Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.

Harrison-Keys is an old publishing company trying to step into the 21st century with E-publishing. There are many lessons learned from the mistakes made by Harrison-Keys. By not creating contingency plans and emergency backup plans, the destruction of Asia Digital has brought the reformatting process to a halt. By not ensuring all resources and communications, abilities and weaknesses were identified and work around processes developed, the failure of the marketing program to attract the target audience has set the project back in deliverables. By ineffectively communicating the logic behind out-sourcing the reformatting to Asia Digital, employees have assumed their positions will eventually be outsourced like in other organizations and are leaving. Harrison-Keys must know when too fold their hand on this project and address the problems before things get any worse. Less convinced that the future growth in publishing is in E-books with the turnover of CEO's, Harrison-Keys must explore various methods and tactics for salvaging the project.

English: VA IT Project Management Framework

McGraw-Hill's 1990s logo

English: McGraw-Hill Building at Rockefeller Cente...

Harrison-Keys can determine which best practices are best suited to their needs. Harrison-Keys examines project management, overcoming obstacles and getting back on track.

Describe the Situation

Issue and Opportunity Identification

In the University of Phoenix scenario two for MBA 590, Harrison-Keys is a century old publisher. Like other publishers, they are experiencing margin squeeze as print retailers consolidate, and generous return policies have squeezed margins father. Sales are declining at a 6% rate. Harrison-Keys has followed the lead if many other publishers by attempting to boost sales and revenues through E-publishing. "Determining the accuracy of predictions regarding the economic implications of a new technology based on adoption/innovation theory is important in assessing the potential for applying the methodology to other evolving communications sectors" (Shaver & Shaver, 2003). Publishers such as McGraw-Hill have been providing E-content for over a decade. Harrison-Keys has implemented...