The Clambake Case:
The Clambake Company has been providing seafood to the northeast region of the United States for over 30 years. They started as a small family business and have grown to more than 30 employees. They first installed a small accounting system to take care of their finances, payroll, and tax reporting. About seven years ago they installed a sales program to track sales. They are now considering buying out a competing company that would increase their sales 80% and their workforce 40%. They realize that it will require more time in the office to administer the company, especially since they are now branching out into other areas. One concern they have is what to do about their information systems. They anticipate strong growth over the next 10 years and cannot afford to make a mistake with their IS. They wonder if they should add two other functional systems to go with the two they have or to spend more resources, which might stretch them now, in order to go to one cross-functional system that would be more than sufficient to accommodate the anticipated growth.
They have hired you as a consultant to make a recommendation on what they should do. Make your recommendations.