Discuss top management support (Troshani et al. 2011 and/or Dong 2008) as it relates to the Queensland Health SAP-HCM implementation.
Top management usually makes strategic decisions and assigns resources to IT projects. In the case of Queensland Health, top management played a crucial role in initiating the SAP-HCM project. However, it is clear that there were project design problems relating to scope. In addition, the time available for the project was too little leaving no room for changes. The final problem was that there was no testing on the required scale to determine the efficacy of the new payroll system.
These three mistakes confirm findings by Troshani, Jerram, and Hill (2011), which indicate that management support in IT project design is critical for success when switching from old systems to new ones. Project design is part of the critical role that top management plays (Arnold 2007). There is a need to plan such projects carefully and to allow sufficient time and resource capacity in case of any eventualities. Troshani, Jerram, and Hill (2011) also pointed out that “regulatory compliance” is a key factor catalyzing the change process (p. 481). In this sense, there was a need for Queensland Health to uncover all the regulatory and environmental influences on the project. A risk analysis would have identified the problems that it is now dealing with, such as negative publicity and high profile redundancies. Top management also failed in its duties when it did not provide the best conditions to test the new system before going live.
There is a good degree of convergence with the response provided because of the concurrence of the place top management holds in the project design process and their role in supporting the implementation effort. The top management had the opportunity to ensure better testing of the new system to take care of all foreseeable eventualities from a technical perspective.
If you have been involved in an IS implementation (not necessarily an HRIS implementation), discuss how the Queensland Health SAP-HCM implementation is similar or different to the one in which you were involved.
I was involved in the design of a basic Electronic Health Records System for a local health facility. The objective was to reduce the overheads incurred in running the hospital by linking all the services offered. In particular, the system hoped to provide a real-time assessment of the services offered to individual inpatients and outpatients.
The key similarities with the Queensland Health are that top management initiated it and that the original deadlines were very ambitious, without sufficient regard to the human resource capacity. The major difference is the top management insisted on retaining the existing systems until they were certain the new one was handling the processes more efficiently.
The top management felt that with the skeleton staff in charge of IT at the facility, five members in total, the facility could implement a new low-cost system for handling health records Based on the local network at the facility. The systems relied on the efficient transfer of information between the reception, consultants, nurses, pharmacy, and the procurement department. The system was simple but there were very many issues regarding standardization and training that made it impossible to deliver within three months. The prototype design alone took three months.
However, as opposed to Queensland Health, the top management granted time extensions and refused to adopt any changes before they were sure that the changes were more efficient than the systems in use. There was an insistence on workability as opposed to meeting deadlines. The top management supported the project team all the way through by providing reasonable resource extensions and incentives such as pay for overtime work related to the project.
Reference List
Arnold, JT 2007, ‘Moving to a New HRIS: Time for a New Human Resource Information System? Plan Ahead for a Painless Conversion’, HR Magazine, June 2007, pp. 125-132.
Troiani, I, Jerram, C & Hill, RS 2011, ‘Exploring the Public Sector Apotion of HRIS’, Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol 111, no. 3, pp. 470-488.