Successfully Navigating the Turbulent Skies of a Large-Scale ERP Implementation

Bombardier is a Canadian based public company operating in the sector of manufacturing planes and train in several countries. It was founded by Joseph –Armand Bombardier in 1942. They key people involved in the management are Pierre Beaudoin, Alain Bellemare and Lutz Bertling who are working as Chairman, CEO and COO of the company respectively. Over the years, this company has utilized its resources very well and followed a fantastic strategy of expansion. Most of the expansion was made using inorganic strategy of expansion by acquiring various companies already running in the industry which help Bombardier in quick rapid growth. This is quite clear as it has moved well in the value system from making of snowmobiles to planes

Bombardier is a Canadian multinational aerospace and transportation company. The product of the company has aircraft, business jets, mass transportation equipment, recreational equipment and a provider of financial services.

Bombardier has grown substantially via acquisitions since 1989. These acquisitions allowed Bombardier to expand operations, however, in doing so they inherited multiple different information systems, processes and business practices. Bombardier, had become a textbook silo company.

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.

In these two schematic representations we can see that the biggest business group of Bombardier is the Aerospace group with a revenue of $8 126 M during for year 2000. As Bombardier is the number one or two globally in the aerospace industry, depending on which under group you are looking at, Bombardier is considered to have a high competitive advantage. The industry attractiveness is rather high, as it is a global industry with a turnover of many billions dollars, but also with a high growth of about 5 % per year.

ERP projects are most definitely expensive and risky, nevertheless despite these potential costs KEDA decided to embark on its ERP implementation project in hopes of obtaining a high return on investment. One of the factors that led to this decision was the fierce competition of global and local competitors. In an effort to retain its position within the industry and combat the threat of other businesses, KEDA needed to evolve. Specifically, through choosing a new ERP system, KETA hoped that this strategy would improve operations and become a productive advancement to the structure of the company. Since the Chinese government stopped their support and the MRP-II couldn’t manage the multiple system operations, they had to seek out a new alternative.

Bombardier Inc., a diversified manufacturing and service company, is a world leading manufacturer of business jets, regional aircraft, rail transportation equipment. It is also a provider of financial services and asset management. The Corporation employs 79,000 people in 24 countries in the Americas, Europe and AsiaPacific

Bombardier Aerospace is a train and aircraft manufacture based out of Canada. It is considered the one of the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world after Boeing and Airbus (Andrews, 2015). Bombardier Aerospace performs its operations in two distinct sectors: rail transportation via Bombardier Transportation and aerospace via Bombardier Aerospace. In regards to Bombardier Aerospace, it includes aircraft (commercial and cargo), jets, turboprops, and amphibious aircraft. In an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal, McKinnon (2015) points out that “National Bank is guiding for 20 commercial plane deliveries in the quarter, up from 13 a year earlier…[and] Revenue, according to analysts, is expected to climb around 6% to $4.62 billion” (McKinnon, 2015, para. 3). Airline

Bombardier inc. is a world-leading manufacture of innovative transportation solutions, ranging from regional aircraft and business jets to rail transportation systems and solutions. The company is a global corporation headquartered in Montreal 29 January 1942, Canada, with total revenues of about $14.7 billion. The major shareholders are members of the bombardier family. Bombardier sells its products on all five continents, with a high concentration in Europe and North America. More than 94%

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

After reading the case study, there were many conditions which I think made the ERP implementation desirable for Bombardier Aerospace. As quoted in the case study by a senior project manager that ‘Organization has become a textbook silo organization’ because of its acquisition strategy. This particular quote is one of the desirable reasons as whenever Bombardier Aerospace acquired any company they adopted the data, process and the systems of each company and hence it was just like a textbook silo. The cost of information system ownership increased due to the increased number of systems. There were process delays, sequential

It was stated that an adequate training that is provided to end users can increase the likelihood of ERP implementation success, whereas the lack of suitable training may cause ERP system implementation failure (Nah et al., 2003). Moreover Khandekar & Sharma (2005), Tharenou et al. (2007) argued that in order to achieve the organisation’s financial, managerial and performance objectives from the ERP implementation, training programs that are designed to enhance users’ skills and develop human resource capabilities are vital. In addition, training and education reduces user resistance and increases ease of use, as the result, increases the chances of ERP systems success and willingness to use (Bradley, 2008). An implementation an ERP system without sufficient training possibly will have a negative impact on the organisational performance (Somers & Nelson, 2004).

The project did not achieve desirable standards as far as customer requirements, scope, environment and execution were concerned. It was important that the project integrators to ensure customers do not escalate during the implementation of the project, being the first adopters of the software FoxMeyer should have exercised caution by adopting the software in phases rather than implementing the project directly, furthermore, execution was the biggest problem, despite knowing that the project needed skilled personnel FoxMeyer did not train staff during the early stages of the project and had to rely on consultants. Finally the company should have gained control over the project from the start to ensure that all the staff and management were involved but in this case despite knowing that the project would not work as envisaged the management did not take control or stop the implementation of the project.

Anderson (2014) said “ERP implementations rarely fail in formulation; however, they frequently fail in implementation.” It does not in with just purchasing an ERP system. A well designed implementation plan is the company’s ticket to success. A well designed implementation plan addresses all potential bottlenecks like execution problems such as lack of training, attitude and participation of the entire workforce from leaders to staff, and member selection for the whole ERP project implementation team. An ERP project is

First ERP Failure (Hershey): There are many organizations which were successful in the implementation of ERP’s but there are also ERP implementations which were a disastrous failures. Firstly let us know about few of such organizations. The most famous company Hershey’s, one among the top fortune 500 companies was once hit by the ERP failure in the year 1999.The Hershey Foods Corporation was founded by Milton Hershey in year 1894 . Hershey’s had approached three vendors SAP AG, Siebel Systems and Manugistics for implementing the ERP system. Few of the modules were implemented in January 1999, remaining modules were due on April 1999 [3]. Unfortunately it was delayed and was moved on to be implemented in July 1999 which had overlapped with the year’s busiest time when huge orders were received for Christmas and Halloween. To complete the implementation on a faster notion Hershey decided on following Big Bang implementation in which several modules were implemented parallel. This implementation was failed miserably due to lack of order management and fulfillment, even though Hershey had finished the product and