Vermont Teddy Bear Company (VTBC) is a privately owned company founded in 1981 by John Sorinto. Mr. Sorinto begin his successful business by selling and delivering hand sewn bears or BearGrams out of a pushcart in the streets of Burlington, Vermont. Since that time, the company's focus has been to design, manufacture, and direct market the best teddy bears made in America using quality American materials and labor. Vermont Teddy Bear Company expanded its product base to include a BearGrams plush toys, PajamaGrams apparel, TastyGram gourmet foods, and Calyx Flowers floral arrangements. Vermont Teddy Bear Company sells mostly via its online store, printed mail order catalogs and through a telephone hotline service. Vermont Teddy Bear Company
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CEO John Gilbert and the CIO Bob Stetzel are working together to improve day-to-day operations but are running into a few show stoppers, issues and concerns. First issue is the limited amount of business knowledge and continuity for incoming CIO Bob Stetzel. There is a limited amount of continuity as well a limited number of employees who possess the operational knowledge to effective run the day to day operations during peak seasons. Due to recent layoffs and downsizing, Mr. Stetzel’s IT staff consist of seven IT professionals with narrowed knowledge/skills who previously focused more in troubleshooting and problem-solving than application development, system and software upgrades. This personal/human resource management issue may have contributed to the lack of proper documentation of resources, critical IT applications, standards, operational functions, processes, policies and procedures. Mr. Stetzel understood the importance of knowledge management and realized that if certain employees were to leave, they would be taking critical undocumented business knowledge with them. Vermont Teddy Bear Company limited IT staff worked extremely long hours behind the scenes and under pressure to insure the company maintain its operational threshold through the peak season (Gogan & Lewis,
CEO John Gilbert and the CIO Bob Stetzel are working together to improve day-to-day operations but are running into a few show stoppers, issues and concerns. First issue is the limited amount of business knowledge and continuity for incoming CIO Bob Stetzel. There is a limited amount of continuity as well a limited number of employees who possess the operational knowledge to effective run the day to day operations during peak seasons. Due to recent layoffs and downsizing, Mr. Stetzel’s IT staff consist of seven IT professionals with narrowed knowledge/skills who previously focused more in troubleshooting and problem-solving than application development, system and software upgrades. This personal/human resource management issue may have contributed to the lack of proper documentation of resources, critical IT applications, standards, operational functions, processes, policies and procedures. Mr. Stetzel understood the importance of knowledge management and realized that if certain employees were to leave, they would be taking critical undocumented business knowledge with them. Vermont Teddy Bear Company limited IT staff worked extremely long hours behind the scenes and under pressure to insure the company maintain its operational threshold through the peak season (Gogan & Lewis,