PAN AFRICA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
BUE 4123 BUSINESS CONSULTING
ASSIGNMENT - CASE STUDY
Mandy, Eric, Bruce and Muchoki Partners is a large Kisumu based legal firm. Among its staff
are 22 data entry clerks who work in the Word Processing Centre (WPC). Their job is to process
large volumes of legal documents produced by the firm's solicitors. WPC clerks are carefully
selected and must be holders of Diploma in ICT, or KCSE certificate with good passes in
business subjects. When they join the firm, they are taken through a week of training in
specialized legal documents, and extra training sessions are held regularly to ensure they keep
their knowledge up-to-date.
The firm occupies 10 floors of a new building in Kisumu City. The WPC is located on the 15th
floor and has wonderful views around the city and the lake. The centre is very well equipped
with excellent furnishings and a very pleasant staff room. The firm is able to attract good quality
workers because it offers above average wages and many other benefits. However, all is not well.
Senior staff and solicitors have complained to Madam Mandy, the Managing Partner that they
need to check the work of WPC clerks who work as relief secretaries, because of the frequent
errors made. They also believe that these workers are unreliable and lack initiative. Personnel
records show that WPC staff do not stay with the firm for very long, despite the opportunities for
promotion.
None of the solicitors know the workers in the Centre very well, but all praise the hard work and
service provided by Mrs. Odeny, the WPC supervisor, who has worked with the firm for over 20
years. Indeed, they tend to see the problem as the result of something wrong "with young people
today." When Madam Mandy raises the matter of the WPC's problems, Mrs. Odeny reacts a little
angrily. She defends her clerks, saying that despite the errors, they do complete a lot of work.
She admits that many of them find the job boring, as it mostly involves keying in information.
The clerks also, often come to work late, chat at every opportunity, and generally don't work too
hard. To stop this, she keeps a firm eye on them but she believes she can't be too hard or they
will leave the firm.
Mrs. Odeny then explains the WPC system. The work to be done arrives from each solicitor and
is allocated to the clerks on a daily basis. To ensure they know what to do, she goes over each
piece of work with them before they do the job. When information needs to be clarified, Mrs.
Odeny goes to the relevant solicitor herself and then passes the information on to the clerks. She
collects the output when the job is finished and returns it to the solicitors.
Her job however, also means she liaises with solicitors on other floors, so she is often away from
the Centre. Mrs. Odeny agrees that the workers do not perform very well as relief secretaries, but
thinks this is because the work is more complex than they are trained to do. She says the
solicitors do not help the relief secretaries enough and expect them to know everything straight
away.
