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ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS ASSIGNMENT -

INTRODUCTION - The board of your case-study client company were impressed by your presentation of proposals for their enterprise systems. They would now, in addition, like to have a management overview document which they can use as a basis of discussion among themselves to decide how best to take these ideas forward.

They would like you, as their advisory consultants, to provide a summary of the issues involved. There are two principal issues that they need to consider:

• What might be the benefits to the company of introducing new, corporate systems ?
• What are likely to be the challenges experienced in introducing those systems?

The fundamental decision that they have to make is whether the potential benefits are likely to justify the resources, challenges and business disturbance involved. That is, they need to decide: "Will it be worth the bother?"

ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE - The topics below are split into two groups, as explained above - the potential business benefits and the likely challenges which need to be managed.

The choice available to you is either:

a) Choose only one topic overall from the six options available, and explore this topic in considerable detail. [length: 2000 - 2500 words].

or

b) Choose one topic from each section and consider those two topics in somewhat less detail. [length: 1000 - 1300 words each].

Note - The whole assignment in total should be no more than 3000 words. Please choose topic A to write, using the attached PowerPoint as the case to explain. Need 2200+ words.

The following are brief descriptions of the expected content of each of the available topics. Please read these summaries carefully before beginning your report.

POTENTIAL BUSINESS BENEFITS TO THE COMPANY -

1 - Company overview and expected corporate benefits of ERP

This option should critically assess the expected benefits of an integrated ERP system from the point of view of the corporation as a whole, i.e. a board of directors' perspective.

Before you start writing, you will need to decide on a framework for your paper. You could possibly structure it in relation to the company's business strategies and priorities, as evaluated in the in-module work and presentation. Another approach might be to use a known academic framework such as Shang and Seddon's categorization of ERP benefits.

An additional useful perspective would be to think about what benefits might be achieved fairly quickly after ERP implementation and which would take longer to achieve, perhaps because they require longer term evolution of management policies and techniques made possible by ERP.

2 - ERP benefits for a specific business function chosen from the BCM

For this option, you first need to choose an individual function from the BCM and declare which function you are choosing. This topic is essentially targeted to win the support of the Director of that particular function.

(You could, if you wish, choose a group of related functions. You must then declare specifically which functions you are choosing and explain why you are grouping them together for the purpose of this discussion.)

You should evaluate the benefits of implementing ERP from the point of view of your chosen business function. Since a key aspect of ERP is its use of a shared database, you will need to consider how the activities of this function could be improved by enhanced exchange of data with other functions (either within one site or across the global organization).

A further aspect to be considered is how the consolidated corporate data can potentially be used via improved business intelligence facilities to support management decision-making within this function.

3 - Business benefits expected from the introduction of corporate performance management (CPM)

Please note: The concept of CPM is sometimes known by other synonyms, EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) or BPM (Business Performance Management). It is a much wider concept than simply HR personnel performance management.

This topic assumes that an integrated ERP database provides a reliable source of consolidated corporate data upon which such performance management capabilities can be built.

It should evaluate and justify the benefits of performance management techniques for management of your case-study company as a whole. It is essentially a head office perspective, explaining to the board of directors how such capabilities could help them improve the performance and profitability of the company over a period of time.

To approach this topic, the student will need to do some reading around concepts such as balanced scorecard, key performance indicators, performance metrics, etc.

Some evaluation of appropriate software tools may be introduced but this should not be the dominant theme of the paper: it should mostly be focused on improvement of the target company business.

4 - Potential use of social collaboration software within the business

This topic addresses the potential benefits offered by social collaboration software in conjunction with the established corporate ERP database.

Since its inception in the 1990s, ERP has been focused on establishing a structured, shared, corporate database. However, around that fixed resource employees have always solved business problems themselves via face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations, e-mails, etc.

Now that social collaboration software is also available, integrated with the corporate ERP database, how might employees use this new capability to enhance human collaboration and decision-making ?

Please note: This question requires serious research and reading around possible relevant topics such as new product design and introduction, resolution of manufacturing operations problems, liaison with customers and suppliers, etc. The discussion must be firmly based within the business context of your case-study target company.

CHALLENGES TO BE FACED IN INTRODUCING NEW SYSTEMS

5 - Implementation challenges and methodology for ERP implementation

This section should discuss the challenges of replacing many local legacy systems in your case-study company with a global, integrated ERP system.

The core concept of the module, around which all the lectures and case study steps have been based, is the use of a multi-stage project management methodology. This approach provides the ability to plan and monitor the progress of the ERP implementation project as a sequence of sequential stages.

You should first declare the methodology framework you intend to use, which should either be the Infor one used in the module or some other well-respected methodology such as SAP's ASAP scheme. Within each project stage, you should then specify the challenges that are likely to arise at each stage and critically evaluate how each of these challenges is to resolved and by whom within the practical context of your target international company.

Overall, this discussion should explain to the company management how they should plan and manage their ERP introduction. It should bear in mind the technology issues around software and data consolidation. It should also consider the various human perspectives between different management levels and the diverse cultural perspectives, with multiple nationalities and languages, across a global organisation. The interplay between company project staff and international vendor support staff is another important factor to be considered.

6 - Recommended approach for introducing Business Intelligence / Corporate Performance Management methods and tools

This section moves on from implementation of an integrated corporate ERP database to consider how this may be used as a basis for enhanced management information and performance improvement in your case-study company.

It is concerned with transformation of the company mindset to a culture where every location and division establishes performance metrics and monitoring, and knows how to use the tools available to manage this environment. It therefore involves both education in performance management concepts and training in use of BI and CPM software tools.

The discussion is concerned with how such a transformation should be managed, perhaps using ideas such as a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) acting across the multiple global locations of your case-study target company.

Please note: This is another topic area which requires serious research and reading beyond the material covered in the module.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar