Week 6

1. Respond to the following:  Stuff-Up.Org (fictitious organisation at the time or writing) has an ailing set of in-house developed legacy systems.  It has been decided that the IT department will be tasked to investigate the possibility of adopting an ES.   If they recommend ES adoption, then it has also been decided that they will be tasked with evaluating products and recommending a product to the CEO.  What might be wrong with this situation?  What problems do you see arising?

        

Adopting an ES in replacing the in-house legacy system requires huge efforts .It is very hard to make the judgment for the IT department to investigate the possibility of adopting an ES, since it was their effort to introduce the in-house legacy system .The IT department staffs have a very good knowledge of handling the development of the in-house legacy system but since new ES system is much more complex and huge, it needs more time to know the new system. They need to perform more research in evaluating the product offered by different vendors. According to Khosrowpour (2000), decision on adopting new ES system can be made after a series of planning, analyzing the cost-benefit and comparison with the other products. The department staffs need to work together to find the best suitable ES for the organization. They need to face the challenges of high maintenance cost, inflexibility, end user training, implementation cost and so on.

An enterprise system is a multifunctional system which brings the entire department into one unit. Any organization is always looking to increase the effectiveness and improve the performance of the business processes. So the problem may arise if the decision is made only by the IT department .According to Gupta (2000), the adoption of the new ES might not give the desired outcome as the information put into the new system are very less. There might be another problem of technical and management issues during the integration of the different products in the new system.

 

1. Examine assessment item 2. Following on from the previous week, provide a rough skeleton of what you are going to put in your conclusions.

       This report investigated the important factors that are necessary for a successful implementation of ES which include technology, manpower and plans. Regular monitoring and carrying out the functional gap analysis can be a huge boost for the successful implementation. Bringing stability by re-engineering and adding specific functionalities can play important role in fixing the implementation and maintenance cost.

References:

Gupta, A 2000, ‘Enterprise resource planning: the emerging organizational value systems’, Industrial Management and Data Systems, vol.100, no.3, pp.114-118.

Khosrowpour, M 2000, ‘challenges of information technology management in the 21^st century’, Information Resources Management Association International Conference, Alaska, USA, eBook Collection (online EBSCOhost).

     

Week 9

1. Respond to the following:  If an organisation has business processes that do not match any commercially available ERP, should the organisation adopt an ERP?  Provide factors for and against and suggest other possible considerations that would factor in your reasoning.

       

If an organization has business processes that do not match any commercially available ERP, the organization should still adopt an ERP because the business organization can get the opportunity to business process re-design which enable to upgrade into best practice. The organization can still achieve their goals by shifting towards re-engineering of the ERP system.

The factors to be considered to adopt ERP as mentioned by Sumner (2005):

• ERP software can help in establishing a long term goals if strategic planning is put into action.
• It can increase the efficient and the productivity by reducing the inventory cost.
• Information gathering is quicker as duplication is very less.
• Reporting makes it easy to make quick decision.
• User interface is more improved and easy.
• Data consistence and data sharing are also improved.

The factors against adopting an ERP are as follows:

• Costly during implementation and maintenance.
• Insufficient Capital
• Implementing an ERP may take more time than expected which in turn can affect the whole project.
• Risk of slowing down the business functionality and business processes.
• Uncertainty of the completion of the project.

2 . Post an entry to your blog that answers the following questions:

 

a. What was the most difficult assessment item you completed so far in COIT20230 this term?

Ans: Assessment 3

b.  What was difficult about it and how would you suggest it could be improved?

Ans: Finding the appropriate article to match the case study was the difficult part about the                                               assessment 3.By spending lots and lots of time in research, it could be improved.

c. If you could provide three pieces of advice to a student who will be doing this course next term what would they be?

Ans:   Advices to a student doing this course next term would be;

• Lots of research is required.
• Take the lecture and tutorial every week.
• This course will help in building the career in IT industry.

 d. How will you able to use this knowledge in your future career?

Ans: This knowledge will help me to select the right ERP software according to the business need when I work in any IT company in the future. It has helped me to understand the suitable strategies to be taken into action in order to achieve the objectives such as adopting the new ERP system or remain with the old legacy system.

References:

Sumner, M 2005, Enterprise Resource Planning, 1^ST edn, Pearson Education, New Jersey.

Week 8

Respond to the following:  What skills and attributes do you think an ERP project manager must have?  Do you think these skills should include functional and/or technical knowledge of the product?  Why/why not – justify your answer.

A project manager (PM) is always keen on putting their maximum effort in delivering a safe project bounded by the allocated budget and on fixed time as the requirement of the client. PM  not only standardize the quality but also gives the desired performance( Sommerville, Craig & Hendry 2010).ERP PM should posses a very good and sharp knowledge of the business process and various related issues which may come up during the implementation phases. Not only that, ERP PM should definitely have other skills and attributes in delivering a successful project with quality standards and performance which may include leadership, communication, decision making, planning and so on.

Some skills and attributes that a PM should have for successful ERP implementation are given below:

• PM must have the skill in choosing and prioritizing the right employees who have been working in the same field for many years because ERP is a change process and it needs experienced employees who can change their way of working according to the change of time (Motiwalla & Thompson 2012).
• PM should lead the team from the front by providing the necessary guidance and motivation to the other member of the team.
• Since there are lots of disputes and coordination issues among the stakeholders, so PM should cope with all kinds of conflicts by proper communication and coordination and bringing all the participants into one place.

It is not necessary for the PM to have maximum understanding of both functional and technical knowledge in order to evaluate the vendor product. But PM should have certain level of knowledge such as monitoring the technical team performance. It is not necessary for the project manager to carry out the programmer’s job which is the technical skill. But the project manager can monitor and check whether the other programmers have been doing the right thing and it is going to be completed in the specified time. In order to handle those technical issues, project manager needs to locate the right solution and provide necessary resources to carry out the business processes ( Gross 2011).

References:

Gross, J 2011, ‘ERP project managers: how technical do they have to be?’, viewed on 11^th September 2013.

Motiwalla, LF & Thompson, J 2012,Enterprise System for Management,2^nd edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA.

Sommerville, J, Criag, N & Hendry, J 2010, ‘The role of the project manager: all things to all people?’, Structural Survey, vol.28, no.2, pp. 132-141.

Week 7

1. Respond to the following:  One of key problems with ERPs is their minimal level of delivered reports.  When should this become apparent and what are some options organisations have to address this?  What impacts do these options have?  What reason might there be for so few delivered reports?  [Note:  You may need to do so external research to understand this problem and answer these questions]

A major challenge for any organization during the ERP implementation of a system is the minimal level of delivered reports.

Sumner (2005) points out many reasons for the minimal level of delivered reports and some of them include the following:

• The implementation group not being able to analyze and understand of what the system is trying to achieve.
• Lack of proper training to the end users
• Lack of configuration
• Lack of effective query and reporting tool
• Realizing the effect only during the testing or go-live phase

To overcome from the report generation issues various techniques can be adopted such as acquiring business intelligence tools from a third party vendors, performing enhancement with online data analytic processing or any simple and easy –to – use reporting tool .According to Fisher and Walker-Gibbs (2006), a change readiness can directly affect in the success of the project. A change can help the implementation team to understand more about the system.

When it comes to reporting, more and more manpower is required which is a time consuming process and can create a lot of delays as well as damaging the resources (Goswami 2011).It can also provide a negative impact in receiving the financial and management report on time.

2. Examine assessment item 2. Following on from the previous two weeks, provide a rough draft of your introduction and your executive summary.

Rough draft of introduction

The introduction of the report discusses the background of the Millicent Homes ERP project implementation as well as the reasons of its failure. It also discusses the various technical and functional departments with the reason of adopting ERP implementation as the best practice.ERP software has a set of modules for supporting various functional areas such as Sales and Distribution, Material Management, Service Management and so on.

Rough draft of Executive Summary:

The report summarizes how the ERP can further enhance the productivity and operational efficiency of the company despite of various problems. The report is able to capture the difficulties encountered in pre-implementation and benefits gained after post-implementation. This report suggests Millicent Homes to continue using ERP system.

References:

Fisher, M & Walker-Gibbs, B 2006, ‘Staff perceptions of the implementation of enterprise resource planning systems in three Australian universities’, Re-visioning research and knowledge for the 21^st century,pp.139-158.http:// hdl.cqu.edu.au/10018/7254.

 

Goswami, S 2011, ‘Reporting through ERP systems’, ERP Reporting Systems, viewed on 11th September 2013, http://www.sboecube.com/blog/business-intelligence/erp-reporting-systems/

 

Sumner, M 2005, Enterprise Resource Planning, 1ST edn, Pearson Education, New Jersey.

 

Week 5

Respond to the following:  Many experienced ERP implementers will say there are two rules you should follow when implementing these systems:

1. Do not customise your ERP.

2. See Rule 1.

 

Why do you think this is?  What are the risks of customisation?  What does a need to customise say about the willingness or an organisation to effect BPR?

 

Most of the industry experts agree with the statement of not to customize the ERP.I do support on the statement as customizing the ERP is not an appropriate idea of acquiring the benefits from any business processes. It is obvious that customization requires more financial resources along with more time for the technical staff to understand and handle the code as customizing an ERP system requires excellent knowledge skill and excellent understanding of the current situation of the organization. Motiwalla and Thompson (2009) emphasis on minimizing the customization to implementation to diminish the chances for “unexpected and unpleasant surprises” which will be crucial to “emphasis training and change management”.

There are numerous risks associated with the customization of ERP. The cost to support and manage the changes in the source code would be very huge. The flexibility of the ERP system would be reduced which may be difficult to maintain the entire system .The clash between program code and business process can arise the integration risk as these two parts need to go hand on hand during the entire life cycle of the business. Harris (2000) has put forward certain risks involved in customizing the ERP system which include:

• Customization being the indicator of organizational changes management issues.
• The customization cost directly affects the implementation cost.
• Customization lacks the security issues which makes it more difficult to upgrade the system.

Avoiding customization of ERP implementation is because of the specific measures such as Business Process Re-engineering or BPR that is undertaken by the organization for lifting up the efficiency through re-engineering of the current business processes. As a result, company customize the ERP by upgrading their processes by parts which maximizes the risk of expending the higher cost and maintaining multiple system each built differently (Motiwalla and Thompson 2009).

References:

Harris, R, 2000, ‘Customization versus Standardization: Striking a balance in ERP software’, Machine Design, vol.72, no14, pp.64-69.

Motiwalla, LF & Thompson, J 2012, Enterprise systems for management,2^nd edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA.

Week 4

Respond to the following:  ERPs usually require frequent application of vendor software patches in order to address minor security/functionality issues and bugs.  Not applying these patches can result in the vendor withdrawing support for the ERP.  This process occurs in Operation stage.  Moreover larger updates, requiring mini ERP implementation projects, can occur as frequently as every three years.  What are the implications for organisations adopting an ERP?  Do you think the text captured the complexity of this? Why/Why not?

 

Every business organization expects to earn benefits in terms of cost and productivity. In this competitive business world, the organization looks for the possible advantages. In order to flourish the business, the organizational members are keen to update and upgrade their business processes. Security and the functionality issues are always the main concern to be addressed for the smooth running of the business. Larger organization requires larger planning system to be adopted for the smooth operation such as ERP system. After implementation, ERPs generally need upgrading software patches and mini implementation to address minor security or functionality issues and bugs. But not applying these patches can result in the vendor withdrawing support for the ERP.

In such a case, according to Motiwalla and Thompson (2012), the implications for the organization adopting an ERP can be stated as follows:

• Purchaser has to be more aware of the requirements and should be informed of all possible costs and restrains on what can be done.
• The stability has to be compromised.
• Additional consultant would be needed when the company’s IT are not able to carry out the modifications.
• Training the employees, maintenance, top managements are the different important issues that are need to be taken into considerations to make sure the ERP implementation is on right track.

Svejvig (2011) states that the text captured the complexity of an ERP adoption are partial. The adoption is only related to important aspects needed in governance of management in ERP implementation process but does not mention the complex aspects such as the Critical Success Factor. The study also describes that for better success in ES implementations, one should be critical of CSFs and the researchers and practitioners can be guided to know and locate the factors.

 

References:

Motiwalla, LF & Thompson, J 2012,Enterprise systems for management,2^nd edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey,USA.

Svejvig,P 2011, ‘A successful enterprise system re-implementation against all odds- a multisourcing case study’ ,Journal of Information Technology Case & Application Research,vol.13,no.4,pp.3-31.

Week 3

Respond to the following:  ERPs are often touted as providing ‘best practice’ in functionality and business processes.  However, many organisations have their own business processes and often do not want to change.  If an organisation is unwilling to change its business processes, can it gain any value from an ERP?  How could this be achieved?  What are the risks?

 

Adoption of the ERP system might be a useful tool for achieving  various important goals such as quick decision making by the business process managers, maximizing the information throughput and minimizing the response time to the suppliers as well as customers, but however many business organization would not want to change their business processes to the ERP system. The organization does not want to invest huge amount of money and waste time for re-engineering the process. If an organization is not ready to redesign a completely new system that can work in the old environment, they can still get some value from an ERP by accepting partial ERP implementation. But the benefits would be limited as there will be limited vendor support and more cost would be required for the maintenance of the system as well as the performance and the efficiency would be degraded (Sumner, 2005).

Organizations that are not prepared to change their business processes can achieve value from ERP implementation by customizing technical issues. Technical customization relates to a selection of various ERP modules that is well suited for certain processes in making adjustments and maintaining the configuration tables to match practice which can fill the space between the existing structure and ERP implementation(Carton & Adam 2010).

There are certain risks associated in adopting the ERP implementation into the existing business processes. It is not worth to any organization if the employees don’t know how to use the new system. It can lead to losing the job of the employees if they cannot handle the new system properly. The various failure stories of the ERP system has also been the key issues that the employees are unwilling to change into the new system as they are unknown about the consequences that the organization could bear after adopting the ERP system (Abdullah, 2007).Furthermore, the staff related to the software department will require high degree of knowledge and skill in coding as well as modifying the software.

References:

Abdullah S, 2007, The role and impact of business management in enterprise systems implementation, Business Process Management Journal, vol.13, no.6, pp.866.

Carton, F & Adam, F 2010 ‘Towards a Model for Determining the Scope of ICT Integration in the Enterprise: the Case of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems’, The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation,vol.13,no.1,pp.17-26.

Sumner, M 2005, Enterprise Resource Planning, 1^st edn, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Week 2

1. Respond to the following:  Shadow systems are frequently used as a justification for the implementation of ERPs.  Shadow systems are often, but not always, reflective of practice and data storage needs in particular functional silos.  Yet oddly, the implementation of an ERP doesn’t always eliminate these systems – sometimes, the number of them increases.  Suggest possible causes.  What threat do these systems pose to integration?  Who or what else might be threatened by the existence of these systems?

 

        

Shadow systems are designed and setup to perform planning, monitoring and decision making of an organization. These operations are replicated in full or partial data or functionality of the organization in a legal way (Behrens & Sedera2004). Despite of having a fully operational ERP system, some organizations are still bonding with the shadow system because the system provides the information and functionality for the requirement of the individual department in an organization.

Behrens and Sedera (2004) state some possible causes that the shadow system may still exist after the implementation of an ERP system which may include:

•  Lack of unity on the problem being solved and specific financial justification of the project between the project team and decision makers.
• Not enough user training
• Insufficient testing, which increases risk of omitting essential functions or not be well accepted by the end users.
• Lack of functionality

Jones et al.(2004) highlights some threats posed by the Shadow System to integration:

• The shadow system costly and difficult to maintain as it does not support the organization for the long term run.
• Expected benefits to the organization such as efficiency, end user satisfaction and cost reduction are very much low from the system.
• The system is poorly designed which makes it very difficult to address the error.
• Since the system consists of small database, it is not scalable to support large number of users.

Shadow system can be a big threat to a business in making the decision because of the lack of proper data security and information gathering. Since the processing of the information is performed manually there are larger possibilities of occurring duplications and errors affecting the suppliers and the customers. It will cost huge amount of money in recovering from the loss. Ultimately the whole business process is affected along with the end users and other stakeholders (Jones et al., 2004).

References:

Behrens, S & Sedera, W 2004, ‘Why do shadow systems exist after an ERP implementation? Lessons from a case study’, Association for information Systems Electronic Library, vol.1, no.1, http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1279&context=pacis2004.

Jones, D, Behrens, S, Jamieson, K & Tansley, E 2004, The rise and fall of a shadow system: lessons for enterprise systems implementation, http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/publications/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-shadow-system-lessons-for-enterprise-system-implementation/

 

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