MOI Global Expansion
MOI’S global expansion was destined to fail. After the emergence of niche players in the North American (NA) market and inroads from online mega-retailers, such as Amazon, MOI’s expansion was beginning to stagnate. This dropped down revenues and created a need to expand into new global markets. The IT enhancement program (ITEP) chosen involved outsourcing the building and maintenance of MOI’S overseas e-commerce presence to seven IT companies located in seven countries. Even though part of management, such as Wyse disapproved the plan, C-level management sanctioned it to minimize costs. The plan, however, backfired as all the independent consultancies produced 9 localized websites each with a different feel and utilizing five different e-commerce platforms. The resultant difficulty in the synchronization of offshore operations has resulted in an 8.5 times upsurge in costs over budget.
The biggest challenge facing MOI is the difficulties in the synchronization of overseas operations leading to orders, billing, and shipments not being identified and reacted to in time; whether there is a dip or spike in demand. Moreover, there is a problem of increased product damage during shipping by 50 percent. Coupled with this is the inability to fix product defects on location, which means that products need to be shipped back to the factory. These problems have resulted in MOI’s expansion running 8.5 times over budget and being 18 months behind schedule. The problems have led to a bad image for the enterprise where customers, competitors, and analysts are wary of MOI’s products.
Some of the most essential near-term IT initiatives include the synchronization of offshore operations so that the company can react accordingly to orders, billings, and shipment. It is also necessary for plans to be implemented to ensure that the global expansion initiative is running according to budget and timeline. Another requisite action is the utilization of a single e-commerce platform across all websites, and the websites are designed in a mode that gives them a similar feel.
In turning around the global expansion mess, there are limited options available for me because I will be working under CFO Downer who is focused on killing ITEP. This means that increase in budget allocations is a far-fetched option. The first thing to do is to communicate with the seven independent IT consultancies so that they can create localized websites with similar knowledge and technologies’ theme. This will ensure that the same e-commerce platform is used and the websites have a similar feel and look. There is also a need to synchronize the websites so that data sharing is done easily and effectively.
In order to turn around the global expansion debacle, some of the things that should be done include the straightening of the technological and communications issue. Product packaging necessitates redesigning in a way that it can withstand the rigors of both ground-based and air-based international shipping. When this is done, there will be no need to suspend product development that would lead to a loss of revenues. An offshore network of maintenance technicians also need to be kept to ensure repairs are done in a timely manner. The low cost, high returns nature of CFO Downer might necessitate having him removed if the ITEP program intended to modernize MOI’s application portfolio, technology infrastructure, and methods and practices is to be implemented. In the long-run, the ITEP program is the best bet for MOI to assure its global expansion. In the short-run, however, it is all about mending broken fences by synchronizing offshore e-commerce operations in the numerous vendor sites.