ACME or Omega case analysis , organizational analaysis

1. CASE STUDY- THE DECISION DILEMMA
Group-7
B-batch
Choosing any one out of many options is sometimes very risky and confusing. It involves a lot of
thinking which may or may not lead to success. In this scenario, the decision had to be taken
between two software service providers. Secure bank was looking for a software service provider
who can maintain their new integrated banking software. Even though they had a well-defined IT
department, they felt it would be better if there was a third party just to handle the development,
implementation and maintenance of the new software. Secure Bank needed a small or medium
size provider who could give them the due importance and attention along with a good quality
software at low price. After several round of evaluation, bank shortlisted two companies:
Acme amp; Omega.
Both the shortlisted organizations were similar in size and had achieved SEI-CMM certification.
In some competitive scenarios Acme won against Omega whereas if we take financial numbers,
Acme was more profitable than Omega. Secure Bank was in a condition of Decision Dilemma
where it has to choose any one provider who is more eligible and efficient for the need of the
bank.
ACME INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Mr. Jay Swaminathan himself has announced that his company, Acme Information System is the
leaders and ahead of their competitors in profitability that among the mid-sized software service
providers category. Even the Secure Bank noticed that Acme has won more times against Omega
in competitive scenarios and even though financial numbers were not publicly available, several
sources confirmed that Acme was more profitable than Omega.
Acme is known to manage its operation with minimum bench strength. Bench strength is the
capability of members of an organization’s staff to move into positions of greater responsibility
when required. Since they follow assembly line principle, one worker of the organization is
doing the same job over and over which ultimately results in higher efficiency. They believed
that the secret to success and profitable growth lay in specialization. Acme also had one of the
best ‘rookie ratio’ (Rookie Ratio is defined as number of people with less than 2 years
employment) in the industry. Which means that the company has a perfectly balanced number of
experienced workers and newcomers.
The success of Acme Information System was because of Acme’s high quality processes that
were stringently followed. Mr. Jay said that, “Developing industrial scale software is an
engineering job that needs to be done following the principles of assembly line. Gone are the
days of heroic programmers”

2. Acme also had well documented organization charts and job descriptions. Employees were
clearly explained the rules of the organization and every employee had well-articulated
responsibilities and narrowly defined jobs that leveraged their particular competencies
Acme’s employees were in general happy and proud to be part of a profitable organization,
though some of them wished that they had more discretion in their jobs and some opportunity to
experiment or try out new things.
Even though Acme was a feasible option, we have reached to a conclusion that Omega is
comparatively a better choice for the Secure Bank than Acme.
Why OMEGA?
 Owing to their open culture, they were able to find the design shortcoming initially
because Omega’s employees worked together without departmental barriers and
proposed ideas to help one another. Here an engineer who did not even belong to
development team has given the suggestion about shortcoming in the design. In the case
study its clearly says that Deep the CEO believed that much specialization leads to
creation of silos which prevent collaboration.
 Innovation is part of the culture, Omega’s employees initially felt that work is
uninteresting because there was no element of design, Omega motivated them not
through the incentives but by giving them the hope of getting the contract and they will
able to design and innovate software .This motivation helps the employee to work
sincerely to get the project.
 Omega was able to communicate the bank about importance of new design and make it
approved and assured the bank that they would able to provide new design without a
delay which led to increased impression of Omega. The negotiation skill shows that
Omega is strong in terms of soft skills.
 Omega was able to develop the module and test it adequately without any pressure of
time which will definitely give them superior position. This proves that they are
technically competent.
 Omega was able to fix the problem with the initial design and able to deliver the
prototypes on time without compromising in the testing process. This shows that their
assurance in terms of quality.
 Omega believes in giving a fair chance to its competitors, they were ready to share the
new design developed by them with their competitor which shows their strong belief in
following business ethics. So, Omega is fully equipped to undertake this project and is
definitely a trustworthy organization.
Structure of Omega
 Omega, having an organic structure, wins the race because they are able to produce
higher quality unit. On the other hand, Acme having mechanistic structure seems less

3. competent and less reliable because of its low quality even which they are unable to
produce in time and some of its prototypes function can fail to work.
 Omega even corrects a design error in the original blueprint, which improves product
quality. But, both the company is given just a prototype order, and they were encouraged
to find the way to reduce the cost and Acme takes advantage of this opportunity to
experiment to find ways to reduce its costs, whereas Omega does not.
 Omega runs a more organic structure, which relies heavily upon communication,
delegation and teamwork. This strategy allows Omega to effectively compete with Acme
by stressing reliability and by placing emphasis on quality.
 Omega’s decentralized, organic approach allowed for the building of prototypes 10 days
faster than Acme, correction of errors, and a highly reliable prototype much more reliable
than Acme’s. Omega was more effective when evaluated by these criteria.
 The informal nature of the structure seems to be working fine, except that it needs a bit of
formalization and clarification of people’s roles. This structure was a point of strength for
Omega in this bid; however, it won’t work for other tasks that need faster
accomplishments of the activities. For example, instead of exchanging opinions and
suggestions most of the time, this can be organized using information sharing systems
that centralized data that everyone in the organization needs.
 Omega encourages their employees to innovate and try out new methods while
implementation which helped them in finding design error in the blueprint, and going
forward , when the company starts building product they might incorporate more changes
that would improve UX for the customers, which is a win-win situation for both Client
and the Company. Hence Omega should win the contract.