Your
company has 3000 employees and is looking for ways to reduce some of
its operating costs. You have prepared the following list of
operating expenses.
Telephone costs |
$750,000 per year |
Employee policy handbooks |
$8.75 per handbook for printing and distribution |
Employee benefits counseling |
$80 per hour meeting |
You are hoping you can reduce some of these costs by using
Internet technology to build an intranet for the firm. The intranet
would do the following:
- Provide e-mail communication among employees worldwide.
- Provide employee handbooks that could be published and revised
electronically and accessed from each employee's desktop computer.
- Enable employees to select and revise their medical and life
insurance plans online through their computers.
You believe that employees could use e-mail to accomplish 40% of
the communication that is taking place over the telephone. All
employees are required to review their health benefits and re-enroll
in their benefits plans once per year. New employee handbooks are
distributed to each employee once a year. The intranet would cost
$600,000 to develop and $100,000 annually to maintain. No new
hardware or networking infrastructure would be required since
employees already use networked desktop PCs.
- How would the intranet make the management process more
efficient?
- How much would the intranet reduce agency costs? Is the
intranet worthwhile to build?
- Are there any other benefits that could be produced by the
intranet? Are there any disadvantages to using the intranet?
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