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CBC Case Study

The Clean Brite Company (CBC) Ltd is a supplier of cleaning products that purchases products from manufacturers and resells them. A management review found issues following a merger, including cultural integration challenges, employee dissatisfaction, and discord between management. An IT review found unsuccessful projects due to unmet user needs and a lack of understanding business requirements. The consultant recommended adopting an agile method like DSDM Atern to improve requirements gathering.

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Ahmed Mhedhbi
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99 views2 pages

CBC Case Study

The Clean Brite Company (CBC) Ltd is a supplier of cleaning products that purchases products from manufacturers and resells them. A management review found issues following a merger, including cultural integration challenges, employee dissatisfaction, and discord between management. An IT review found unsuccessful projects due to unmet user needs and a lack of understanding business requirements. The consultant recommended adopting an agile method like DSDM Atern to improve requirements gathering.

Uploaded by

Ahmed Mhedhbi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Clean Brite Company (CBC) Ltd Case Study

Company overview
The Clean Brite Company (CBC) Ltd is a supplier of cleaning products to a number of different
industry and commercial sectors. CBC does not manufacture the cleaning products itself but
purchases them from appropriate manufacturers, repackages them and sells them on.
CBC provides different grade cleaning products to a number of very different sectors. For example,
food processing industries, hotels, catering organisations, hospitals and public organisations, such as
leisure centres and schools.
The needs of each of the different sectors serviced by CBC are very different, and each sector is,
therefore, treated entirely separately from the others. A catalogue detailing the cleaning products
available is produced for each of the sectors – a restaurant would not be interested in purchasing
the type of cleaning products used to clean equipment used by a plastics manufacturer, for example.
A team of telesales staff is assigned to each of the sectors to advise potential customers and take
orders. However, supporting the sales and querying functions of each of the sectors is an
organisation-wide stock control system which aims to ensure that orders for any cleaning products
may be fulfilled as quickly as possible.
CBC has been in operation since 1982. Over the years the company has grown, and it has a loyal
customer base. In 2009, CBC bought out its main rival, Scrubaway Allbright Ltd (SAL), and began to
merge operations. This merger involved streamlining operations and reducing the workforce where
necessary. Today, CBC is the leading supplier of cleaning products to UK industries and has an annual
turnover of £30 million.
During 2013, the Managing Director of CBC came under attack from the executive board because of
the vast amount of money spent on unsuccessful I.T. projects during the last three years
(approximately £12 million). As a result of the board’s concerns, an external management
consultant, Max Payne, undertook a review of the Company generally, and the I.S. development
functions specifically. He reported back the following:
General company review
The merger of SAL with CBC has led to two distinct organisational cultures that need to be
integrated.
Similarly, the merger of the two companies, and resulting streamlining of operations, has led to
employee dissatisfaction and insecurity that is clearly affecting individual performance.
There is obvious discord between the executive board and the day-to-day management group, and
this is beginning to impact upon planning and decision-making for the future.
The Information Systems (IS) Department is viewed by the rest of the organisation as distinct and
aloof. Department Heads appear to have little faith in the service offered by the IS department.
5
Information System development function review
The Information system development function is largely unsuccessful because end-user needs are
not being met.
Not enough attention is being given to understanding the problem domain before technical
requirements are discussed. Greater consideration needs to be given to the relationship between
the information systems developed and the wider organisational environment.
The I.T department has good programming resources with many staff being experienced in object-
oriented techniques, web development and multimedia application programming. However, the
decision in 2006 to freeze In-house IT recruitment and employ two contractors instead has led to a
great deal of dissatisfaction. Since this time, 20% of the IT department workforce has resigned. This
has led to a skills shortage in relation to current system support and local business knowledge.
Many of the systems developed in-house are mission-critical. That is, they relate to the primary
function of the organisation of selling cleaning products to different industry sectors. As they are
not, generally, meeting the user requirements, they are placing a strain on the company’s ability to
function effectively.
Robust, flexible systems with appropriate user-friendly interfaces are a key requirement of any new
I.S developments within the organisation.
A variety of development methods/techniques are in use within the organisation including object
oriented, rapid application development and structured approaches. However, there is no
organisational standard for a development environment and no clear guidelines on how
development methodologies should be applied.
Finally, unless the role of the business analyst is given proper credence within the organisation, with
the problem domain being thoroughly explored and then user requirements being properly analysed
and documented, there is unlikely to be any great improvement in I.S development success rates.
The results of this review, obviously, caused grave concerns to the board members. They further
commissioned the management consultant to identify appropriate techniques for business and
requirements analysis activities within the organisation.
When Max Payne, the management consultant, presented his final report to the board, he strongly
recommended the introduction of an Agile method to understand the problem domain. He then
recommended the use of DSDM Atern in particular to assist in the gathering of user requirements.
The information gathered about the Home Sector Order Processing System is summarised below in
the appendices.

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