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revenue from the certifi cates. The certifi cate archive staff increase represents pure
overhead because by law there is no charge for searching the archives or mailing out
duplicate certifi cates to replace lost originals.
Tom meets with Frank Fouchet, the company Financial Manager, and Lisa
Lemoine, the company Operations Manager. They determine that it is time to
automate the certifi cate production and archiving process. The numbers tell them
that a computer-assisted certifi cate system might allow them to defer a prepara-
tion staff increase for several years and possibly allow them to reduce the current
archive staff while sustaining revenue growth and increasing profi t. As with all
automation projects, there is no “free lunch.” It will take money to save money.
DSA must invest some of its profi ts now in a computer system in order to realize
both the revenue growth and increased profi t later. Lisa also observes that there
will be costs and effort beyond the computer system implementation per se to con-
vert the current manual archives to computer-searchable archives. There may need
to be a transition period in which some certifi cates will be computer searchable
and printable while other certifi cates will remain searchable and printable only by
hand.
DSA contacts Computing Perspectives, Inc. (CPI), a local computer consulting
company, and requests a bid from CPI for a turn-key computer-assisted certifi cate
production system that will completely replace the DSA manual certifi cate system.
The CPI consultant team visits the DSA offi ces and interviews Tom, Frank, and Lisa
to understand the scope and requirements of the new system. Then, the CPI team
asks to see the written offi ce procedures and watch the certifi cate staff manually
produce completion certifi cates using these procedures. Afterwards, CPI replies
with a turn-key bid that includes
computer hardware
computer software
written guides for users and administrators
training for the administrators
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The CPI team highlights the following specifi c risks that the automated certifi cate
system implementation will present to DSA business. Most of these risks have been
mitigated so far by the manual certifi cate system in place.
ability to produce State approved original certifi cates that conform to State of
Colorado legislation
ability to archive all DSA original certifi cates produced and mailed for the
legislated 3-year duration
ability to search the DSA certifi cate archive and either confi rm certifi cate
originals or print approved certifi cate duplicates
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The CPI team also points out DSA risk due to the nature of the required manual-
to-automated system skills transition because the current certifi cate production
staff is not accustomed to doing more than word processing and spreadsheets on
computers.
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