Using SNA to evaluate Information and communication Technology requirement of the a family business.

Background:

I am a part of a family owned business. The company is into manufacturing of corrugated boxes. The family is led by 4 brothers, having 6 manufacturing units in close proximity.

The current organization structure is such that 1st brother is the face of the organization meaning he works as connector between the large B2B client and communicate everything within the internal organization.
                       The 2nd brother is responsible for all the financial activity and also looks after 1 of the 6 manufacturing units. The 3rd brother is responsible for Purchase, Maintenance, operations at large, and also looks after 1 of the 6 units. The 4th brother is responsible for Logistics, storage of some inventory and also holds managerial function of 1 of the 6 units.

Situation:

We understand that every business in today's world needs to be integrated and connected in such a way that all the internal and external communication flow becomes seamless.
The current situation is that all the brothers are spending a lot of time in communicating with each other to keep everyone posted however due to communication gaps, few of the information gets missed at times which results in a problem and the business fails to deliver. The level of information flow has made the brothers sick as they are always on the phone and loosing on the personal time.

Problems Identified:

Speed of information flow across different parts of the organization, with respect to keeping everyone updated about the progress without requiring them to be constantly on the phone asking about the update.

Possible Solution:

 The company is looking to invest in an ICT system which might resolve this issue, however to evaluate the requirement MMAK had to analyze, its requirement because the cost of the system totally depends on the number of users and with every user it comes with a cost of the software, hardware and training.  

Objective of SNA:

In order for the this new ICT system to work, the company might consider SNA, this would allow the company to streamline the requirement of information flow. The data which could be used is the corporate cell-phone record that is already available with the company.

The incoming and outgoing calls with the frequency of calls to different numbers can be requested by the telecom company and does not violate the privacy of anyone in the organization. Meaning the company can use everyones interaction with the frequency of the call and then convert them into data that makes sense of UNICET. (For example: if there is more than 5 calls to a number, it would be classified as frequent and less then 1 call a day to a number could be used as "sometimes" likewise depending on the overall data, the measures could be established.)

Now, when we have the data, we can Dichotomize the data into two groups, the first group would have </= to 4&5 which is frequent and most frequent, therefore establishing that there is a 100% requirement of this ICT to these people because the information frequency is very high.

And the other group which is > 4, could be further used to establish the importance of the person, (for Example: the client may not be communicating as much as the internal organization however it is a good idea that he being the source "High out-degree & Low In-degree" of the information. If we ingrate him then the whole process becomes more faster.)

Possible Result:

The SNA has helped to identify the possible solution to a key business problem. With that I am able to establish that the SNA is been a key tool to identify the ICT requirement of the business.


Regards,
Shail Aggarwal
MIM
Hult IBS