CASE STUDY: Emergency Response Unique Manufacturing Unified Companies (ER UMUC) Incorporated Company Overview: ER UMUC Incorporated: ER UMUC, Inc. is a light (value added) manufacturer in the Emergency Response Management market, and offers a variety of products to support domestic and international disaster relief efforts. Some of their products are: rapidly deployable structures, custom mobile command trailers, gas mask filter canisters, etc. ER UMUC has built its reputation on the personal relationships fostered by its regional sales representatives and has an extensive network of community contacts. The sales representatives are proud of the best-in-breed product offering and are frequently called for live product demonstrations. ER UMUC Company Stats (Last Quarter Results): Gross Annual Revenue: $30 Million/year Outstanding Debt: $20 Million Available Cash: $4 Million Average Sales Margin: 15% ER UMUC made significant profits during a recent hurricane impact on the gulf coast. The executive management and board of directors felt that the time was ideal to acquire two companies that differed noticeably from their current business, CarbonTech and MyRentals. CarbonTech: A small activated carbon and filter manufacturer with NIOSH approval for their filter design. CarbonTech’s IT infrastructure is small (25 computers, 3 servers); the Operations Manager, Joe DeCline, has been servicing all IT needs. He takes great pride in the Epicor Vista® Software that he runs on a Progress® database. This has been a family business for years, and Joe’s father Jay manages the business very closely. Generally, CarbonTech is resistant to change. MyRentals: This medium size event services company provides tent rentals for a variety of events; they have been a “big player,” renting tents, AC Units, portable professional kitchens, etc. to everything from the Super Bowl to personal weddings. No event is too large or too small. The company’s General Manager, Bobby Buddy is the quintessential nice guy. He has a great personal relationship with most of his 200 full time employees, and even some of the 300 seasonal workers. The IT administration has been completely outsourced, and MyRentals is unhappy with the current level of support. The cost to support IT in their 14 satellite offices and use the Microsoft Dynamics GP® ERP system is consuming their very valuable cash. The Technology Environment: As the Director of Information Technology for the combined companies, you find three very different environments. The current CEO of ER UMUC, Rock Martin, is technology averse – historically IT capital equipment purchases have been limited to less than $5,000/year. This is in stark contrast to your direct supervisor the CFO, Neil Robber, who loves to be connected. CarbonTech’s General Manager, Jay DeCline, is willing to invest in technology, but only if his son, Joe approves the purchase. Joe believes that he has already provided CarbonTech with every ...

1. CASE STUDY: Emergency Response Unique Manufacturing
Unified Companies (ER UMUC) Incorporated Company
Overview:
ER UMUC Incorporated: ER UMUC, Inc. is a light (value
added) manufacturer in the Emergency Response Management
market, and offers a variety of products to support domestic and
international disaster relief efforts. Some of their products are:
rapidly deployable structures, custom mobile command trailers,
gas mask filter canisters, etc. ER UMUC has built its reputation
on the personal relationships fostered by its regional sales
representatives and has an extensive network of community
contacts. The sales representatives are proud of the best-in-
breed product offering and are frequently called for live product
demonstrations.
ER UMUC Company Stats (Last Quarter Results):
Gross Annual Revenue: $30 Million/year
Outstanding Debt: $20 Million
Available Cash: $4 Million
Average Sales Margin: 15%
ER UMUC made significant profits during a recent hurricane
impact on the gulf coast. The executive management and board
of directors felt that the time was ideal to acquire two
companies that differed noticeably from their current business,
CarbonTech and MyRentals.
CarbonTech: A small activated carbon and filter manufacturer
with NIOSH approval for their filter design. CarbonTech’s IT
infrastructure is small (25 computers, 3 servers); the Operations
Manager, Joe DeCline, has been servicing all IT needs. He
takes great pride in the Epicor Vista® Software that he runs on
a Progress® database. This has been a family business for
years, and Joe’s father Jay manages the business very closely.
Generally, CarbonTech is resistant to change.
MyRentals: This medium size event services company provides
tent rentals for a variety of events; they have been a “big
player,” renting tents, AC Units, portable professional kitchens,

2. etc. to everything from the Super Bowl to personal weddings.
No event is too large or too small. The company’s General
Manager, Bobby Buddy is the quintessential nice guy. He has a
great personal relationship with most of his 200 full time
employees, and even some of the 300 seasonal workers. The IT
administration has been completely outsourced, and MyRentals
is unhappy with the current level of support. The cost to
support IT in their 14 satellite offices and use the Microsoft
Dynamics GP® ERP system is consuming their very valuable
cash.
The Technology Environment: As the Director of Information
Technology for the combined companies, you find three very
different environments. The current CEO of ER UMUC, Rock
Martin, is technology averse – historically IT capital equipment
purchases have been limited to less than $5,000/year. This is in
stark contrast to your direct supervisor the CFO, Neil Robber,
who loves to be connected. CarbonTech’s General Manager,
Jay DeCline, is willing to invest in technology, but only if his
son, Joe approves the purchase. Joe believes that he has already
provided CarbonTech with everything they need in the areas of
Operations and IT Infrastructure. Joe is fond of saying “If it
aint broke don’t fix it.” Bobby Buddy, GM for MyRentals, is
inherently trusting of his advisors, and has purchased all
recommended services and support from his
telecommunications, IT, and ERP support providers.
Your IT staff consists of yourself as Director of IT, a senior
database developer, and a ½ time PC technician.
Each company has its challenges: The parent company, ER
UMUC is cash poor and unprofitable. CarbonTech is very
profitable, but does not earn enough to support the other
companies, and is very resistant to change. MyRentals has
placed too much trust in the individual branch managers to run
localized operations and is now only breaking even; they
desperately need to get control of their financials, but each
branch has different procedures for material acquisitions. Their
“just get it done” attitude has resulted in poor margins and poor

3. documentation on all purchases.
Now with many more assets, personnel, and business
challenges, the executive management is turning to you to help
alleviate some of their financial stress with sound IT solutions
that will demonstrably improve ER UMUC’s ability to operate
and the “bottom line.” With so many different stakeholders you
know that your analysis and recommendations must be
sound!Challenges and Opportunities:
ER UMUC has many challenges and opportunities as it works to
combine the three companies into one integrated enterprise.
The company could benefit from any number of enterprise-wide
implementations that would improve its sales support, its
manufacturing and supply services, and its corporate financial
management, as described below.
Sales Support
The historical root of ER UMUC’s success has been its regional
sales representatives, and there is no reason to expect otherwise
in the future. Each sales representative returns to the
company’s headquarters periodically for product training and a
PC upgrade. You have noticed, even in your short time at ER
UMUC, that everyone stores their information in a different
format.
ER UMUC has been warmly received by all their customers.
Despite that fact, however, there is some fear that the market
for new purchases in the rapidly deployable shelter product line
may be evaporating. The shelter product line has been the
leading revenue generator at 60% of all revenue. Lately, ER
UMUC’s established customer base is more interested in shelter
rental options than purchase options. Suffice it to say that ER
UMUC’s sales team is working long hours trying to sell the
products they have been trained on (i.e. ER UMUC’s historical
product line).
ER UMUC wants to continue to manufacture the deployable
shelters, but is willing to lease them through the MyRentals
subsidiary. ER UMUC would like to reduce the total sales
force, make them more efficient in their use of technology, and

4. use the same sales force to sell and lease the shelters, depending
on customer requirements.
Your task is to propose an efficient IT solution for the mobile
sales force to support them as they sell and lease products of
both ER UMUC and MyRentals.Manufacturing and Supply
Services
ER UMUC has been using the filters made by the newly
acquired CarbonTech Company in its filter canister product and
now wants to completely integrate the product line,
manufacturing the correct number of filters and having them
available at the canister plant just in time to be used in making
the canisters. The sales of the canisters are increasing at a pace
that ER UMUC will be able to use all the filters made by
CarbonTech.
In addition, ER UMUC will be the sole provider of deployable
shelters to the MyRentals subsidiary. Therefore, the
requirements for sales and leases of the shelters will impact the
manufacturing process; and the amount of shelters manufactured
will determine how many can be sold or leased. Since
deployable shelters are a primary product of ER UMUC, and are
a significant portion of the leasing business of MyRentals, you
have decided to focus on that product line as you propose
improvements in the IT support.
Your task is to propose a solution to the just-in-time supply of
filters to the canister manufacturing process and to ensure the
manufacturing line for the deployable shelters is producing the
right number of shelters to fulfill the sales and leasing
requirements.Corporate Financial and Inventory Management
ER UMUC is supporting three different financial systems for
their business functions, which have been independent. For a
publicly traded company, this presents an accounting nightmare.
Each company reports independent financials and each company
has different report formats. This makes the integration needed
for combined reporting nearly impossible. Every quarter the
accounting staff, IT Staff and executive management spend
nearly 4 weeks producing end of quarter reports. Consequently,

5. annual inventory is also challenging – once again, three
systems, three inventory procedures. The annual inventory
covers only the permanent assets of ER UMUC and its
subsidiaries, not the products being manufactured, leased, or
sold.
Financial systems currently in use are:
· ER UMUC – Infor ERP Visual®
· CarbonTech – Epicor Vista®
· MyRentals – Microsoft Dynamics GP®
ER UMUC is not current on their service contract. Both
CarbonTech and MyRentals are current on their licenses and
service contracts. Below is a summary of expected annual
costs:
· InforERP Visual: $25K to bring all 25 licenses to the current
build, 10K for independent support, $10K for annual renewal of
licenses.
· Epicor Vista: $16K for 10 licenses with support.
· Microsoft Dynamics GP: $25K for 25 licenses, $10K for
support.
Your task is to propose a solution for integrating the financial
management and inventory systems for ER UMUC and its two
subsidiaries to significantly reduce the time and effort required
to produce the quarterly reports and to ensure accuracy.Staged
Assignments and Exercises:
Throughout this course you will be Director of Information
Technology for ER UMUC. Taking advantage of the business
practices and IT solutions discussed in the class, the Course
Modules and the textbook, you will be expected to increase
profits, keep the business running, and bring ER UMUC and its
subsidiary companies into the 21st century. One of the
challenges/opportunities above will be identified by you, and
you will propose a solution for that area. That solution will be
used in a series of staged assignments.
Upon completion of these assignments you will have performed
an array of activities to demonstrate your ability to apply the
course content to a “real world situation” to:

6. · Recommend an IT solution based on your analysis of the
business environment (case study, stage 1: memo)
· Evaluate the IT architectural considerations of your
recommended solution (case study, stage 2: paper) Provide the
details of an IT solution
· Provide a business case for your proposed solution (case
study, stage 3:annotated outline)
· Explain the best practices and enterprise methodologies to be
used for implementation of your proposed solution (case study,
stage 4: executive briefing)
· Evaluate the risks of a specific solution (Exercise 1)
You will find the details of each assignment and a
corresponding grading rubric in separate assignment documents.
The specific weights of each of these assignments can be found
in the class syllabus.
Note: ONE of the listed business challenges/opportunities areas
listed above (sales support, manufacturing and supply services,
or corporate financial and inventory management) will be used
throughout the staged project. Hint: As noted earlier in the
case, the goal of ER UMUC is to combine the three companies
into one integrated enterprise—so your solution should support
that goal.
IT Architectural Considerations for Proposed Technology
IFSM 301: Information Systems Management
IT Architectural Considerations for Proposed Technology
Case Study – Stage 2
Janelle Chapman4/13/2013

7. Case Study – Stage 2
IT Architectural Considerations for Proposed Technology
According to the proposed idea in the first stage to use
dedicated servers and systems for the sales representatives, it is
believed that the solution will provide a meaningful platform to
the imperative sales team of ER UMUC Inc. It is to be
mentioned here that the servers will not only be used for storing
the information coming from the various offices but will also be
helpful in tracking the performance of the overall processes. In
addition, the move will help in improving the customer
satisfaction and will only take the customer relationship
activities to the next level.
The dedicated servers and systems will also help in bringing
uniformity in the way information is being stored into the ER
UMUC Inc. systems. Although, the initial investment in this
process will be relatively large as compared to the investments
by ER UMUC Inc., in technology so far but this system can also
be used in integrating the operations of MyRentals and
CarbonTech. Once the integration is complete, the initial huge
investments in setting up this system will end up being very
small as compared to the overall benefits that it will offer to the
company.
Considering the fact that proper functioning of the sales
representatives is very important for the long-term success of
ER UMUC Inc., the investment in aligning the processes for the
team will prove to be a very effective strategy for the company.
Regarding the architectural considerations, it should be noted
here that the system will be accessible to the entire sales force
of ER UMUC Inc., as they will be the ones who will be filling
in the information into the system. Since all the information
will be stored in the cloud, the accessibility factor is taken care
of by deploying dedicated servers for the task. Keeping in mind

8. that all the work is being done on an in-house basis, one can be
assured that maintainability will not be a cause of concern. In
fact, the system will be designed in such a way that it can be
easily modified with the changing needs of the business. In
addition, since the system will be used by a huge sales force
that may or may not be friendly with technology, it will be kept
in mind that it is user-friendly and can accommodate as many
users at a given point of time.
The nature of work of ER UMUC Inc., is such that when the
demand comes in contingency, it has been fulfilled in a short
duration of time, the security of this process is of utmost
importance to the company. Keeping these conditions in mind,
the authentication so this software will be taken care by
allotting a personal key to every employee thus giving him
access to fill in his information into the software. In addition,
there will also be a master key which will be given only to a
selected few which will give access to the entire information
database. Apart from the personal key, the software will also
ask for employee code before giving him access to the next
phase. And for the master access, there will be only IP allowed
at a time and along with the personal key and employee code, it
will match the retina of the employee with the help of a
webcam.
Out of supply chain management, customer relationship
management and ERP systems, the second option i.e. customer
relationship management is most applicable to this task.
Keeping in mind that the core purpose of this task is to
effectively manage the information that was so far not kept in
uniform format and hence was not much of use, the effective
use of information will help in improving the satisfaction levels
of the consumer. It may also be noted here that all the
information that will be stored by the sales representatives, it
will help the company in tracking the overall performance in a
much better fashion.
Proposed

9. Solution
Resources
Information System Activities

10. References
Haag, Stephen; Maeve Cummings, Donald J. McCubbrey, Alain
Pinsonneault, Richard Donovan (2006). Management
Information Systems for the Information Age (Third Edition).
O’Brien, James A; Marakas, George M. (2011). Management
Information Systems (Tenth Edition).
Input
Customer information received by sales representative
Processing
Information received is organized for future retrival

11. Output
Reporting sales performance
Storage
Shared database containing all customer information
Control
Quality control on information entered by sales representative
People Resources
End Users (ER UMUC sales support representatives)
Specialists (systems analysts, software developers, & technical
personnel)
Hardware Resources

12. Machines (desktop computers & printers)
Software Resources
Programs (data entry program applicable to ER UMUC data.)
Procedures (data entry procedures)
Data Resources
Existing Customer records
Inventory databases

13. Network Resources
communications control software
inter-network processors
modems
1
interoffice memorandumto:
Rock Martin, ceo, er umuc inc.from:

14. Janelle V Chapman, director of itsubject:
Analysis of business envirnoment & it recommendations
date:March 31, 2013cc:
professor moore parker
This memorandum aims at refining the Sales Support sector of
ER UMUC Inc., by addressing key issues affecting this entity
following the recent acquisition of CarbonTech and MyRentals.
An analysis has been evaluated based on the company’s existing
system and procedures. In order to convey more uniformity
between all three divisions, updates into its operations, backup
solutions, training, and information storage practices are
necessary in an effort to enhance productivity and customer
relations.
Challenge/Opportunity Area for ER UMUC Inc.
ER UMUC Inc. has impeccable regional sales representatives
which is evident through an extensive network of community
contacts acquired over the last couple of years. However, the
company is faced with the challenge of improving methods in
which the sales team stores its information. Currently, company

15. information is being stored in various formats, hindering
potential advancements made on behalf of the company. In
addition, there is currently no system backup available of the
important information stored by the sales representatives.
Company information should be streamlined into one
synchronized format, backed-up regularly and accessible by all
applicable personnel. The most effective way to achieve this is
to implement the adaptation of a common information storage
system and format.
Apart from the issues of information storage and system
backups, there is much needed improvement in the area of staff
training. Although employees receive training, the training
processes need to be sharper in their approach. In addition,
consumers’ interest in the option of leasing shelters rather than
purchasing them out-right has increased.
Recommendations
Based on the study, the following recommendations should be
considered:
a) Dedicated Server: There should be dedicated servers installed
for the storing of information entered by the sales
representatives. In an effort to make all entries uniformed, a
detailed procedure and/or query database established for storing
information should be developed.

16. b) Outsource Training: ER UMUC, Inc. should outsource
training resources so to offer an overall enhanced training
experience, gain access to practical and technical proficiency,
and greater efficiencies on the part of the staff. Outsource
training is also a cost effective method of ensuring staff get
trained faster and learn more under the direction of a specialist
with a proficient expertise in the field of sales/customer service
(Training and Development.Naukrihub.com, 2012).
c) Additional Sale Option: In response to customer inquiries,
the company should offer renting shelters in addition to
purchasing. Doing so will increase revenue, and customer
relations.
Proposed IT