived in the office, he saw a post-it-note on his desk. It
was from John, and the note written in a liner, “Review the visuals, too fanciful.” Gideon was
totally baffled. What did John mean that the visuals were too fanciful? Gideon felt totally
drained and did not feel like working on the visuals anymore. He decided he would not take
any initiatives unless instructed. He thought, clearly my ideas are not valued. John is biased
towards Jason and no matter what I do, my efforts will go unnoticed. Anyway, Jason is more
experienced. He probably would be more convincing when making a case. At that instance,
his gaze settled on Fei Li and brightened up a little. Fei Li, though has similar work experience
as him is far more reticent at work. He recalled how she has been criticised harshly by John
for the mistakes she made in previous projects.
The Crisis Recounted
It was just three days before the conference when John was called into Angela’s room, Group
director of Business Services. Angela has received an email regarding a customer’s complaint
(Appendix A) from one of the company’s major customers, The Sanctuary General Hospital.
John was instructed to resolve the matter urgently looking immediately into service recovery
with the customer.
Without delay, John called for a meeting with his team. John was flustered and he asserted
to the team that they better have some constructive solutions for the situation. “Your midyear review with me is just round the corner and not forgetting that potentially the company
may enter into another cycle of redundancy. You don’t want to be next in line to be asked to
leave.”, John stated. He was adamant to reach a solution to regain company’s reputation, but
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ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
time is not on his side. Customer has threatened to terminate the contract in the next 24
hours.
The meeting was intense. After hours of discussion and brainstorming, Jason said, “This is not
the best solution but given the limited time we have, I think it will help us gain back some
grounds with The Sanctuary.” Most of the members were not totally convinced, especially
Matthew, “while it seems to resolve some backend issues arising from the situation, the
exchange may ultimately lead to a more inferior mainframe (3.0 version compared to the 4.0
version customer has originally acquired) that they have initially paid for. This might ultimately
backfire. Furthermore, it does not sit very well with one our company’s credo (Appendix B).”
Taking the lead from Matthew, the rest of team began harmonising the same concern. Jason
retorted, “But this solution is the only fix we can offer at present, and it can reduce the risk of
customer terminating the contract with us. Once we have gained traction, we can strategise
to re-establish The Sanctuary’s confidence in us.” The meeting has gone on for hours and
everyone was exhausted. At this point, Gary raised his voice and told John bluntly, “It seems
like we already have something we can offer to the customer. Couldn’t this whole thing just
get wrapped up?”
John froze for a second and passing over Gary’s comment, moved on to ask for the most
current set of data for both mainframes’ efficiency and tested downtime report. Jason dished
out the information and highlighted several statistics that he received from one of his
networks from the research team indicating that version 3.0 mainframe is more stable than
4.0. “The statistics look promising. We need not divulge that the exchanged mainframe is not
our latest version. Anyway, what The Sanctuary needed is a stable mainframe and it seems
like the older version can do the job. We can use this set of statistics to convince them.” John
decided.
The remaining hours were chaotic and frantic. Things seemed to be on track in managing the
crisis with The Sanctuary General Hospital but just hours before the SEA IT Conference, John
received another email from Angela that the Mainframe version 3.0 at The Sanctuary has
failed again and it was found out that information presented by Jason regarding the
mainframe version 3.0 was only partially accurate…
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ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
Appendix A (Email Complaint from The Sanctuary General Hospital)
Angela Duckson
From:
To:
CC:
Brad Davidson <brad.davidson@atomsystems.com>
Angela Duckson <angela.duckson@atomsystems.com>
Alfred Hitman <alfred.hitman@atomsystems.com>
Subject:
The Sanctuary system failure
Angela,
Yesterday I received a serious complaint from one of our major customers, Patricia Freeway, Director
of The Sanctuary General Hospital. The hospital accepted delivery of new mainframes from our
company to manage their patient record system. Two days after installation, serious hardware faults
developed that brought the entire system down and crucially, we failed to meet our 24-hour service
level agreement around rectifying the system faults.
Our engineers encountered severe problems getting the mainframes up and running again, resulting
in an overall delay of two days. This caused major disruption for doctors and patients.
With the computer down-time meant lives were seriously endangered whilst patient records were
unavailable, and we were very luck nobody died because of the poor-quality products and service. In
view of the seriousness of this incident, I need to highlight this is a threat to our reputation.
As you know we are at the first stage of a huge programme to roll out to high profile specialist hospital
across Australia, this incident has caused a huge dent on our reputation. The hospital has
communicated their severe lack of confidence in our products and our future orders are at risk. It is
going to be difficult to rebuild our reputation for producing dependable, reliable, high-quality products,
suited to this life critical industry.
Brad
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ASSESSMENT 2 CASE STUDY ANALYSIS PRESENTATION (FOR STUDENT)
CRISIS AT ATOM SYSTEMS
Appendix B (Atom Systems Credo)
Atom Systems Credo
“… we must constantly
strive to service our
customers promptly, and
precisely. High quality
services must be maintained
always to meet the needs of
our customers. We make
fair and ethical decisions for
the good of all our
stakeholders, customers,
business partners and
stakeholders, all inclusive…”
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