John M. Anderson and William H. Gwinn - Adopting IT: Food Program Sponsor Discovers. It’s No Picnic
Publisher: Idea Group Pub | 2002-04 | ISBN: 0585432899 | PDF | 16 pages | 1.01 MB


This case discusses the difficulties encountered by Quality Care, Inc. in implementing information technology. Hardware and software costs, changes to business processes and the lack of in-house information technology expertise were problems that had to be solved in order to adapt to mandated changes made by government oversight agencies.
Small companies are often reluctant to try innovative approaches to information management because of the cost of the hardware and software, the potential disruption of processes already dependent on overstressed resources and the lack of in-house expertise. This case looks at the experience with information technology (IT) implementation of one small nonprofit company that provides administrative services for child care providers. Like many companies of all sizes, the focal company realized it must adopt new information technologies in order to survive. The company fit the profile for small companies just entering the world of IT. It experienced the expected internal problems associated with change. And then it discovered that its size and its relationship to government oversight agencies, themselves struggling to implement IT, posed special threats to its survival.
The last half of the twentieth century saw a major movement of women out of the home and into the workforce. With that move came an increased demand for child day care that, in turn, spawned tens of thousands of family day care homes and day care centers, most of them licensed small businesses. Besides providing day care services, many of them participate in various state and federal programs aimed at subsidizing working parents, providing pre-school education to children, and improving nutrition among children of working parents. The company in this case — Quality Care, Inc. (QCI), a pseudonym used for this case — is a food program sponsor whose primary business is to administer day care homes and centers that participate in the federal government’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). (See the list of Online Resources at the end of the case for links to Web sites related to the CACFP.)
[url]http://e45.org/?http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QZBVP7JK[/url]

__________________