MBA 208 - Business Management Information System with Computer Application Case Study No. 5: Glory Finds Solutions in the Cloud Ever wonder who keeps track of all your ATM transactions? If you use ATMs anywhere in the globe - and who doesn't-chances are good that specialist firms like Glory Global Solutions Ltd. are managing the process of dispensing and depositing cash ATM transactions. It's called the cash management business, and it's at the heart of banking activity in thousands of bank branches and global banking systems, and an important part of the retail vending, automated self-service venues, and gaming industries (such as the gambling industry, which runs on cash). There are over 3.2 million ATMs worldwide, and consumers made 10 billion withdrawals in 2016 , amounting to just under 1 trillion in value. Given the ubiquity of ATMs, cash transactions require global scale systems to manage the flow of value. One impact of the financial meltdown beginning in 2008 is that banks shut down thousands of bank branches, resulting in a spurt in ATM cash transactions and an industry-wide move towards automated teller systems. Glory Global was founded in 1918 as Kokuei Machinery in Himeji, Japan. Originally a light bulb manufacturing firm, it expanded on its manufacturing strengths by building the first coin and cash counters in Japan. By the 1970 s it moved into the manufacture of ATMs worldwide and changed its name to the Glory Group. Through a series of acquisitions, Glory expanded rapidly, In 2013 Global acquired Talaris (a UK-based cash management firm) to become Glory Global Solutions with headquarters in Basingstoke, England. Today Glory is one of the world's largest cash management solutions providers. Glory Global Solutions has 2,500 employees, operates in 100 countries, and generates more than 1.7 billion annually according to company sources. Glory remains a lapanese-owned firm that trades on the Tokyo stock exchange. Growing through more than 25 acquisitions, the company quickly became a collection of legacy systems developed in different countries, by multiple firms and developers, for different lines of business. The company also inherited a collection of data centers from the firms it acquired. The various systems could not communicate with one another, and management was unable to "see" all of its businesses or to understand the business processes of their various business segments and operating companies. In 2015 management decided the firm could not achieve its strategic goals of growing the business without being able to streamline and standardize its business processes worldwide. The inefficiency of operating so many disparate data centers and the absence of a single global system operating on a modern technology platform suggested the need for a global enterprise database approach and for operating on a cloud platform provided by a single vendor. Moving to a cloud solution would greatly reduce its data management and IT infrastructure costs. Glory had already begun the move toward a cloud-based business by deploying Office 365 and other cloud solutions a few years before. For the first time, the firm was able to share documents, data, and presentations across all its business segments. The firm's managers believed they could obtain a positive return on their investment within four years by moving other processes to a single database and a single cloud service. The next challenge was determining which vendor would be the best choice. There are multiple vendors of cloud-based computing, from very large firms like Oracle, SAP, IBM, and HP to smaller, regional providers. Ultimately, Glory narrowed the choice down to two global vendors and then decided that Oracle best fit their needs. The firm had already adopted in its European operations several elements of Oracle's traditional enterprise suite installed on Glory's own servers. In the last five years, along with most global cloud providers, Oracle has moved rapidly towards offering "computing on demand" as a business model, where customers do not purchase software but instead rent the computing power they need and pay for only as much as they use the service. Having a single vendor for licensing software and processing power rather than dealing with multiple vendors was also seen as a positive factor. Few firms have the expertise to move rapidly from a legacy system to a contemporary cloud platform. Glory reviewed ten vendors of systems integration or services and chose a firm called TCS to help them with the transition and fill in gaps in the firm's own knowledge. TCS had considerable experience with Oracle enterprise systems and had a number of prebuilt modules that could used by Glory. System integrators are consulting firms that have expertise in the hardware and software of business systems and bring with them a knowledge and background in best business practices learned over many years in different industries. They help firms redesign their business processes and merge them into the enterprise software and IT infrastructure. After twelve months of work, the new platform was ready to deploy. A key challenge facing management was how to implement these platform changes in 24 countries with multiple languages and multiple regulations in each country. This turned out to be a massive cultural change. Each of the firm's business units required training in the new business processes and the software used to implement the processes. Over 2,000 of the firm's employees would be using the new systems, some daily, to perform their jobs. A direct cutover to the new system was considered too risky. A parallel system cutover where both the old and new platforms operate in parallel was considered too expensive, and too difficult technically. Management decided instead for a regional roll out strategy starting with the U.K. headquarters location. Completed in 2016, the company plans to implement the new system in the remaining countries over an eighteen-month period, with a target date of 2018 for complete implementation. Overall, the transition required four years to completion. Management believes they will have reduced their annual IT costs by 50 percent compared to the older legacy systems, but the real benefit will come from being able to operate and grow as a single global firm. CASE STUDY QUESTIONS: 1. Why did Glory choose a cloud solution as opposed to modernizing the systems it had? 2. Why was it necessary to hire a systems integrator firm? 3. What were the main organizational change requirements for implementing the new cloud platform? 4. Why did management choose a regional rollout strategy? Why in the UK