Technology Adoption in a Call Center Enterprise

i. Cyber-security

The security of an organizations infrastructure depends on the soundness and reliability of its critical components. Cyber-security threats seek to take advantage of the rising complexity of the infrastructure systems. Just as reputational and financial risk behaves, cyber-security risk tends to affect an organization's bottom line. It can increase costs tremendously and reduce revenue. An organization can be critically harmed by a cyber attack and its ability to gain new customers and maintain the existing customers can be greatly dented (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2014).

ii. Systems Issues

The design, development and implementation process of an Information System (IS) is neither easy nor straightforward. Reports indicate that IS projects have an unusually high failure rate. There have been increasing concerns why this is the case. The answer to the concerns is that the nature of Information Systems failures has not yet been adequately understood. It is a relatively complex process involving several parts which interact with each other and so creating a particularly cumbersome combination. Furthermore, new problems frequently arise when previous problems weren't nipped in the bud thereby leading to a situation where problems continually get from bad to worse. (Raza & Standing 2008).

The other contributing factors include (Septer, 2013):

i. Processes that are not documented completely from end to end within an organization lead to inefficiencies and delays.

ii. There are several inconsistencies as well defined governance policies and guidelines are lacking.

iii. Knowledge workers in an organization tend to waste lots of man hours searching for relevant information or developing workarounds of the pieces of information needed.

Enterprise systems are typically generic solutions. Their design reflects assumptions about how companies generally operate. The developers tend to systemize them to reflect best practices. The problem arises when the user has no say on what constitutes a best practice during development. It is the vendor who gets to define what the best practices are. Such assumptions can lead to a system that runs against the interests of an organization that uses them (Davenport, 1998).

Anatomy of an Enterprise System (Davenport, 1998)

The configuration of an enterprise system involves making sacrifices and balancing wants and needs and proceeding to operate in a way that the system allows. The following two configuration models can be adopted (Davenport, 1998):

1. Modules

A majority of enterprise systems are modular and so only allow an organization to put the system to use for some of the functions but not all. There are cases where a company really is not in need of a module. A service organization, for instance, isn't likely to need a manufacturing module. In some cases, other modules are rendered useless as the organization already has a working system for the function the module carries out. Generally, the higher the number of selected modules, the greater the benefits of integration, but also the higher the risks, changes and costs involved.

2. Configuration Tables

A configuration table allows a company to customize various aspects of a system to how it operates. An organization can choose, for instance, the mode of inventory accounting -- LIFO or FIFO -- that will be employed and the way it wants to recognize revenue -- by location, distribution channel or product line. Complex ES offering have lots of configuration tables with SAP's R/3, for instance, having 3000. It can take a lot of time to go through all of them. Dell Computer, for instance, spends more than one year on the exercise.

Besides having serious implications to the strategic goals of an organization, enterprise systems also impact an organization's culture. The provision of real-time and universal access to financial and operating data has allowed for the streamlining of management structures through the creation of dynamic and flexible organizations. On the contrary, the centralization of information control as well as processes of standardization are qualities that are present mostly in command-and-control, hierarchical organizations (Davenport, 1998).

While the benefits of adopting IT are widely known, there are systemic issues that tend to curtain its widespread uptake and use. Systems thinking approach takes into consideration the totality of the relationships existing among the various factors contributed by stakeholders at any given time. In the adoption of technology, there are several hidden problems that are embedded within the existing relationships of the components of the system that may not be identified and so curtailing the success of the project (Raza & Steading, 2008). Business and researchers may consider WAN acceleration or WAN bandwidth tools to help lower bandwidth and latency which utilize, for instance, duplication or data compression techniques. One other way to get rid of bottlenecks is using a high-speed network protocol such as Aspera and The fasp technology. The fasp technology uses already available WAN to deliver efficient and faster data transfers (Laskowski, 2014).

The following are the most significant prerequisites of the phase (Lech, 2014):

i. A realistic schedule and budget that permits the target scope to be completed well;

ii. A client who knows well the power structure of the organization and who ranks high in the organization;

iii. Top management support and the delegation of duties to staff who possess good attitudes and have the requisite competencies; and iv. Key users who know what the specific wants and needs of the company are and who have the power to make decisions.

As shown by the list, one of the most important factors critical to the success of the project is the quality of the selected group of participants. They must have the right attitude, have the necessary competencies and have some decision-making power in the organization. Their ability to make definite decisions is important as this helps and speeds up the choosing of the right configurations a consultant presents. They should also have the power to adjust the organizational structure where the organization has to be reconfigured to suit the system.

Call centers have been studied widely. There are ethical issues to address when looking at monitoring of electronic performance. A dilemma arises: "Is a call center manager monitoring an employee's performance using electronic performance monitoring data collected on the employee ethical?" Using Kantian, virtue, covenantal and utilitarian ethical theories, an ethical decision model can be used to evaluate the dilemma (Perkins, 2013).

A call center is made of both human and technological resources that help in delivering services over the phone. Managers looking to raise the productivity of their call centers have always used electronic performance monitoring (EPM). The goal of such a process is evaluating employee performance. Quantitative data that help managers get a feel of employee productivity such as average call time, average call duration and the type of calls are collected. Therefore, EPM can lead to conflict between employees and management. Employees may become concerned about their personal wellbeing as managers continually push on meeting specific performance goals using data collected on them. An interesting scenario therefore arises where a system managers are using to help increase productivity is also leading to employees losing morale. If this is the scenario then the ethical question of whether using performance data gathered on employees to push for increase in productivity is ethical or not becomes even weightier.

Covenantal ethics makes an attempt at subjugating contingencies and vulnerabilities in the relationship that exists between managers and employees as concerns EPM. The ethical decision model makes the suggestion that EPM can do well in call centers within a structure where covenantal relationship between call center managers and employees exist. Integrity, respect and empathy are virtues that can lead to greater commitment to employees by managers and so getting positive responses from employees. How the employee perceives the fairness of management as pertains to the use of EPM is very important as it will reflect on the performance of the employees (Perkins, 2013).

It is very important to make sure that development goals set are actually in line with the already existing competitive advantages and strategies of the enterprise. This is to say that sustainable development should offer additional dimensions to the existing strategy. It gives management a fresh pair of eyes to look at things without completely upsetting the way things are currently being done. The current business environment is one that is quickly changing and adapting to the changes fast is a necessity if a business concern is to continue to prosper. For this reason, management should employ a good external system to monitor and assess performance of the system and how it compares with competitors systems as well as new developed solutions. This is to help make sure that the strategies developed and the systems being used are suitable for the current business environment the organization is operating in (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1992). Gathering of information should be done on the following key areas:

i. Proposed and new legislation;

ii. Industry standards and practices;

iii. Strategies developed by competitors;

iv. Activities and policies of special interest and community groups;

v. Concerns of trade unions; and vi. Technical developments.

For several enterprises, influencing or monitoring external developments involves being increasingly involved in the process of development of public policy. In committing to sustainable development, an organization must now take an active role in the formulation of policy that helps shape and direct external developments so that, to an extent, the industry-wide developments are in line with the objectives of the organization (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 1992).