Carolina Ingredients and the Maturation of a Management Information System

The founder and CEO of Carolina Ingredients believed strongly that efficient and effective management of processes was part of the company’s core values. The company had made continuous improvements in the areas of sustainability and operating procedures. Realizing that information systems were an integral part of the company operations, a systems’ administrator was hired to manage the information systems. The systems’ administrator helped implement several improvements to the operating procedures of the company but a new inventory management system ended up posing a problem that the administrator had to bring to the management team for consultation. In preparation for the meeting with the management team, the administrator identified four different solutions that he planned to present to the group for discussion: purchase a different system; continue working with the vendor for the existing system; hire an outside consultant to develop a solution; or revert to manual processes.