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Unicef And It

Case 1 - How UNICEF Manages Its Global IT

UNICEF – United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund – was established in December 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly. It has its headquarters in New York City and its main area of focus is on the health care, education and rights of children and mothers.
They have a $2 billion annual budget for all their activities. Their main source of cash is through funds and they compete for funding with other humanitarian organisations like CARE. UNICEF has about 10,000 staff and volunteers who work from 250 centres in 160 countries.
The Problem
• Few LANs and no WANs: The connectivity between the various offices was poor even if they were located in the same country.
• Slow internet connection: Communication to the UNICEF headquarters in New York was via dial-up the internet. Vital information had to be printed out and sent to the headquarters to be entered into the central system.
• Old legacy systems: The IT systems that handling the different modules like finance, HR, logistics were al maintained in legacy systems making it difficult to integrate it with the newer systems.
• The decision making process was long drawn out as management had to look into reports which had many months’ data and thus couldn’t get a precise picture of the scenario that lay.
The Solution:
• The first step taken by CIO Andre Spatz to fix all the problems was to move all the systems to the Internet and maintain an internet-based network.
• Fully deployed ERP from SAP: UNICEF used SAP to manage the design, production, marketing of its products like greeting cards. SAP also helps in integrating all the core processes into one cost-effective system. This has also reduced the overheads on the staff to do various administrative tasks and so they are utilized better for more productive work like supporting field projects.
• High-speed Internet access in every country and office: This speeds up the process of communication...