Successful CRM System Implementation in Woolworths Limited

This report discusses the successful implementation of a CRM system in Woolworths Limited, a well-known retail brand in Australia. The report highlights the role of technology and innovation in driving business success and identifies critical success factors and challenges faced during the implementation. The report also provides recommendations for future projects.

Running head: STRATEGIC PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Strategic Project Management: Successful CRM system implementation in Woolworths
Limited
Name of the student:
Name of the university:

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Introduction
Innovation is referred to as one of the greatest way that helps to gain success in this
digital era. For any business technology can either serve positive impact or can serve negative
impact. This report depicts the role of technology and innovation behind the success story of
Woolworths Limited’s ERP and CRM implementation. The direction of innovation and its role
towards the business success can be demonstrated in different manners (Norton 2015). The
positive as well as smarter directions in terms of quality, time and values have proved that the
emerging technology can deliver wide success in the business environment.
It is mandatory for any business organization to consider most suitable technical
excellence so that is can drive the business to commercial and competitive success. Proper
justifications for the success criteria are elaborated in this report with accurate justification and
also numerous criteria that can drive the business towards success are also illustrated in this
report. Behind the success some critical challenges also exists in the organization that are to be
mitigated and for that some recommendations are also illustrated in this report.
Background of the company
Woolworths Limited is one of the well known retail brands headquarters in Bella Vista,
New South Wales Australia ad founded in the year of 1924, 22 September. The company serves
their products throughout Australia and New Zealand. Woolworth’s mission is to obtain high
financial security as well as well being through providing range of competitive, relevant and also
price saving services to the consumers (Abunar and Zerban 2016). Apart from this, the vision of
the company is to provide high quality financial services for their employees. The moral integrity

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of the company is to grab more new consumers and also retain the existing consumers with high
consistency. Another aim of the company is to provide ethical, user friendly as well as
responsive online services to the consumers. Initially, the company has weaker and insecure
operational and functional ability. Due to this reason the service center of the company was
unable to manage their functions successfully (Sullivan and Gouldson 2017). As a result they
have planned to implement an ERP system and CRM support system for managing all their
consumers all at a time.
Discussion on the success criteria
One of the largest food retailers of Australia called as Woolworths Limited is known that
an effective supply chain operation provider in central for being able to deliver fresh food on
everyday basis to Millions of the consumers across Australia. In order to ensure the effective
operation of the supply chain management system that Woolworths Limited deploy in their
business to business integration platform for providing real field application level integration
with the system of the suppliers (Fernie and Sparks 2014). This platform leverages the protocol
of AS2 for the business of business communication that gives a specification for delivering
automated order fulfillment between the businesses with the help of the internet.
The key success factors that work behind the success of the ERP system include the
proper project startup, management commitment, project scope, experienced project team, proper
change management approaches, communication and training management program, budget
preparation and project closure. Mathu and Phetla (2018) stated that, successful business
strategies, IT strategies, ERP strategy review result can give project commitment. The project
associates should have proper understandings about the business requirements and they plan

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according to that to satisfy both the consumers and the employees at a time. Properly proven
tools and methodologies are to be selected by the company to make secure relationship between
the service providers and the consumers. It helps to design good communication outlines as well
as business case so that the system functionalities can be successfully implemented.
One of the major strategic partners of Woolworths Limited is SPS commerce. It helps the
company for the provision of Business to Business integration along with the community of the
suppliers. After high level extensive certification and evaluation process, the senior business
manager of the electronic business of Woolworths Limited has chosen SPS commerce. Due to
the already proved track record decorum the company has decided to adopt the service of SPS
commerce (Mohammad 2018). For direct store deliveries and high speed transmission of orders
this application is very much helpful from the business aspect. In order to meet the requirements
of the consumers and the employee proper support from the external and internal supporters are
very much crucial (Offor and Cleveland 2018). With the changing time the company is adopting
more advanced technology based platform for operating all the system functionalities
accordingly. In order to integrate the supplier’s community the company has adopted the SPS
commerce.
Critical identification and justification of the criteria
The ERP success criteria associated to Woolworth limited are elaborated in the below
section. The company has adopted the SAP RP for implementing the system successfully for the
associate employees of the company. After analyzing the future scope associated to the system
the company has adopted the concept of the ERP system. Incredible benefits can be generated by
the company if they adopt the application concept of SAP ERP system (Jayawickrama et al.

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2017.). Only the suitable ERP system can support the current organizational state of the
company. The executives of the company have shown the roadmap of the ERP requirements to
their potential vendors. With the best functional prcatices the important operations of the system
can be successfully delivered to the working employees and consumers. Within the executive
team the purpose of alignments are being foster successfully (Saravanan and Sundar 2015). If
any ERP system fails to adopt the unified support system then the entire system may face serious
failure. In order to make the employees familiar to the new technology, organized in job training
programs are also arranged by the executives of the company.
Critical analysis of the case based on the criteria
The information management approach of Woolworths Limited was facing serious
challenges that are required to be mitigated. The success criteria that are generated from the ERP
system are as follows:
Competition: For successful ERP implementation Woolworths Limited has invested a lot.
The technology solution of the company has delivered different business processes to make their
application more competitive in nature (Qureshi and Abdulkhalaq 2015). As much
competitiveness will increase for the company, that much collaborative encouragement will
increase.
Forecasting: The ERP system implemented by the company gives the operator a tool
through which the consumers will be able to make appropriate forecasting over their functional
abilities. The executives of the company has made and delivered successful as well as realistic
estimates. This software has touched almost each and every business aspects associated to the

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company (Fosso wamba and Edwards 2014). The interdepartmental efforts can also be
minimized with the facilitate growth of the company.
Scalability: The initial solution developed by the Woolworths Limited has grown a lot
over the changing time. Whenever the business is ready to grow with the help of this application
different functional growth can also be generated accordingly (Nandi and Kumar 2016). Both the
operational and administrative cost associated to Woolworths Limited can be minimized by the
implementation of the ERP system.
Streamlined process: The operational complexity of the company increases with the
manufacturer’s growth. Cross departmentally the operational cost of the company has minimized
with the help of the manufacturing software (Agaoglu, Yurtkoru and Ekmekçi 2015). The
business efficiency and the organizational productivity of the company have reduced with the
implementation of the ERP system.
Other critical success that has been identified for this particular case is the easy access to
the centralized data regardless of the location of the users. With the mobile friendly solution the
consumers of the company will be able to access the details of the products regardless of their
location and time as well. The application efficiency of the company will increase through the
help of this application. The user associate to the system will be able to respond much easily with
the data for which the company requested for (Bintoro et al. 2015). The solution used for the
company is quite easy to use. This powerful SAP ERP solution is capable to provide timely
monitoring changes as well as regulatory compliance to the users also.
Kim (2015) opined that, the ERP system and the CR system developed and implemented
by the company is very much user friendly as a result the user can effectively utilize for driving

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the business success. As the company offers online services to the consumers therefore, their
security is another major concern for the company. It has been found that, due to customized
services no unwanted users will be able to access data related to the employees and users without
permission. A better relationship between the consumers and the service providers will surely
give massive success to the company. Not only this but also, for the high security the consumers
feel free to buy products online with online payment (Nandi and Kumar 2016). In addition to this
for the application details the consumers are capable to deliver powerful and positive Return on
Investment (ROI). The company will be able to collect all the relative information necessary for
the company success (Jayawickrama, Liu and Hudson Smith 2017). Moreover, it can be said that
the successful ERP system can offer streamlined efficient process.
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be said that, the CRM supporting ERP system that
Woolworth Limited use is very user friendly and also helps the company to manage all their
operations much easily. Whatever criteria are planned by the company are implemented
successfully by the employees involved to the organization. Probably this company delivers the
biggest individual payroll implementation platform in Australia. Woolworths Limited has rolled
out the success Factor of SAP Talent management suites. On the other hand it is found that, with
the help of the SAP merchandising the significant challenges that the companies are facing can
be completely resolved. On the other hand, there are no such unplanned outages that are related
to the ERP system in the last three months. The hardware failure that the company has faced is
completely resolved with the successful implementation of the ERPP system. In order to drive

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successful productivity of the company Woolworths Limited has put focus leveraging their IT
operational and functional criteria.
Provision of suggestion or recommendations in the events that the project
should run in future
It has been found that, Woolworths Limited is facing serious level operational and
functional challenges due to lack of management abilities. It can be said that with the help of
certain operational remedies the issues that the company may face can also be resolved
completely. The recommendations given for the company are as follows:
Decision support system: The existing decision support system of the company is very
weak thus the company should install certain additional technology to the system so that the
associated employees of the company take immediate actions on their services.
Improvement on Supply chain management system: The supply chain management
system used by the company requires to be improved to deliver more efficiency to their
employees and other business operators. The all time operational threats of the organization can
be completely resolved with the help of the advanced supply chain management system of the
company. Again, the issues with the adverse logistic activities of the company can be completely
resolved.
Peer competitors: With changing time period the competitors of the company should be
reviewed. With the help of this activity the company will be able to gain simultaneous, long term
and sustainable success. It will help to deliver quality services to the consumers and the
employees who are working for the company.

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