Perot Systems to Provide Free Cell Phones to Project Teams
Case Type: operations strategy.
Consulting Firm: Ernst & Young (EY) first round job interview.
Industry Coverage: software, information technology (IT); consulting, business services.
Case Interview Question #00488: Perot Systems is an information technology (IT) services provider and IT consulting firm headquartered in Plano, Texas, United States. The company maintains offices in more than 25 countries around the world, including the United States, Europe, India, China and Mexico. Perot Systems provides 
information technology services in the industries of health care, government, manufacturing, banking, insurance and others. Perot Systems is especially strong in health care industries with services such as digitizing and automating medical records. Before its acquisition by Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) in 2009, Perot Systems was a Fortune 1000 corporation with more than 23,000 associates and 2008 revenues of $2.8 billion.
While on his way to the airport, the CEO of Perot Systems wants to know whether it is a good idea to provide mobile phones to all company employees. What do you think?
Possible Answer:
Candidate: What kind of IT consulting service does your firm Perot Systems specialize in?
Interviewer: Mostly software development and programming, also some functional consulting.
Candidate: How big is your firm?
Interviewer: We currently have about 23,000 employees.
Candidate: What about the size of management?
Interviewer: About 15% are managers and the rest are programmers and software engineers.
Candidate: It doesn’t seem to be a good idea to provide mobile phones to programmers, because the utilization may not be worth the investment. There is little reason for programmers on the job to use cell phones as the nature of job involves more of online transferring of data (if the need arises) and less of real-time information exchange.
Moreover for the rest of the employees, I would suggest doing a detailed cost-benefit analysis. Costs should be based on assumptions of attractive corporate rates decided with cellular companies and the average usage expected. Benefits will have to be decided by taking into account expected increase in revenue by providing real-time access to information.
Interviewer: Don’t you think you may need some more information before you can jump to that conclusion.
Candidate: Hum…let me think about that for a few moments. Where do your consultants do most of their work?
Interviewer: They work mostly at the client site.
Candidate: What kind of resources do they use while at the client site?
Interviewer: They work on computers. Sometimes they use the PC’s on the client site, and sometimes they use their own laptops.
Candidate: Do they mostly exchange voice communication or data?
Interviewer: Mostly data, but they often call into headquarters or one another for help solving tricking technical issues.
Candidate: I see. Do the client site locations have telephones?
Interviewer: Actually they do, but very often there is only one telephone line in a given room, even though 4 or 5 consultants may be sharing that room.
Candidate: Do the consultants have network connections?
Interviewer: Sometimes they do, though often they are forced to tie up the phone line because they have to dial out to get a connection to transfer data. Well, we’ve run out of time. What do you think we should provide mobile phones to all of our employees?
Candidate: Well, based on what you have told me, I would say that there is a definite need for some employees to have cell phones. Instead of purchasing cell phones for all of your employees, you might explore the possibility of providing phones to project teams on a needed basis to keep cost down.
Interviewer: Do you see any problems with that solution?
Candidate: Well, you would have to set up some sort of system where you track usage by employee just to ensure some accountability. If you could do this, then I think this solution would lead to higher productivity at a minimum cost.
Interviewer: Great. Thank you for your time!