Charlie's Chocolate Factory is a major independent manufacturer of confectionery. Gooey toffee bars, wonderful chocolate bars covered in nougat, Easter eggs, Christmas selections, boxes of chocolates containing strawberry cremes, coconut whirls and hazelnut crunches pour out of the factory gates to the delight of millions of consumers who sit in front of television dipping into boxes of 'Dark Delight'; who jam money in vending machines in a desperate bid to extract a 'Blaster Bar'; who eat large blocks of coffee chocolate as a staple part of their diet. Charlie's sells to small shops, supermarkets, vending machine companies and catering businesses across Europe.

The factory site in Dahlton employs over five hundred people. Besides manufacturing the confectionery, a surprisingly large number of complex functions contribute to putting the wrapped chocolate bar in a shop, ready to be purchased and gobbled up. Table 1 lists the corporate functions at the Dahlton factory which support the production of confectionery.

These fifteen functions support the core competence of Charlie's which is to produce delicious chocolate. They all require IT in some way to support their work.

The IT department at Charlie's consists of some forty people working in six teams on a series of projects for the various functions. It is headed by an IT director whose title is 'Business Systems Manager'. (Note that even titles within organisations tell one something about the culture. A ‘Business Systems Manager’ indicates a wish to take a business view of IT. An ‘IT manager’ might indicate a technical bias, while a ‘DP manager’ might indicate a traditional culture.)

Charlie's believes that information systems help the company to compete and are part of the company's strategy. This leads to a policy of developing all information systems in-house. Where there are not sufficient skills or personnel to meet project development deadlines, computer contractors are hired. These people, usually self-employed, work on projects for a daily fee.

Charlie's started its IT department in the 1960s. Then it used a large mainframe with dumb terminals, which could only transmit information to and from the computer and had no processing power of their own. Systems were written using a hierarchical database supplied by IBM called the Information Management System (IMS). Programming was a complex task, involving navigation of complex data structures and programming using a teleprocessing system called the Customer Information Communication System (CICS). In the early 1980s, Charlie's was one of the first to move to relational databases, replacing IMS with Oracle's database system, much to the annoyance of IBM who hoped Charlie's would go with their relational offering, DB2.

The advent of PCs in the mid 1980s further eroded IBM's hold on Charlie's IT department, previously known as the data-processing department. Charlie's bought many PCs, developing local area networks and eventually joining them up, with links to distribution sites to form a wide area network. Electronic mail links were established and it became very easy for Distribution to tell a salesman in Paris just what they thought of his request for five thousand Hedgehog bars to be delivered to Orly airport by Monday morning.

The move of technology towards Client Server which occurred in the mid 1990s was reflected at Charlie's. PCs were steadily replaced by workstations and in 1997 the last mainframe was switched off and ushered out the door.

In 1993, Charlie's Business Systems Manager decided that he did not want to be involved with buying and maintaining PCs and hardware for a network of over 200 computers. They were losing count of how many they had. Also, some functions were buying their own PCs. An agreement was reached with National Personal Computers (NPC) to outsource PC procurement and maintenance.

In 1995, a strategy was implemented to standardise PC software. This had been an increasingly difficult problem. Systems were being developed on a whole raft of different databases and spreadsheets. Incompatibilities were occurring and the IT department was loosing control. A deal was secured with Microsoft to put its Office software on all PCs. A special discount rate was agreed, with the proviso that all non-Microsoft software was removed from PCs, except, that is, where departments had written key legacy systems, which could not easily be replaced, on other platforms.

The information flows in Charlie's were diverse. This can be illustrated by looking at one process, order-processing (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1: Charlie’s Order Processing Systems

Orders were received from a variety of sources by a variety of means. Some large supermarkets had Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) link with Charlie's. Some salespeople sent in orders electronically via modems to the sales department's Choccy Ordering System (COS). There was, in addition, a telephone sales department receiving orders from small customers such as cash and carry warehouses. Orders still arrived by fax and on paper forms whose layout had not changed since the 1960s. These orders were stored in three different systems, the vending machines system, COS, and the so called Soulsby's system, set up when the big supermarket chain, Soulsby's, insisted on EDI if trade with Charlie's was to continue. Its use was extended to fifteen other large supermarket chains. The coordination of these systems and the extraction of data into the Warehouse, Finance and Sales History systems was a nightmare that kept several analysts busy.

In 1997, these systems were replaced by one integrated order processing system based on an enterprise resource planning systems (SAP). SAP is a package of software which provides all the data-processing needs of a typical manufacturing organisation. This includes modules to deal with sales and distribution, materials management, production planning, financial accounting, controlling, fixed assets management, quality assurance, plant maintenance, human resources management and project management. Charlie's were, for the first time, buying packaged software. However, they did not see it as being packaged, since a key advantage of SAP is that it can be tailored to suit the specific needs of the organisation. Modifications to the sales and distribution modules were in fact minor and have resulted in a more efficient, integrated order-processing system.

1. Explain the following terms:

Client/Server

Outsource

Electronic Data Interchange

2. Identify six issues of concern for the Business Systems Manager.

3. For each area of concern, provide some brief policy guidelines for the business systems manager.

4. What do you think the difference is between an information technology department, a business systems department and an information services department?

5. How would you go about measuring the quality of the service delivered by the Business Systems Manager?

6. Do you agree that information services can no longer concern itself only with the technology?

7. Identify some information services stakeholders in Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

8. Explain the rationale behind Charlie’s outsourcing PCs services and using Manufacturing Applications Systems software,

9. What problems do you think an organisation’s information systems department might face in moving from a technology to a business emphasis?

10. Identify the five elements of the process view of information services. To what extent do you think their ordering should be fixed?

11. Explain the three levels of stakeholder’s goals. What goals do you think the project manager might have had in the document storage system story?

12. Why is benefits management important in the delivery of an information service?