IT Management Report: Improving Rustic Americana Call Center

This report focuses on the IT management challenges faced by the Rustic Americana call center, a division of the Largo Corporation, which sells arts and crafts products online. The report begins by identifying issues such as decreasing annual sales, improper management, delayed shipping, and failures in providing timely notifications for out-of-stock products. It then identifies best practices for technology management, including IT strategic planning, enterprise architecture, IT investment management, and effective people management. Furthermore, the report proposes operational improvements using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, particularly focusing on service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement (CSI). The report highlights the importance of Service Level Management (SLM) within ITIL to ensure customer satisfaction and better service delivery, emphasizing the need for measuring, defining, reviewing, and reporting services, building strong customer relationships, and proactively implementing measures for improved service.

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
Information Technology Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Abstract:
The main aim of this report is identifying various type of problems which has been
currently faced by the call centre of the Rustic Americana. As there are several types of
problem within the organization this report has the aim of solving these problems. To solve
this problem some best practices has been identified for managing the technologies
appropriately. In the further discussion operational improvements has been discussed which
are applicable for Rustic Americana’s call centre and for that Information Technology
Infrastructure Library has been discussed briefly.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Issue Matrix:...............................................................................................................................2
Identification of Best Practices:.................................................................................................2
Operational Improvement:.........................................................................................................4
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................6
References:.................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction:
Rustic Americana is a division of the Largo Corporation, and currently the Rustic
Americana sells arts and crafts product through their web store. In the current situation this
organization is facing problem regarding customer services as they are failing to provide
proper product updates to the customers. In this context some best practices will be identified
for the technology management Rustic Americana. Also, applicable operational
improvements will be identified in this report.
Issue Matrix:
Issues Priority of the Issue Assigned
Responsibility
Support Contact
Decrement of
Annual Sales
High Management of the
Organization
CIO
Improper Service
Quality
High Management Cable Company
Delayed Shipping Medium Shipping
Department
Customer service
desk
Failure in providing
notification when a
product goes out of
stock
Medium IT Department Sales Department

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Identification of Best Practices:
Management of technologies is very much important concept for the operational
improvements. There are several of best practices available for perfect management of the
technologies. The IT strategic planning is very much important in the aspect of technology
management. The IT strategic planning helps in this aspects by affecting how the agencies
will implement a strategic planning for managing their IT facilities (Coltman et al., 2015). In
this aspect for an IT strategic planning there are several steps which need to be followed. In
this aspect the first step is documenting the IT strategic planning process. The other important
steps are the integration of information security management with operational and strategic
planning process and ensuring IT strategic plans supports the agency strategic plans.
The Enterprise Architecture is another aspect by which a well-defined blueprint of the
organization can be achieved. By this the organization will be able to manage the
technologies easily (Chorafas et al., 2016). The enterprise architecture effectively provides
comprehensive and clear idea of the organization. Most of the organizations uses the
enterprise architecture for making certain changes in the organization or for modernizing
existing system (Lapalme et al., 2016). For the successful implementation of the EA within
organization awareness about it must be created. Also a management of foundation need to
be done for development of EA and use.
The IT investment management also one of the best practices which can help to solve
the problems currently faced by the Rustic Americana’s call centre. From the various of
scenarios it has been assessed that IT projects are capable of improving the performance of
the organizations but for this, investments are needed in the in the IT projects (Chandra,
2017). Though this can effectively improve the performance of the organization still in many
cases IT investments can be risky, costly and unproductive. Thus for the Rustic Americana
call centre efficient and effective IT investments management process are required which will

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maximise the value of IT investment and it will also minimise the IT acquisition risk. The
Rustic Americana can initiate an effective IT investment management plan and for that they
need to follow some steps which are creation of awareness, building the foundation and
developing a complete investment portfolio.
Managing the peoples is also very much important for effective operations in the
organization and here it can improve the call centre operations of Rustic Americana. For the
perfect management of the peoples there are several of things which need to be considered.
For effective management of the employees, their issues in the organization must be solved
positively and with that any type of conflict, which has been raised among the employees,
must be mitigated effectively (Cascio, 2015). Also the management need to set a clear
measureable job objectives to the employees so that they can reach to their performance
target effectively.
Operational Improvement:
In the current situation of the Largo Company, several of problem is faced by them
regarding the call centre issue of Rustic Americana. The main issue in this case is related
with the customer centric IT services. In this context for improving the customer centric IT
services, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can be utilised. In the aspect
of IT services the ITIL provides five core process areas (Steinberg, 2011). These five core
process are the service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation process
and continual service improvement. In this aspect the service strategy of the ITIL helps the
organization to identify the business objectives, manage service portfolios and the customer
needs. In this aspect the service design helps to reduce total cost of ownership and improves
consistency, performance and service quality (Rance, 2011). The service transition helps in
this case for IT based customer management by allowing service providers to manage and

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plan changes effectively and efficiently. This also helps in the aspects of managing risks
regarding retired services and also ensure knowledge transfer occurrence. The service
operation process helps in this case by providing opportunities for seeing the benefits of the
previous process area. This process also covers carrying out activities and coordination at
some agreed levels. The Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is different from the other
four processes. It actually involved with large scale improvements across service lifecycles.
The CSI or the Continual Service Improvement is involved with more than measurement of
the current performance (Lloyd, 2011). The CSI is totally involved with understanding of
what need to be measured and why it is measured. Also, successful outcome is measured
through CSI. In the CSI, all of the processes should consist cleared defined objectives and
actionable measurement. This actually led to the improvements of the current system. Thus,
through the implementation of the ITIL customer centric IT services can be improved.
The Service level management (SLM) is one of the biggest factor of ITIL which
ensures that customer are always severed better. The SLM or the Service level management
is part of the service design state of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
customer life cycle and it is one of the most important ITIL discipline (Lu et al., 2016). The
main idea of the service level management is that it ensures agreed level of the services that
are conveyed and the future service of the organization also conveys this agreed service
levels. To ensure this that the organization is delivering the agreed level of services some
procedures need to be followed which are described in the following section.
 The organization need to measure, define, review and report services that has been
provided to the customers.
 A good relationship need to be maintained between the business and the customers.
 The clarity of the expectations must be ensured for the services which will be
delivered to the customers.

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 The satisfaction of the customers must be improved.
 Proactively measures need to be implemented which can help to deliver a better
service while the cost can be justified.
In this context the following Service level management (SLM) activities ensures better
service to the customers.
 SLM effectively converts requirements regarding businesses into some tangible
specifications.
 The SLM also establishes an effective service scope and the service support
provision which helps to provide better service to the customers (Marrone et al.,
2014).
 The SLM also maintain a catalogue regarding the services which generally
includes pricing, offered service to the customers and information regarding
customers. This all effectively contributes in proper satisfaction of the customer.
 The SLM allows service expansion to the customers through the capacity
management.
 The continuous service improvement or the CSI is an important factor of ITIL and
SLM is the keystone for the CSI.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion it can be concluded that Rustic Americana call centre is
having a huge problem regarding the services that are provided to the customers. Due to this
reason in this report some of the possible ways has been discussed which can be used for
mitigating this possible problems. Also, in this report an issue matrix has been provided
indicating all of the issues faced by the Rustic Americana. In the further section of this

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document best practices has been identified related with the technology management.
Following that applicable operational improvements has been also discussed in this case.

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References:
Cascio, W. F. (2015). Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill.
Chandra, P. (2017). Investment analysis and portfolio management. McGraw-Hill Education.
Chorafas, D. N. (2016). Enterprise architecture and new generation information systems.
CRC Press.
Coltman, T., Tallon, P., Sharma, R., & Queiroz, M. (2015). Strategic IT alignment: twenty-
five years on.
Lapalme, J., Gerber, A., Van der Merwe, A., Zachman, J., De Vries, M., & Hinkelmann, K.
(2016). Exploring the future of enterprise architecture: A Zachman
perspective. Computers in Industry, 79, 103-113.
Lloyd, V. (2011). ITIL Continual Service Improvement (Best Management Practices). The
Stationery Office.
Lu, K., Yahyapour, R., Wieder, P., Yaqub, E., Abdullah, M., Schloer, B., & Kotsokalis, C.
(2016). Fault-tolerant service level agreement lifecycle management in clouds using
actor system. Future Generation Computer Systems, 54, 247-259.
Marrone, M., Gacenga, F., Cater-Steel, A., & Kolbe, L. (2014). IT service management: A
cross-national study of ITIL adoption. CAIS, 34, 49.
Rance, S. (2011). ITIL Service Transition (Best Management Practices). Norwich: The.
Steinberg, L. A. (2011). ITIL Service Operation (Best Management Practices). The
Stationery Office.