Personal Assignment 3
Case Study
Cisco Systems, Inc: Implementing ERP
Case: Cisco Systems, Inc. Implementing ERP, 9-699-022
Reading: Thomas H. Davenport, “Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System,” Harvard Business Review (July-August 1998): Reprint 98401
Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System by Thomas H. Davenport
Enterprise systems appear to be a dream come true. These commercial software packages promise the seamless integration of all the information flowing through a company—financial and accounting information, human resource information, supply chain information, customer information. For managers who have struggled, at great expense and with great frustration, with incompatible information systems
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To put it bluntly: if a company’s systems are fragmented, its business is fragmented.
Thomas H. Davenport is a professor at the Boston University School of Management in Boston, Massachusetts. His most recent book, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, was published in 1997 by the Harvard Business School Press.
Assignment Questions
1. At the end of the case, Pete Solvik has a number of questions. Please think about these questions, and be prepared to give your answer:
What factors had made the difference between success and failure of the Cisco ERP project?
Answer:
1. The company was a startup company and it was easy to perform changes to its current business process
2. The company had huge growth rates as far as the revenues were concerned, so that company was no short of the funds required for the ERP Project.
3. The employees were very enthusiastic to work for the new project as they found it interesting from the otherwise monotonous tasks. So the company could embark upon its intelligent employees for the success of the project.
4. The company enjoyed full support from the top management which was one of the major reasons for the success of the ERP project. The management was 100 % in favor of the project
Burrows, P. (2007, July 9). _Bloombeg Business Week._ Retrieve September 3, 2011, from Planet Apple: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4
Our company needs to be installing a latest and advanced ERP system which makes us fully utilizing the business resources in the most efficient manner. Currently, the existing information system does not provide the full, accurate and reliable information from one department to another, neither it’s a cross-platform for information sharing(Columbus, 2014). A less-efficient information system is contributing into increasing cost of production for the business and overall reducing the business efficiency. The inventory turnover is increasing over the time period and so the productivity of staff unable to work at their optimum level. The current information system does not cover the whole business process and rather employees are engaged in manual data recording and preparing the documents to back the data.
In business, it is important for companies to be able to communicate effectively. Each department of a company relies on the other departments as they add to the value chain. One way for a company to integrate its different departments is enterprise resource planning. ERPs are software programs that allow companies to join together data across operations on a company wide basis (Jessup and Valacich 248). ERPs store company information in a common database and allow all departments to access it from one central location (Koch). Companies without ERPS may contain many legacy systems, each operating with different
The benefits of enterprise-wide systems such as enterprise resource management (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) directly align with Riordan’s strategic direction. Proper implementation of these systems will add value to Riordan’s business model. However, enterprise-wide implementations are characterized by large investments and large time commitments. Therefore, the organization must evaluate which systems will help it achieve the majority of its goals, in a reasonable time frame. In doing so, decision-makers can determine if each system’s value is worth its costs and the order in which to invest in and implement each system.
NIBCO is a pipe and valve manufacturing company headquartered in Indiana with ten plants and three distribution centers. NIBCO wanted their business processes to be strategically improved in order for their manufacturing facilities and distribution centers to meet their customer’s requirements (Brown, DeHayes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012). There were multiple systems being utilized within NIBCO and none of the systems had the ability to communicate with each other which created duplicative and wasteful resource efforts. NIBCO’s decision to implement an ERP system was to improve their information systems. Beutler (as cited in Brown et al., 2012) stated that the consulting group reported to NIBCO “to look at integration as a major
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
Today Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is extensively adopted by many organizations regardless of kind and size, mainly because it provides enterprise-wide view of information across all their business operations and help organizations achieve consistency across all their functional departments. The potential benefits of ERP system implementation include improved coordination across functional areas, increased efficiency, reduced operational costs, rapid access to information for decision making, managerial control and support for strategic planning.
In general, ERP systems are designed to standardize information entry and create data storage for information sharing across the organization. There are numerous advantages of ERP but skeptics argued on the fact that these advantages can be also achieved by simplification and lean production methods. IT systems could be effective and reliable in the long run but at the same time there is an uncertainty about whether it will align with the concerned business process. For instance, the ERP system implemented at the Korey plant to replace MRP system failed. Though it met the requirements of individual unit and enabled employees with wide range of
In this system, the whole company is based on a matching database, matching application system, and a continuous interface. In addition, the ERP system combines human resources, accounting marketing, production, and the delivery and supply chain management into one system (Chamg, Wu, & Chang, 2008). When the ERP system was first presented, companies began to handle information more accurately and correctly, and thus reformed and enhanced the quality of the accounting and financial processes. The implementation of Section 404 was very difficult and time consuming; however, businesses have been able to find a little relief by implementing an ERP system to help with the transition. Software companies have taken advantage of companies with few internal controls accentuating that the focal feature of the ERP system is the use of built-in controls that can copy a business’s organization (Morris, 2011). This allowed companies to implement the internal control requirements of Section 404 with a little more
Chandler earned his Pulitzer Prize for bringing into his book what he witnessed in the American business history not only for that generation but also for those to come (Carol, 42). According this work, a number of issues are deduced to show the rise of management. First, in his show of the replacement of traditional enterprises based on invisible hand he talked of their dependence on the market mechanism. Here, businesses were not conscious of competition but the need to facilitate competition arose with modern business enterprises. Under this subject, he focused on the situation in the United States of America showing that small businesses were losing value (Bucheli, Mahoney & Vaaler, 875). Their profitability was going down and it would reach a level that they could no longer withstand. They could not any more depend on market mechanism. They now needed coordination from administrative position.
As a result of technological advancements, modern businesses seek new and improved methods of conducting their business processes. Systems have been designed to augment and manage core business functions such as production, accounting, procurement, and human resources. However, even with these systems in place, information is unreliable and inconsistent if they are on disparate platforms. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software tackles this problem by integrating business processes into a centralized system.
There are some strengths and weaknesses that have been made clear about the project plan in the case study, “Beijing EAPS Consulting, Inc.” in the Custom Book, (2011). These
FoxMeyer should not have implemented the project on the basis of escalation that the project would save the company revenue. All the project factors needed to be considered. The project vendor and consultants should not rely on history of successful projects but careful analysis of each company before implementing a project.
implemented only in July 1999. This overlapped with the time when the company usually started