Who Is Responsible for Assuring It Success at Lenox?
1) Who is responsible for assuring IT success at Lenox? We cannot say only one person is responsible for assuring IT success at Lenox. In fact, each of the three people mentioned in the case are. James Bennett isn’t blameless because after hiring a new CIO, and put new life in the company, he disappeared giving her the mission to create a delivery system and to ensure that it properly works meeting the Lenox’s management expectations. On the other hand, the CIO, Diana Sullivan, made a big mistake because she took the responsibility for what she can do (creating the delivery system) but also for what she can’t do. Another thing that we have to highlight is Sullivan’s incapacity to see the signals warning her that she needs help from Bennett and Fontana. For example when Bennett said that “computers have never been one of Lenox’ strengths”. This means she had to show to other managers how to use properly the computers and technology to catch up other successful companies (a very tough issue to fix by herself). However, we cannot say Sullivan was completely wrong because she understood the insurance business. She had also an excellent track record in information services and strong leadership abilities that allowed her to organize Lifexpress and Lifexpress Team to evaluate IT and to promote IT to support the company. In addition, she articulated a vision to meet the challenges and delivered the system on-time and on-budget. But what’s wrong? She had to understand that her role wasn’t only to write the program on-time but also to create a good environment in Lenox where the implementation of the new system was longer than expected. We have also to talk about Fontana. He was too focused on what competitors were doing instead of helping Sullivan to promote the new system. He also didn’t really understand what’s going on in Lenox’s delivery system. Definitely, at Lenox, we can say that the CEO, the CFO and the CIO are responsible, in different ways, for assuring IT