This individual essay assignment assesses a student’s ability

Introduction

Assignment

Business Information System

Essay

Essay

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System)

ERP i.e Enterprise Resource Planning System is a method of Planning, Organising and maintaining various Business process systems by using a particular software suite, normally called as ERP software tool. Basic use of ERP( Chien.T & Syue.J (Taiwan), software tool is to collect the information from the large business database and perform the day to day activities of gathering, planning and maintaining the information related to the business for smooth functioning of Supply Chain Management Network. The ERP software is often purchased from ERP vendors. ERP vendors are responsible for responsible for creation of a particular software that could manage the various business process activities and then they deal with procurement of the above software to the client.

Some of the leading ERP vendors are Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Sage, Epicor and Enfor. Among these six best ERP vendors, SAP is the best vendor due to its uniqueness of providing two business solutions viz R/3 and B1 out of which R/3 provides business solutions for all the type of businesses i.e small size enterprise, medium size enterprise and also large size enterprise while on the other hand B1 provides support normally for small and medium sized enterprises which have inbuilt modules for operations like financial activities, reporting, purchasing and customer relationship management. Both the software could be easily implemented on UNIX, windows and various other operating systems.

The main advantage of ERP is that the functionality of the business gets increased leading to cost effective solutions which definitely reduces the human error and yields profit. The only disadvantage of using ERP tool is that the software is costly and there is a bit complexity. However gaining proper training about the ERP, its one time investment can lead to immense profitability leading to customer satisfaction.

Case Studies related with ERP Implementation:

ERP implementation is no doubt is a best service as it reduces the complexities in the supply chain network of various business processes. But it’s not that the ERP implementation is always successful. This section deals with analyzing case studies related to ERP implementation focussing on both the ERP success and ERP failure.

Case Study 1: Cadbury (It proved to be a success)

Cadbury is one of the oldest chocolate companies located in America, famous for its powerful taste. Due to its awesome taste and flavour, there was a overflow of customers which were creating chaos for the company, as the company house was facing severe troubles for managing their production and distribution market.

One such solution which proved effective for this company was ERP implementation. By implementing ERP software, the problem of Cadbury was solved as the ERP implementation resulted in increased profit.

Hence, ERP implementation proved to be successful in this case and dealing with various trend values like: (Kumar. B (USA)

• Improve customer experiences: Customers were already happy with the Cadbury company due its awesome taste so there was a overflow of customers leading to unexpected acceleration growth, which provided problems in the production and distribution module. However implementation of SAP ERP tool solved the problem of distribution and production resulting in improving customer experiences.
• Enhance employee engagement: As the SAP was able to perform complex tasks by itself saving the time of employees, so the active employee participation was noticed in the above case.
• Innovate business processes: SAP was able to perform complex tasks of breaking the business modules, which yielded innovative business process growth.
• Optimise business process services: SAP reduced the time complexity of the above system which yielded real time business implementation by optimizing the supply chain management growth.
• Advance operations and productivity: SAP was able to perform advance operations like marketing, producing reports, visualization, which yielded growth in productivity rate.
• Realise digital transformation: As all the business processes were managed i.e carried out with the help of technology, the SAP implementation provided digital transformation of the business processes related to the above company named Cadbury.
• Empower the workforce with insight: As SAP was itself able to manage the large database and various complex activities, the workforce on the employees was reduced.
• Manage complex, large-scale projects: Obviously due to the extensive features of SAP, the complex and large scale projects were managed effectively and efficiently.
• Transform finance and operations: SAP was implemented, hence the financial operations were performed with ease and the track of database containing the entire information associated with budget, purchase of inventory, partnership dealing etc was recorded and maintained.

So, for the Cadbury Company, ERP implementation proved to be a success and the company recorded a high rise in its profits, due to which the company is still famous and making profits even in today’s era of 21^st Century.

Case Study 2: Nestle

Nestle is one of the famous company which has its headquarter located in the Konicki district of Switzerland. The company has immense customer satisfaction, as the candy maker nestle companies were able to make delicious candies, which were attracting customers towards it.

This international Candy maker company has its 3 operating companies in South Africa, United Kingdom and United state of America. The main issue which the above company faced was in its integration process which involved active participation of all the operating companies together.

Hence to resolve the above issue company decided to implement ERP solution with the main intention of re-inventing the outdated accounting system. The SAP ERP was used for implementation purpose which provided a positive result on the business outcome yielding maximum profit.

Hence, ERP implementation proved to be successful in this case and dealing with various trend values like:

• Improve customer experiences: Customers were already happy with the Cadbury Company due its awesome taste so there was a overflow of customers leading to unexpected acceleration growth, which provided problems in the production and distribution module. However implementation of SAP ERP tool solved the problem of distribution and production resulting in improving customer experiences.
• Enhance employee engagement: As the SAP was able to perform complex tasks by itself saving the time of employees, so the active employee participation was noticed in the above case.
• Innovate business processes: SAP was able to perform complex tasks of breaking the business modules into its logical values, which yielded innovative business process growth.
• Optimise business process services: Time complexity of the above system got reduced, which provided optimised business process yielding to increase in overall profit rate.
• Advance operations and productivity: SAP was able to perform advance operations like marketing, producing reports, visualization, which yielded growth in productivity rate.
• Realise digital transformation: As the updation of the outdated method of carrying transaction took place, the business was able to function digitally, which further resulted in increased profits.
• Empower the workforce with insight: Due to holistic approach, the load on the man power got reduced to a certain extent yielding empowerment to the workforce.
• Manage complex, large-scale projects: Obviously due to the extensive features of SAP, the complex and large scale projects were managed effectively and efficiently.
• Transform finance and operations: SAP was implemented, hence the financial operations were performed with ease and the track of database containing the entire information associated with budget, purchase of inventory, partnership dealing etc was recorded and maintained.

So, for the Nestle Company, ERP implementation proved to be a success and the company recorded a high rise in its profits, due to which the company is still famous and making profits even in today’s era of 21^st Century.

Case Study 3: Hershey Candies (Failure)

Not necessarily, the ERP implementation proves successful; one such example is of Case Study related to Hershey Candies. Hershey Candies has a famous brand name. The company decided to implement the SAP ERP to enhance its performance and growth. The only mistake which the above company did was the usage of holistic approach in place of iterative approach which resulted in disputes in Management Plan. The company was unable to handle the above disputes, faced problems in dealing with the above management of business process which ultimately lead to loss in the above company.

Due to loss in the company, customers lost their hope and there was less engagement of customers. Employees were frustration, as the implementation had failed, so their engagement in the above business process was not much appreciated. There was a state of Chaos due to loss of profits.

The ERP implementation in this case had failed due to the poor management control facilities. Hence in this case the ERP implementation had failed to a great extent.

Note: For ERP failure related to the above company, problem was not with the experience of customer, or holistic approach, but the problem was due to lack of strong management control policies.

Other Case Studies: ( Ogao.P & Matende.Samwel (Kenya)

There were also other case studies involved in the success of ERP implementation. One of them is the PCI i.e Plastic Components inc ltd. This above company was a manufacturing company which made use of new technology to implement the ERP software tool. It selected the ERP tool to be IQMS.

This manufacturing company had issues in creating Excel data sheets, as it was filling the information manually which was a tedious time consuming process and hence it was decided by the company to implement the ERP technology to reduced the complexity.

By implementing the ERP tool making use of new technology, the time complexity of the company got reduced to a larger extent and it was possible for the company to perform various financial tasks related to purchase, inventory and automation with ease.

Challenges in ERP Implementation:

The major ten challenges involved in ERP implementation are:

• Selection of suitable ERP vendor: In today’s market numerous ERP vendors are present which are attracting the clients towards it. To select a one ERP vendor is a hectic task and requires a lot of research. It is not at all a easy process.
• Role of higher officials: Higher officials play an important role in ERP implementation process. Their rude behaviour could lead to failure.
• Lack of Training: Even though the ERP is successfully implemented, it leads to failure has the employee does not know how to perform the various operations using ERP software tool may be due to insufficient knowledge or lack of training guidance.
• Time required for implementation: For ERP to be successful, requires time, but some organisations gets irritated due to the more requirement of time.
• Cost of Implementation: The cost of ERP software tool is very high, some organisations cannot afford to have this much high budget which ultimately leads to its failure.
• Testing: Inadequate testing is one of the main challenge which leads to failure of ERP implementation.
• Maintenance cost: To keep the ERP in running mode requires a lot of maintenance and cost, some of the organisations are unable to afford such a high maintainence cost leading to failure of ERP implementation.
• Internal Hardware Investment: Internal Hardware is required for the successful implementation of ERP software tool. Some of the organisations are not interested in investment leading to the failure of ERP implementation.
• Retention of Employee: Despite of having adequate knowledge and successful training regarding the ERP software tool, some of the employees leave their company which leads to failure of ERP implementation.
• Complexity of ERP: Sometimes the ERP implementation gets failed just due to its complex architecture and procedure.

Best ERP Vendors: (Fagerstrom.A, Haddara.M& Maeland.B (Norway)

The top ten ERP vendors of 2020, as listed in TechRepublic are:

• SAP: The two clouds which the SAP makes use of are hybris and aribra which helps in consolidation methods related to business process.
• Oracle: Oracle makes use of SaaS cloud and helps in performing various finanancial and project management tasks associated with the particular business.
• Microsoft: Microsoft makes use of SaaS model for deployment process and it is one of the smartest way to use Microsoft for small and medium size businesses.
• Infor: Infor is best suitable for manufacturing companies leading to its effective implementation process.
• IFS: IFS is best suitable for defence and construction companies which provide end to end robust functionality in business process.
• Workday: Workday is suitable for large enterprises which basically provide help in carrying out financial tasks leading to its effective implementation.
• Epicor: It is suitable for small and medium sized enterprises belonging to research and development company.
• Abas: Abas is an effective ERP software tool suitable for small and medium sized enterprises and it helps in advanced planning and scheduling tasks associated with the particular business process.
• Deltek: Deltek is suitable for every type of business enterprise be it small, medium or large dealing with advanced Customer Management Process yielding optimization in supply chain management.
• Sage Enterprise Management: Sage Enterprise Management is one of the best ERP vendor tool which makes use of cloud saga and provide end to end functionality of the business associated with the particular organisation.

Thus from the above essay it can be noted that ERP i.e Enterprise Resource Planning System is an effective way which gathers the particular information from the large data base of the required business organisation and performs the various tasks related to planning, managing, researching, financial analysis, advanced scheduling, CRM related to a particular business process. ERP makes use of an effective ERP implementation software tool which performs the various activities thus reducing the complexity of the employees working in a particular organisation.

Various ERP implementation software tools are available in the market but among those SAP is the best as it provides robust end to end communication to carry out certain tasks related to a business. ERP has various advantages like it performs the business operations in an effective and efficient manner, reduces the time consuming activities associated with the employees working in the company thus yielding accurate results which helps in maximizing profits. This profit maximization leads to effective improvement in supply chain management network thus reducing the cost of the business yield cost benefit analysis.

Though ERP has the certain advantages, there are also disadvantages associated with ERP implementation methods. The main disadvantage of ERP implementation is its cost. The best ERP tool i.e SAP needs very high amount to be paid to purchase its license and also the complexity of ERP implementation tools is high which needs adequate training and efforts, but once successfully implemented these ERP software tools acts as a boon to a particular business leading to its high supply and improved network management. Thus it would not be wrong to say that ERP implementation is an one time investment, which when invested successfully can do wonders in the market leading to customer satisfaction which is ultimately the goal of every business organization.

Conclusion

The above assignment was based on writing essay for an interesting topic ERP i.e Enterprise Resource Planning System. The complete essay has been provided in this assignment. The essay began with the introductory part about basic ERP system. The middle part contains the case studies related to ERP success and failures. The last part of the essay contains information about key challenges involved in ERP implementation, best ERP tools followed by advantages and disadvantages.

References

Chien.T & Syue.J (2014), “What We Ignore During ERP Implementation Activity?” Taiwan, Journal of Enterprise Resource Planning Studies, Pages-16.

Fagerstrom.A, Haddara.M& Maeland.B (2015), “Cloud ERP Systems: Anatomy of Adoption Factors & Attitudes”, Oslo: Norway, Journal of Enterprise Resource Planning Studies, Pages-24.

Kumar. B (2018), “Impact and Need for Financial Transformation in the Insurance Industry Using ERP”, New Jersey: USA, Journal of Enterprise Planning Resource Studies, Pages-5
Mbohwa. C & Madanhire.I (2016),” Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in Improving Operational Efficiency: Case Study”, South Africa, Procedia CIRP, Volume 40, page no: 225-229

Ogao.P & Matende.Samwel (2013), “Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system Implementation: A case for User Participation”, Kenya, Procedia Technology, Volume 9, Page no: 518-526

Conclusion

The above assignment was analytical type, where a website of information security was given, and it was asked to prepare a excel sheet and testing table on various control families. All the tasks are solved.

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/800-53/Rev4