An Investigation of Customization in ERP System Implementations Marcus

In today’s business environment, companies use integrated information systems to gain competitive advantages. The primary objective of senior management is to generate a 10% profit to reinvest into the enterprise and expand their divisions. Several of Bandon’s competitors have implemented ERP with integrated CRM solutions. In order for Bandon Group, Inc. to compete with businesses such as Xerox, it is necessary to integrate the business applications. According to Monk, Ellen, & Wagner, “increasing information system efficiency often results in the effective management of business processes, which is essential to maximizing profit and sustainable growth” (2009). Bandon Group has common critical problems and issues within the organization today; there are also opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed. The technology department is small and strained. With the range of various technical solutions that have been implemented across the divisions it has become very difficult to provide data migrations, network support, technical support and training (Sumner, 2005). An ERP system can dramatically reduce costs and improve operational efficiency as it removes feudal decision-making and facilitates data integration and transparency between business units

The change management lead is responsible for developing strategies and detailed work plans, monitoring progress, and resolving change management issues.” (Motiwalla, 2011, p. 125). For this reason, the change management process incorporated into the implementation used by the army was blueprinting, “refers to all the activities, which are necessary for the reproduction and description of the customer's business operations in an ERP System.” (TechRepublic, 2009). In addition, the Army analyzed customization of the software instead of changing business

Change management can be defined as a framework that is used for managing the consequences of novel business processes and for managing the changes taking place in existing organizational structure or cultural of an enterprise (Reiß, 2012; Rouse, 2008; Elearn, 2007; Creasey, 2012). In addition, some define change management as a structured process, which causes considered changes that need to be reviewed for technological and organizational promptness in a reliable way, which are relaxed or squeezed to regulate the business needs and experiences. In addition, it is also examined that the process of change management helps in communicating the status and existence of changes to all affected

The role of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in companies today is rapidly changing from just providing after-the-fact reporting of results to delivering analytics and intelligence on how to succeed with new products and services. ERP has in the past been relegated to just managing the interactions and interconnections between supplier, manufacturing operations and to a lesser extent, fulfillment. ERP is rapidly emerging as a viable framework for guiding the strategic decisions and directions of any manufacturing or service-related business globally with greater accuracy and profitability (Ash, Burn, 2003). With ERP being such a significant strategic platform for growth of companies, it is not surprising to see so many being upgraded and enhanced to help companies stay in step with their customers using SaaS-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM), predictive analytics and greater visibility through the entire value chain of a business as a result (Ash, Burn, 2003). With so much riding on the implementation of an ERP system from a customer relationship and analytics standpoint, effective project and change management is the most critical success factor there is in attaining strategic plans using these systems(Chen, Yang, 2009). The intent of this analysis is to define which information should and should not be shared with technical and

Introduction..................................................................................................................... 3 The implementation process ............................................................................................ 4 1. 2. 3. Begin with a feasible IS /IT strategy which aligned with the business strategy ......... 4 Organisational fit ..................................................................................................... 4 Employ a Change Management process to deal with resultant organisational issues

Re-engineering of business processes to fit the "industry standard" prescribed by the ERP system may lead to a loss of competitive advantage.

I manage medium to large teams of technical specialists, support personnel and business consultants (both on and off shore models). I have implemented enterprise wide applications (ERP’s) including major customised software development for a diverse group of industries including utilities and local government organisations. These included business processes changes and related change management activities.

A recent change at my current company was the implementation of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from a German based company called SAP. SAP stands for systems, applications & products in data processing and is business software that helps companies manage operations and customer data. We migrated back in August of this year from Manage 2000 (M2K), a terminal based inventory and billing system, to a dynamic browser based version of SAP that also manages customer contract information. Even though the new SAP software provides better data management, enhanced information security, and faster response times it also caused issues, which I believe, could have been avoided through better development and implementation planning.

As an initiative to streamline their internal processes and decrease costs our IT department recently implemented two new process simultaneously. They started utilizing the Agile model compared to their older waterfall model for their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) builds. While this process will allow for faster changes to be made by IT on the business’ behalf, it requires a substantial increase in the business involvement side (Tutorialspoint.com, n.d.). The second process change centered around cost containment and involves the business to act as their own IT Business Analyst (BA). In the IT department haste to implement the changes, they did not inform all customers with upcoming projects of the planned process changes. The IT consumer were subsequently not afforded the opportunity to acquire the crucial buy-in surrounding the new practice. These missed steps in the communication of the plan has led to

According to Chiu and Tam (1997), in their title of project “Business Process Reengineering: The role of information technology” stated that business environment nowadays such as competition, customer demand and customer change require business to focus in business process reengineering (BPR) to reduce time, improving quality, customer service and reduce costs. Therefore, they suggested that process design should be enabled and change process should be identified in any BPR

Customized cost- When implementing an ERP system, according to different requirement from customers and the actual situation, it is essential to appropriately change an ERP software package (as secondary development). No matter how the performance of the general ERP software package, it always has differences with specific enterprise’s demand. Therefore, they need to appropriately modify it. The custom costs are more expensive than the cost of an ordinary ERP software package [37].

{draw:frame} Business process Management with SAP R/3 Index 1. Executive summary 2. ERP Introduction 2.1. Evaluation of ERP 2.2. Vendors of ERP 2.3 Advantages and disadvantages of ERP 3. Legacy Systems 3.1. Advantages 3.2. Disadvantages *3.3 Procurement of E*RP instead using legacy systems 4. * Nature of *SAP R/3 4.1. Advantages of SAP R/3 4.2. Disadvantages of SAP R/3 5. Business process integration in the procurement cycle of SAP ERP 5.1. Procurement life cycle 6. References 1. Executive summary: ERP introduction: 2.1. Evolution of enterprise resource planning (ERP) (E.M.Shebab et al, 2004): Stand in the market mrp was expanded with costing and marketing and named this as MRPII. The main purpose of

Every project has the ability to bring some changes in the system, management of any organisation. It is quite hard to implement any project without making any transformation either into the management or leadership. Ideally, whatever transformations required to implement any project or changes emerged after the implementation of project does not have any adverse effects on the organisation structure. And those specific changes should always be accepted by every person involved for the implementation of project. Another most important factor is the management and leadership style, methodological techniques required for the project implementation or planning that always needs to be assessed and utilized very effectively to find out the readiness of the new project implementation. This report largely emphasize upon the different change management aspects like leadership style, employees behavioural change and strategies deployed to manage these aspects for the proper and effective implementation of project. The MedDev case study about the ERP project implementation has been very useful source for analyzation and development of strategies and methodological techniques. It also provides clear overview about the different leadership style and development of resistance among the employee to any change.

Although (Newman,2000) suggest that with the implementation of ERP has been successful in business industry rather than universities because universities have distinctive structure and decision making process. Hence, with the implementation of ERP it deliberately affect organizational structure. For instance now universities have consider “education as a business and students as a customer”(Tsichritiz,1999). However with the implementation of ERP panic the academics for use of advanced technology affect in accelerating the clearness of transaction . on the contrary staff horror about their job (Allen,2002).

This essay will discuss the essential need for Business Process Reengineering (BPR) to be included in the success of an ERP implementation, specifically the role of, steps needed, and results of the BPR.