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COMP1432
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Systems Planning and Management
Course Work Report
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Prepared by: Aws Al-Rubaye
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Student Id# 000635735
Prepared for: Dr Georgios Samakovitis
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Word Count:
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School of Computing and Mathematical science
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(3550)

excluding Cover page, Table of contents, tables and References

Table of Contents
Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3
1.

Introduction: ....................................................................................................................... 4

2.

Maritz Research Background: ............................................................................................. 5

3.

Computer assisted telephone interviewer CATI:............................................................. 7

4.

3.1.

What is CATI? .............................................................................................................. 7

3.2.

How CATI work? .......................................................................................................... 7

3.3.

CATI technical specification: ....................................................................................... 7

3.4.

CATI and Maritz Research: .......................................................................................... 8

CATI Implementation process: ........................................................................................... 8

4.1.

Real Motives of implementing CATI by Maritz Research: ........................................... 9

4.2.

Analysis phase: ............................................................................................................ 9

4.3.

Design and Implementation Phase: .......................................................................... 10

4.4.

Testing and Evaluation Phase: .................................................................................. 12

4.5.

Implementation process conclusion: ........................................................................ 13

5.

Strategic analysis of the Implementation:........................................................................ 13

6.

Post Implementation Review (PIR): .................................................................................. 15

7.

Findings: ............................................................................................................................ 16

8.

Future work / Recommendations: ................................................................................... 16

9.

Conclusion: ....................................................................................................................... 17

References and Bibliography ................................................................................................... 18

Abstract
The report in below will discuss the implementation life cycle of information system in an
organization called Maritz Research Company, however, the road map of the report will start
by giving a brief explanation for the overall process of implementing the project at the
company, then a brief explanation will discuss the background of the company and their
business. The report will then discuss the system itself, and will try to highlight the links
between the system functionalities and the company requirements which will lead after all, to
discuss the implementation process of the projects life cycles and who was involved in that
phase and which department in that company, then a conclusion will shows whether, the
company follows the plan attended for implementation or not. The implementation process
will be address by conducting interviews with different employee of Maritz from different
departments. The report will also discuss the strategic impact of implementing the system
using the PESTEL framework for that purpose. Eventually, the report will end up by a set of
findings from the post implementation process and recommendations for future work in this
regard, and then a conclusion will be drawn for the overall implementation process of the
system.

3|Page

1. Introduction:
This report is based on an independent market research company called Maritz
Research, where the writer currently holding a part time job in this firm as a
telephone interviewer. The main idea of this firm is data collection, where this report
will be based on. The report will discuss the implementation of a retrospective
information system in the mentioned organization called CATI, standing for
Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewer. The type of information required to
complete the research of implementing this system and studying the strategic impact
of implementation from a structural, cultural, and operational point of view and any
other identified facets of the organization will be based on interviews, more specific a
face to face interviews with group of employees at the company in different
departments, e.g. my direct supervisor who have the experience in using the system
for five years now, my regional manager who dealt with this system from the early
stages of development and the project manager of the UK branch, and he is one of the
few people in the management board who set the requirements and motives for the
firm and draw the way to adopt the system and start using it as a replacement of
traditional data collection methods. The work on this report will return with a great
benefit to the readers. The benefits of report can be accomplished by checking the
background of both the organization and the system and compare this to the set of
motives and requirements that pushed the company to adopt such system, after all, the
reader may start draw a comparison between all of these data along with the strategic
impact behind the use of this system to come up with a clear conclusion and
recommendations to identify weather this system considered to be a success or a
failure to the firm on the long term.

4|Page

2. Maritz Research Background:

Maritz Research, an independent market research company with a great awards and
certifications from the market research society. The main aim of the company as
described by Maritz (2011) is to assist their clients in harness the power of people
through market solutions. Maritz research assists the world largest companies in
meeting their most important goals by enabling them to understand, enable and
motivate their employees, customers and partners. The organizational structure of
the company may be represented by the organizational hierarchy in figure (1) as
shown below. The company have several branches all over the world and the diagram
in figure (1) showing the hierarchy of the company in the UK. The company here
have five different departments and a director manager. The five mentioned
departments below will be involved in the implementation processes of the system.
The collection of data for research purposes within Maritz Company used to be
gathered using traditionally collected method, where a group of interviewers have to
take the questionnaires / surveys and collect the information from the customers face
to face and on door to door visit, the answers of the customers will be collected on
paper questionnaires and sent to a data entry team where the gathered information
from the field will be transferred into electronic form. This traditional way of running
questionnaires are quite expensive and non-practical at the same time due to the cost
of transport for the interviewers and the amount of cases completed per interviewer /
day. For these reasons, Maritz Research Company decided to invest in a more
productive tool to reduce the cost of manpower needs and to accelerate the process of
collecting data from the customers; consequently, they decided to implement CATI
program as a solution for these problems.

5|Page

UK Branch
Director Manager

Development and
Marketing

IT Deputy
Development
Deputy

Planners

Finance and
Accountant

IT Department

IT Experts

Marketing Deputy

HR Department

Financial Deputy

Marketing Experts
Hardware Experts

Production
Deputy

HR Deputy

Accountants
Experts
Software Experts

Administrator
Manager

Accountants
Administrators

Figure 1: Maritz organizational hierarchy structure.

6|Page

Manufacturing and
Production

Quality Experts

3. Computer assisted telephone interviewer CATI:

In this section of the report an introduction to the background of the system will be
introduced, starting by defining what is CATI? How its work? And what essential
technical specifications the system is required. Moreover, an explanation for the link
between the systems requirements and the companys needs will be discussed in this
section as well.

3.1.

What is CATI?
CATI, standing for (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing), an
interactive front-end computer system used mainly by market research
companies to assist their interviewers asking questions and gathering
information based on surveys or questionnaires over the telephone. The
answers for these questions are then uploaded to the computer system
immediately by the interviewers. CATI program make it easier for
interviewers to perform multiple tasks while try to gather the information from
the clients. As previously mentioned, the program doesnt provide questions
on the computer screen only, but also allow performing a data entry job by
simply uploading the information to the computers directly, so running a
separate data entry process is no longer necessary.

3.2.

How CATI work?

The idea of using CATI in market research or the way its work is to perform
an electronic form for the surveys or the questionnaires to provide the
questions with multiple choice answers on the computer screen. This form will
give the ability for the interviewers to ask the question and select the answer
from the list based on the respondent choice. Moreover, the answers will be
gathered and transferred to the database of the system in special coding format
which will be done automatically by the CATI system.

3.3.

CATI technical specification:

In order to have the CATI work on any computer, servers to support the
operations of the program will be a must in this case. The first server will be
the telephone server, where the main function of this server is to manage
phone lines, such us dial out, dial in and voice recordsetc. the second server
will be used to store the database into the CATI workstations. Further to that,
the system will required a network setup to provide the connection between
the interviewer computers and the server. The computers will also need to be
supplied with telephone headset to provide Hands-free dialling from the
computer within the system.

7|Page

3.4.

CATI and Maritz Research:

As previously mentioned, Maritz research used to utilize a traditional method
of data collection to accomplish the goals of their research, while now with all
the features of CATI system it is very likely for a respectful marketing
research company like Maritz to invest and implement a more effective tool
that assist the company to achieve efficient research goals, gain more clients
and reduce the cost of conducting a research by their employee.

4. CATI Implementation process:

The below section will discuss the implementation phase of the CATI system at
Maritz research company. This part of the report will have a brief explanation for the
implementation plan and who was involved in the overall process e.g. which
departments involved in what phase, and the role of each participant. Further to that,
the section will discuss the motives that inspire the company to invest in the system,
and will try to highlight whether the system attended to the plan or not. The analysis
of the implementation process will be achieved by using the SDLC framework
(Software Development life Cycle). There are various of reason for choosing this
framework to study the implementation phase of the project, most important reason is,
this framework is initially designed to describe the process of building information
systems, and the company itself follows the SDLC framework during the
development life cycle of the system. The use of phases will make it much easier and
more efficient to discuss the implementation plan based on the SDLC projects life
cycle. In this case, the SDLC framework will assist in defining the role of each user
and which department was involved in each phase. The SDLC life cycles is described
in the below diagram as mentioned by the PTC, (2011).

Figure 2: System development life cycle

8|Page

4.1.

Real Motives of implementing CATI by Maritz Research:

The implementation of the system will assist the company reducing the cost of
transportation of the interviewers; since the interviewers will start conducting
the interviews at the company offices via the telephone instead of making a
door to door visit to complete the questionnaires, even the number of
interviews per day will increase than before in this case. In addition, the
company will no longer in need to provide data entry team to transfer the data
into electronic format as this will done automatically by the system which will
reduce the cost of salaries paid to the data entry team.

4.2.

Analysis phase:
The implementation process of CATI system starts by the analysis phase,
where all the involved departments will start gathering the requirements of the
system. The below table will highlight the departments involved in the
analysis phase, the role of each department and the role of the interviewed
employee in each department to understand their participations in this phase.
To accomplish this phase, 4 departments involved and (6) people interviewed
as shown in below table:

Interviewee (s)
1. Steve
Sutherland
2. Sue Williams

Interview
Date
25/11/2011

Department
Finance and
Accounting

25/11/2011

4. Peter Jackson.

25/11/2011

25/11/2011

3. Sean McNally.

Role of Department

Development
and Marketing

Identify the estimated

cost of the
implementation
process.
Identify ways to
Manage
implementations cost.

Identify the sales

benefits of
implementing the
system.
Identify plans to reduce
implementations cost.
Carry out a research to
identify companys
requirements for new
system.

Role of Interviewee (s)

9|Page

Liaise with the

development and
Marketing department.
To identify the initial
cost of implementation.
Create a financial
statement related to the
overall estimated cost of
the implementation
process.
Liaise with the Finance
and Accounting
department.
Generate a marketing
and sales report to
highlight the cost versus
the benefits of
implementing such
system.
Conduct analysis to
identify the companys
requirements.
Analyse the ROI, (Return
On Investment)

5. Deborah Green

26/11/2011

IT Department

6. Jim Massey

25/11/2011

Operation /
UK Branch
Manager

Select the best and

most compatible
system and Technology
to be used.
Provide advice related
to the selected system.

Generate a report that

identified the best
available system based
on the requirements
analysis of the
development and
marketing department.
Administrative
responsibilities.
Liaise with all involved
department.
Design business strategy
/ Gantt chart for the
project.

Project manager

Table1: analysis phases list of interviews

4.3.

Design and Implementation Phase:

Based on the SDLC framework, both the design phase and implementation
should be separated from each other; however, both phases in the
implementation life cycle of this project are almost similar and related to each
other, where the same departments were involved and worked together to
design and implement the CATI system at Maritz Research Company. Four
departments involved and (5) people interviewed to understand this phase.

Interviewee (s)
1. Jim Massey

Interview
Date
25/11/2001

Department
Operation /
UK Branch
Manager

Role of Department

Project manager

Role of Interviewee (s)

2. Steve
Sutherland

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25/11/2011

Finance and
Accounting

Manage and control the

cost of designing and
implementing the
system.

Follow the business

plan and Gantt chart
steps.
Liaise and contacts
involved department
to ensure a smooth
implementation for the
systems life cycles
Contact related
external consultants
when required.
Managing the budget
by follow the expenses
of the project with the
finance and project
manager.

3. Priya Patel

26/11/2011

IT Department

4. Deborah Green 26/11/2011

Design and Implement

the CATI system at the
company branch

5. Sally Smith

27/11/2011

HR
Department

Recruitment

Arrange the model and

design specification of
the system.
Install the system
technical and
technological
requirements
(Network setup,
Supervisors /
interviewers PC setup,
servers, and headset
and phone Quest cards
setup...etc.).
Liaise with the other
departments to deliver
the system within time
and budget.
Interview and training
candidates to work on
the CATI system.

Table2: design and Implementation phases list of interviews

Now, after accomplishing the design and implementation of the CATI system, the below
diagram will describe the basic structure of the design and what the system looks like
after implementing. Below figure based on Maritz Company design structure, as shown
below:

Figure 3: CATI structure design

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4.4.

Testing and Evaluation Phase:

The last two phase of the SDLC framework will discuss the testing and
evaluation phases of the project in a series of interviews for employees of
Maritz research company who were involved in the two mentioned phases.
Five departments involved and (7) people interviewed to understand this
phase. As shown below:
Role of Department
Project Manager

Interviewee (s)
1. Jim Massey

Interview Date
25/11/2011

Department
Operation / UK
Branch Manager

2. Priya Patel

26/11/2011

IT Department

3. Deborah Green

26/11/2011

4. Sally Smith

27/11/2011

HR Department

5. Sean McNally

25/11/2011

Development
and Marketing

27/11/2011

Manufacturing
and Production

Testing technical
and technological
elements of the
system.
Performance
evaluation.
Evaluate CATI
system.

Role of Interviewee (s)

Ensure quality control
of system testing.
Generate a critical
evaluation report based
on the testing results.
Testing the Hardware /
software part of the
system.
Testing the system
functionalities.
Record the test results
for the CATI system.

6. Peter Jackson

7. Juleanne Black

Quality control.

Table3: Test and evaluation phases list of interviews

12 | P a g e

Generate a report
critically evaluate the
implementation of
CATI system and the
impact of using such
system rather than the
traditional method of
collecting data based
on the results of the test
phase.
Evaluate the systems
performance based on
the feedback of the
interviewer when using
the system.

4.5.

Implementation process conclusion:

The implementation process of the project went in the right directions. All the
employees in the departments involved agreed there were no deviation to the
plan drawn by the operations / management board to implement the system,
consequently, the project considered to be one of the most successful projects
in this company. The management board of the company didnt try to steering
the project in any other directions than what it was mainly designed for and
that reflect positively on the implementation process of the CATI system. The
system ended up implemented successfully within the given time and budget.

5. Strategic analysis of the Implementation:

This section of the report will discuss the strategic impact of implementing the CATI
system at Maritz Research Company. The analysis for the impact will be
accomplished using the PESTEL framework. The use of this framework provide an
efficient and effective way to analyse the strategic impact of implementing any
system from political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legal
points of view. According to oxford university press (2007) using the PESTEL
framework can analyse the many different factors in a firm's macro environment. In
some cases particular issues may fit in several categories. However, the below
section will discuss the strategic impact based on the PESTEL framework, as shown
below. The below diagram obtained from the Business Mate organization (2011) and
represent the (6) strategic impacts studied by the organization while implementing a
new system.

Political Factors

Legal Factors

Economic Factors

The Organization
Environmental
Factors

Social Factors

Technological
Factors

Figure 4: PESTEL framework diagram

13 | P a g e

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Political impact: from a political point of view, the implementation of the

CATI system has been very positive and successful as the new system follow
the United Kingdom Data protection act (1998) where all the data applied to
the new system will be encrypted and cannot be accessed by individuals. On
the other hand, the UK data protection act worked as a negative impact for the
organization as its force the company to invest more money in order to follow
specific standards in encrypted the files according to the UK Data protection
act standards.
Economic impact: from economic point of view, the implementation of the
CATI system has been positive and the project considered being a success.
The new system save the regular cost of interviewers, where transportation
cost and travelling time are a huge cost for the company. On the other hand,
analyzing the cost and advantages of CATI system shows the negative impact
of the system. The system designed to only pay off in repeated questionnaires
and large scale surveys. The implementation of CATI reduces the cost of
transportation but its add new cost for purchasing and replacing the
equipment and phone charges as well. CATI considered being very powerful
system to reduce the time required to conduct a research but it also considered
more expensive than traditional method of collecting data.
Social impact: in general, the social impact considered to be positive for both
the respondents and interviewers. The responded may not notice whether the
interviewer is using a computer during the survey or not, even though, there
was no research conduct to understand the impact of this knowledge, the
general impression shows no differences in this case. On the other hand, the
interviewers are showing more standardization in their behaviour while using
CATI. The system also assists in allocating necessary information for the
manager, consequently, supervisors like the new features of the system. The
only negative social impact of the new system is breaking the direct
connection between the company and their clients since all the interviews now
done by telephone rather than personal visit interviews.
Technological impact: from a technological point of view, CATI have a
positive impact and considered to be very successful as the system reduces
missing data while conducting a research especially in large scale
questionnaires. From experience, CATI shows less error than traditional
method of collecting data as the new system store the information in electronic
form rather than papers. The electronic form will assist the interviewers in
automatically branch the questions based on the respondents answers. The
system will also verify an online checking on the responses and alert the
interviewer on any inconsistent or doubtful answers. CATI can also schedule
future calls. However, a negative impact counted as the new system required
the interviewers to have at least basic knowledge in using computers and
digital presentation methods which considered to be challenging for some of
the interviewers who have lack of experience using computers.

Environmental impact: the environmental impact of the CATI can

considered being positive as well, since the new system replaces the use of
papers by electronic form and reduces the use of transportation to reach the
respondents in their houses. On the other hand, the technical requirements of
the system required to install more computers, servers and power supplies
which considered being a negative impact on the environment.
Legal impact: the positive legal impact of the system represented by the
encryption for the data collected by the respondents. Moreover, CATI make
all the interviews personalized which reflect positively again on the data
protection act. The negative legal impact occurred due to schedule calls to the
customer on behalf of their original providers without prior acknowledgement
by Maritz or their clients.

6. Post Implementation Review (PIR):

The post implementation review will evaluate the implementation process of the
CATI system at Maritz Research Company. The PIR as defined by the Federal student
aid (2008) serves as a fact-finding review focused on comparing the original project
goals with the achieved project results and gathering any lessons learned to improve
the success of future IT investment projects. The below section will draw a table
with a checklist for the evaluation areas of the project. For more details regarding the
people involved in the PIR phase, kindly make sure to check section 4.4 of the report.
Evaluation area

Evaluation area description

Achieved

Goals and Objectives

Functional
Requirements Versus
Implementation
System performance

Risks & Security

Cost & Schedule

Documentation

Determine whether the implemented

system has achieved its goals and
objectives
Determines if the system delivered
the right products and services
according to the customers
specifications and users needs
Determine the overall picture of
how the system perform in real life
test
Ensure a complete security plan
designed and implemented and
validates that all systems risks are
identified.
Investigate whether the system
completed within planned budget
and schedules timeframe
Determine whether a clear
documentation throughout the
project life cycle completed or not

Table 4: post implementation process checklist.

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PIR Results
Partially
Not
Achieved Achieved

7. Findings:
The implementation process of the project wasnt totally perfect as we noticed from
the PIR report in section (6) above. Based on that report, the below section will shows
the findings of the evaluation team regarding the implementation process of the CATI
system. As shown below:

It is clear that Maritz Research Company have a specific set of goals and
objectives to implement the CATI system. Based on the PIR report, these
goals and objectives achieved successfully.
The company considered the system successful and delivered what is required
according to customers specifications and users needs.
Testing the system in real life shows some errors in the overall performance of
the system.
The company addressed all the risk and security required to avoid any clash
for the system.
The project life cycles completed within given time and budget.
There was a lack in the documentation of the life cycle of the project.

8. Future work / Recommendations:

The study of the implementation process of the system and discussing the strategic
impact of the implementation process shows the success of implementing the new
system, CATI, within Maritz Research Company. However, the below section will
address and highlight in bullets points recommendations and future work for any
further work to be accomplished in this regard at a higher levels by the company or
any other individuals. As shown below:

16 | P a g e

Enhance the user interface of the CATI system to be more users friendly and
follow certain accessibility criteria.
Add more functionality for the system to allow the user control the automatic
dialling for respondent.
Enhance the documentation process throughout the project life cycle to make
sure all the details of the system recorded and archived.
It is important to involve all the related department in both implementation
and evaluation phase of the project life cycle.
Work more to enhance the performance and reduce the delay in displaying the
questions while using the CATI system.

9. Conclusion:
The implementation of the CATI system shows a clear success for Maritz Research as
a company looking to improve their performance and provide better services for their
clients. The implementation process involved the participation of different
departments at the company but this didnt influence the process of the projects life
cycle as shown in section 4 of the report. On the other hand, section 5 discusses the
strategic impact of the project from different point of views, political, economical,
social, technological, environmental and legal based on the PESTEL framework. The
report shows the positive strategic impact and the negative one as well, and then a PIR
conducted to evaluate the original goals of the systems from the achieved one based
on the results shown in the analysis of the strategic impact. A set of findings and
recommendations drawn for further future work in this regard. As a conclusion, the
new system, CATI, considered being a very successful project for Maritz Research
even though, there were registered negative impacts from the implementation process
and partially achieved goals as shown in the PIR report of the evaluation team but the
overall process considered to be very successful and positive.

17 | P a g e

References and Bibliography

1- Maritz Research. 2011. about us. Available from:

http://www.maritzresearch.co.uk/pdf/Maritz_Research_ENG.pdf . [Accessed on 02
Dec 2011].
2- Samakovitis, G. 2011. Systems planning and Management. Teaching schedule.
Available from:
https://cms1.gre.ac.uk/teachmat1112/COMP1432/course/schedule.asp?banner=COM
P1432 . [Accessed on 04 Dec 2011].
3- Oxford University Press. 2007. PESTEL analysis of the micro environment. Available
from:
http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199296378/01student/additional/page_12.htm .
[Accessed on 09 Dec 2011].
4- Unescape organization website. 2011. Computer Aided Telephone Interviewer.
Available from: www.unescap.org/stat/pop-it/pop-guide/capture_ch04.pdf . [Accessed
on 09 Dec 2011].
5- Product Development Company. 2011. Software development life cycle. Available
from: http://www.mks.com/resources/resource-pages/software-development-lifecycle-sdlc-system-development . [Accessed on 05 Dec 2011].
6- Legislation UK. 1998. Data protection act. Available from:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents . [Accessed on 09 Dec 2011].
7- Business Mate Organization. 2011. What is the PESTEL framework. Available from:
http://www.businessmate.org/Article.php?ArtikelId=16 . [Accessed on 09 Dec 2011].
8- Federal student aid. 2008. Post implementation Review process. Available from:
http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/static/gw/docs/ciolibrary/FSA_PIR_Process_v4.0.pdf .
[Accessed on 11 Dec 2011].

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