Prepare The First Section Of Business Analysis And System ✓ Solved

Prepare the first section of a Business Analysis and System

Prepare the first section of a Business Analysis and System Recommendation Report (BA&SR) for Maryland Technology Consultants (MTC) based on the provided case study. MTC is an IT consulting firm (founded 2008, HQ Baltimore, 450 employees, $95M revenue) that provides business process, IT, and outsourcing consulting. Strategic goals include winning new IT contracts, building an international remote consultant cadre, rapid staffing for awarded contracts, and increasing reputation for leading-edge consultants. Current hiring is manual; HR cannot meet a sudden need to hire 75+ consultants quickly. Management seeks an off-the-shelf SaaS applicant tracking/recruiting system that can be implemented quickly, integrate with existing timekeeping and payroll, support mobile and global hiring, and maintain strong data security. Stakeholder requirements summarized: CEO—ensure right people are in place quickly; CFO—low total cost of ownership, integration with payroll; CIO—SaaS preference, mobile compatibility, global viability, security; HR Director—easy-to-use, scalable, integrable; Recruiting Manager—reduce time-to-hire, handle large volume; Administrative Assistant—workflow automation; Hiring Manager—dashboard, scheduling, ease of use. Analyze the organization and explain how an IT system could be used to support its strategies and objectives and support its decision-making processes. Produce the first section of the BA&SR.

Paper For Above Instructions

Executive summary

Maryland Technology Consultants (MTC) faces a tactical and strategic talent-delivery challenge: rapid scaling to staff two anticipated large contracts (75+ consultants), continued growth, and plans for international augmentation while preserving agility, reputation, and data security. A commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applicant tracking/recruiting system (ATS) can align directly with MTC’s strategic objectives—faster time-to-fill, quality-of-hire, global reach, and cost-effective operations—while providing decision-support through analytics and integrated workflows (Deloitte Bersin, 2016; Gartner, 2019).

Organizational analysis and pain points

MTC’s core competency is consulting talent. Current manual hiring processes create bottlenecks in resume routing, candidate tracking, interview scheduling, offer management, and onboarding. HR and support staff are overloaded, causing lost or delayed candidates, longer time-to-hire, and increased risk of losing top talent to competitors (SHRM, 2018). Key stakeholder needs include rapid staffing (CEO), constrained total cost of ownership and payroll integration (CFO), a SaaS, mobile, and secure solution (CIO), ease-of-use and scalability (HR Director), volume-handling and time-to-hire reduction (Recruiting Manager), workflow automation (Admin Assistant), and hiring-manager dashboards and scheduling (Hiring Manager).

How an ATS supports strategy and objectives

An ATS directly supports MTC’s strategic goals in multiple ways:

  • Win and deliver new contracts: By reducing time-to-fill and improving match quality through automated resume parsing, keyword matching, and recruiter workflows, an ATS enables faster deployment of qualified consultants, increasing bid credibility (Gartner, 2019; Kavanagh et al., 2015).
  • Scale internationally: SaaS ATS platforms support multi-language, multi-jurisdictional configurations and global candidate pools while providing compliance features (GDPR, local labor law settings), enabling MTC’s plan to incorporate offshore research/analysis support (Benlian et al., 2011; GDPR, 2016).
  • Build reputation for talent: Candidate experience improvements—automated communications, transparent status tracking, and efficient scheduling—enhance employer brand and increase applicant conversion (SHRM, 2018).
  • Operational efficiency and cost control: Automation reduces administrative overhead, paper handling, and interoffice delays; analytics provide visibility into recruiter productivity and hiring costs supporting CFO oversight of TCO (Deloitte Bersin, 2016; LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2017).

Decision support and analytics

Modern ATS platforms provide dashboards and HR analytics that convert hiring activity into actionable metrics: time-to-fill, source-of-hire effectiveness, pipeline conversion rates, quality-of-hire indicators, and forecasted hiring needs (Davenport et al., 2010). For MTC, these analytics enable:

  • Real-time visibility for hiring managers and executives (dashboarding for hiring status and resource forecasts).
  • Predictive insights to prioritize requisitions when bid success probability changes (supporting just-in-time hiring decisions).
  • Financial linkage to payroll/timekeeping to calculate hiring costs, billable utilization ramp, and ROI per hire (CFO requirement).

Functional and non-functional system requirements (summary)

Based on stakeholder input, key requirements include:

  • Core ATS functions: job requisition management, resume parsing, candidate database, configurable workflows, interview scheduling, offer management, and onboarding task tracking (SHRM, 2018).
  • Integrations: secure API-based integration with existing timekeeping and payroll, SSO with corporate identity, and calendar integration for interview scheduling.
  • Global and compliance features: multi-currency, multi-language support, data residency options, and pre-built GDPR/compliance controls (GDPR, 2016).
  • Security and governance: encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access, audit logging, and alignment with NIST/ISO controls (NIST SP 800-series; ISO/IEC 27001).
  • Mobile-friendly UI and recruiter/hiring-manager dashboards to fit MTC’s distributed workforce (Benlian et al., 2011).
  • Scalability and vendor support: SaaS delivery with rapid provisioning, SLAs, and support for peak hiring bursts.

Expected benefits and KPIs

Implementing an ATS should yield measurable benefits within months: 15–25% reduction in time-to-hire (Recruiting Manager expectation; corroborated by industry reports), decreased administrative headcount hours, improved candidate throughput during peak hiring, and better forecasting for staffing needs (LinkedIn, Deloitte). Suggested KPIs to track include time-to-fill, time-to-offer, offer-acceptance rate, source efficiency, recruiter workload, and TCO per hire (Davenport et al., 2010; SHRM, 2018).

Risks and mitigations

Primary risks include data privacy breaches, integration delays, user adoption resistance, and configuration mismatches for global hiring. Mitigations: choose vendors with strong security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2), implement phased integration with payroll/timekeeping, run targeted training and change management for hiring managers and recruiters, and pilot international workflows before full rollout (NIST, 2018; Benlian et al., 2011).

Conclusion and next steps

An enterprise-grade SaaS applicant tracking/recruiting system is well-aligned to MTC’s strategic priorities: enabling rapid, high-quality staffing for client contracts, supporting international growth, and delivering decision-grade analytics while controlling TCO. Recommended next steps: (1) develop a prioritized requirements matrix mapping stakeholder needs to vendor capabilities; (2) perform a vendor short-list and proof-of-concept focusing on integration, security, mobile UX, and compliance; (3) define a phased implementation and change management plan emphasizing recruiter and hiring-manager adoption; and (4) establish KPI baselines and executive dashboards to measure success post-deployment.

References

  • Davenport, T. H., Harris, J., & Shapiro, J. (2010). Competing on Talent Analytics. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/
  • Deloitte Bersin. (2016). High-Impact Talent Acquisition: The New Imperative. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/
  • Gartner. (2019). Market Guide for Talent Acquisition Technology. Gartner Research. https://www.gartner.com/
  • Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). (2018). Applicant Tracking Systems: Benefits and Best Practices. https://www.shrm.org/
  • Benlian, A., Hess, T., & Buxmann, P. (2011). Drivers of SaaS-Adoption – An Empirical Study of Different Application Types. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 3(5), 357–369. https://link.springer.com/
  • LinkedIn Talent Solutions. (2017). Global Talent Trends and Recruiting Benchmarks. LinkedIn. https://business.linkedin.com/
  • European Parliament and Council. (2016). General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). https://gdpr-info.eu/
  • NIST. (2018). NIST Special Publication 800-53: Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations. National Institute of Standards and Technology. https://csrc.nist.gov/
  • ISO/IEC 27001. (2013). Information Security Management. International Organization for Standardization. https://www.iso.org/isoiec-27001-information-security.html
  • Kavanagh, M. J., Thite, M., & Johnson, R. D. (2015). Human Resource Information Systems: Basics, Applications, and Future Directions (3rd ed.). Sage Publications.

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