Improvement in Operational Efficiency due to ERP Systems Implementation

The University of Massachusetts suffered a major ERP failure in 2003. The university had begun work on the $10 million dollar project in 2000 as a replacement for the older ERP system (Rico, 2010). Under the previous system, each of the five University of Massachusetts’s campuses had its own systems that included the software, hardware, and project teams. Each was independently ran, modified, and maintained by its respected campus. The University of Massachusetts identified the need for a centralized ERP system that could standardize the many processes within it across all the campuses.

Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) is any integrated cross-functional software that reengineers manufacturing, distribution, finance, human resources and other basic business processes of a company to improve its efficiency, agility and profitability.1 On an initial view, an ERP system appears to be the cure for any company’s issues. The installation of such a system offers an organization the opportunity to re-structure their procedures, to coordinate branches’ systems in other geographic locations, unify information and inspire employees via granting them permission to company information. Now these chances exist at heightened costs financially. There are also implementation horrors and labor issues with which must be dealt with. A

Upon his arrival in 1993, Pete Solvik, the company’s CIO at the time was objected to the idea of implementing ERP because he termed it as being “mega.’ Also, the CIO wanted the company to stick to its traditional standardization mechanism that required the use of universal database architecture. At the time, the company was using a UNIX based system that could not support the unexpected growth. The system could only efficiently handle financing, manufacturing, and order entry functions (Austin, Nolan, & Cotteller,

Kumar, P. (2010). Successful implementation of ERP in a large organization International journal of engineering science and technology. Vol. 2(7), 3218-3224. Retrieved from http://www.ijest.info/docs/IJEST10-02-07-151.pdf

An extensive research was done to fetch the historical background of company, the functioning of its legacy systems, and the issues that are being faced by the company as a result of ERP implementation. However, there are only few studies that showed ERP case studies for the company relative to the ERP issues.The web searches provided a restricted account of data on company’s ERP profile. In order to find details of the issues that are being faced by the

Muscatello, Small, and Chen (2003) state that ERP systems, when they are implemented effectively, can bring impressive strategic, operational and information-related benefits to those firms that adopt them. However, in such situations, a failure in implementation might bring about the financial collapse of the firm. They further state that in the modern world, most of the information about the failures and successes are based on reports that are made concerning ERP implementation in big manufacturing and service organizations. However, it is stated that those who sell ERP systems are now steadily turning their marketing sights on small and medium-sized manufacturers. It is because of this that Muscatello et al state that researchers have been given the opportunity to gather, analyze and disseminate information that will help these firms to

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

ERPs are notoriously difficult and time consuming to install since they impact all areas of a business’s processes. Forty percent of all ERP installations are only completed partially and another twenty percent are complete failures resulting in a removal of the system (Yick, 2011). This leaves successful, complete, ERP implementations in the minority and NIBCO’s selection committee did not want to create additional opportunities to fail, especially with the data issues that were occurring with their legacy systems (Brown, DeHaynes, Hoffer, Martin, & Perkins, 2012).

The problem presented by Joseph-Armand Bombardier is the upcoming third round of ERP implementation in his organization. Even though a big improvement over the efficiency and success of execution between the first ERP round (Mirabel plant) and second round (Saint-Laurent plant), there is still room for improvement.

In order to survive in this competitive business world, every business must produce or provide not only a better product or service, they must also provide better customer service, minimize their production costs and overhead costs, have a more efficient management system, a highly reliable infrastructure…the list is endless. Many of these can be achieved through a customized enterprise resource planning system (ERP). ERPs serve as “one comprehensive database to house all of [the company’s] corporate information” so that “when you enter new information in one place, the system automatically updates related information.” However, if these systems are not implemented correctly with the necessary change in management of people and technology

In all facets of business, it is certain that a properly implemented ERP system will help save labor, resources, and overhead. The system will aid in discovering unneeded labor and misuse of the organization 's resources. It will help optimize the businesses ' processes. For instance, the human resources department is able to identify the necessary level of laabor to accommodate an unexpected change in customer demant as soon as a sales spike occurs. These types of decisions can be made on the spot and this can rid the organization of communication difficulties during times of crisis (ERPwire.com).

Within this case the Comp Group are looking towards implementing Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) packages with the aim to build strong capabilities, improve performance, undertake better decision making and achieve a competitive advantage(Al‐Mashari and Al‐Mudimigh, 2003).

ERP has become a potential solution which the companies are aiming for to improve their business process performances. There are various challenges that are encountered by the organizations in terms of people, process and systems oriented issues in the usage of disparate systems. In aim of increasing their business operations, the companies are eying at ERP as potential solutions. In this research paper the focus is upon understanding how ERP can be resourceful and few case outlooks has been discussed on the successful implementation and the potential benefits the organizations could gain.

Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) integrates the external and the internal management of information across the organization. ERP systems automate the different business processes like sales and service, customer relationship management, finance, accounting, manufacturing with an integrated software application. It is a complex software package that integrates the data and the processes across the organization. Separate systems were maintained in 1960’s by the organizations for different business functions which required frequent updates and lead to ineffeciences in the organization. Since it’s inception in 1990’s ERP systems have been developed drastically with top players like SAP and Oracle. These systems have improved data efficiency, improved data accuracy, improved efficiency and productivity. Many companies tried to implement ERP, some failed while some successfully implemented it. The following paper describes what were the factors that lead to industy’s biggest ERP failures and what companies did the right things for successful ERP implementations.

• ERP software is hitting business at a time when data integration, reduced transaction costs and speed and accuracy of information are critical strategic issues.