Maryland Technology Consultants Case Study: Business Analysis and System Recommendation

📄 Words:	1117
📝 Subject:	Management
📑 Pages:	4
✍️ Type:	Essay

Introduction

MTC’s business purpose is to supply its customers, including small- and mid-size businesses, nonprofits, and governmental organizations, with highly professional experts and consultants in business process consulting, IT consulting, and IT outsourcing consulting. Currently, the firm is anticipating expanding procedures, which will require the fast hiring process of numerous applicants for the upcoming contract. The currently applied manual hiring procedure puts time and effectiveness constraints on the human resource department. In the face of such challenges and tasks, MTC needs to launch a new automated hiring system that would allow for achieving the goals within the company’s business strategy. The current report introduces the analysis of the business environment for the application of the new hiring system and the analysis of the existing hiring processes. Essential requirements for the new system and detailed recommendations are presented.

Strategic Use of Technology

Business Strategy

The currently used manual hiring system obstructs the firm’s ability to build a cadre of consultants internationally and provide customers with highly skilled consultants with expertise in new technologies and innovative solutions. Therefore, the proposed automated hiring system will increase the recruitment capacity and ensure that large volumes of information about numerous applicants are processed simultaneously. When using the new system, MTC will meet its goals of employing the best candidates to win new contracts, build an international team of consultants, and increase its competitive advantage by improving its most valuable asset – the human capital.

Competitive Advantage

Within the sphere of the consulting industry, MTC meets significant competition, including such firms as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and smaller niche companies with loyal customers. However, as demonstrated by MTC’s strategic goals, the company aims at expanding its share in the IT consulting market by 7% each year during the next five years. Evidently, employees constitute the most valuable strategic asset of the company since it performs as the provider of consulting services. The more highly qualified and experienced consultants work in the company, the higher is the level of its competitive advantage over the rivals (Pereira et al., 2017). Therefore, an effective highly-technological hiring system is an immediate valuable tool for building hiring capacity that will ensure the recruitment of the most qualified and appropriate people for the most tentative positions within the entity.

Strategic Objectives

MTC’s strategic goals are aligned with the company’s overall business strategy and provide a step-by-step vision of what the firm plans to pursue in the nearest future. The objectives presented below provide measurable planned actions that will help achieve the goal if assisted with the new hiring system.

Strategic Goal (from case study)	Objective (clear, measurable and time-bound)	Explanation (2-3 sentences)
Increase MTC Business Development by winning new contracts in the areas of IT Consulting	Apply for ten newly available requests for proposals from governmental, private, and nonprofit organizations within the next six months.	The proposed new hiring system will provide the human resource department with an opportunity to find and employ the best IT consultants available from the workforce market. Using the system, the hiring team will allocate and train the best candidates in an efficient and productive manner. Therefore, when applying for new contract opportunities, MTC will have a competitive advantage in the form of a strong team of experts.
Build a cadre of consultants internationally to provide remote research and analysis support to MTC’s onsite teams in the U. S.	Employ four research analysts from abroad within the next six months to expand the international team of experts.	The new hiring system will enhance the effectiveness of the process of application for the position of foreign candidates. Such a feature will expand the pool of potential recruits and improve the mean level of expertise of the team. An online-based system will ensure that applicants have access to the positions and that human resource managers can easily apply hiring strategies to assess candidates and choose the most appropriate ones.
Continue to increase MTC’s ability to quickly provide high-quality consultants to awarded contracts to serve the clients’ needs best.	Employ five customer service improvement specialists within the next 12 months	The employment of customer service improvement specialists will allow MTC to allocate specific effort to exploring the clients’ experiences when cooperating with MTC and identifying their perceived advantages and disadvantages of the received services. The analysis of customer needs will provide an opportunity to improve the services in the future. The newly introduced hiring system will provide a technological basis for timely recruitment of the most experienced customer service improvement specialists capable of contributing to the company’s ability to offer high-quality consultants to awarded contracts to serve the clients’ needs best.
Increase MTC’s competitive advantage in the IT consulting marketplace by increasing its reputation for having IT consultants who are highly skilled in leading-edge technologies and innovative solutions for its clients	Initiate an intensive IT consulting training on innovations and technologies for newly employed applicants within the next three months	The hiring system will increase the chances of the hiring team to identify the most necessary skills that need to be improved in the candidates. It will also facilitate the procedure of tracking the applicants’ success throughout the training session to ensure the best results are achieved.

Decision Making

This table shows possible decisions on the strategic, tactical, and operational levels, which define the directions of the company’s development and will be supported by the new hiring system (“How do information systems support decision making,” n. d.).

Role	Level as defined in Course Content Reading	Example of Possible Decision Supported by Hiring System	Example of Information the Hiring System Could Provide to Support Your Example Decision
Senior/Executive Managers (Decisions made by the CEO and the CFO at MTC supported by the hiring system.)	Strategic	The CEO open two new recruiting centers abroad	Executive managers of MTC are responsible for making decisions that entail strategic development (Abubakar et al., 2019). The hiring system will provide information about the locations (cities and countries) where It consultants are most qualified.
Middle Managers (Decisions made by the Director of HR and the Manager of Recruiting supported by the hiring system.)	Tactical	The Director of HR decides to increase the number of employees to meet the staffing demands of new contracts.	The system will provide technical tools for human resource managers to employ relevant candidates to meet the requirements of the teams.
Operational Managers (Decisions made by the line managers in the organization who are hiring for their projects supported by the hiring system.)	Operational	A line manager decides to hire niche specialists to meet the needs of a client	The hiring system will allow for attracting applicants from the international multi-professional pool of candidates to employ the targeted audience.

References

Abubakar, A. M., Elrehail, H., Alatailat, M. A., & Elci, A. (2019). Knowledge management, decision-making style and organizational performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), 104-114.

How do information systems support decision making? (n. d.). [Data set]. Web.

Pereira, L. F., Jeronimo, C. M., & Ramos, M. R. (2017). Management consulting business models a perspective of sustainability. 2017 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation, 29-35. Web.