Enterprise Information Systems

ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
BUS5EIS – ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
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ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................3
1. What problems does Geneva have with their legacy systems?............................................4
2. What is the business, technology, strategic and business process rationale for Geneva steel
to undertake SAP implementation?..............................................................................................4
3. Geneva plans to use SAP to change culture at Geneva. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of this approach to culture change?......................................................................5
4. Where is Geneva Steel today and why?...................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7
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ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Executive summary
The customer base of Geneva Steel, the only integrated steel mill in the west of Mississippi
River was in the west and central US; selling its products to steel service centres and distributors.
The company had developed the US government’s biggest construction project during World
War II. The plant that was run by U.S. Steel for 40 years, in early 1987 owing to various factors
was shut down. The company was reopened under new ownership of Joseph Cannon, who
owned over half of Geneva Steel till January 1999 together with company president Robert
Grow. The culture at Geneva Steel was like of a conventional steel mill, hierarchical with fears
of failure and challenging for superiors. A recent survey conducted on customer satisfaction
reveals that the company had some problems in this area. For including a number of
heterogeneous systems, the integration and access of information was made difficult in the
information system configuration of Geneva which was further improved over time. Although
huge amount of transaction data is created from its current information system, most of it is not
accessible to users nor are they integrated with each other. This raises difficulties in decision-
makings as limited knowledge about customers and their orders is provided by the IS besides
limiting links with customers. Integrating information is a critical job in management particularly
while designing business plan. For affecting systematic change in its corporate systems,
processes and structures thereby, reducing costs by 20% Geneva started a Delta project in 1997.
It brought organizational change by realigning the management responsibilities amid senior
staffs who were reduced to 219 from 328, operations management reduced to 92 from 155. Many
organizational measures were developed for assessing the impact of the project for providing
adequate data in terms of quality, timeliness and costs. However, Geneva’s existing MIS failed
in capturing enough information and decided to adopt SAP as it would improve reporting
capabilities, availability and use of information through system based integration of data by
linking accounting and IS and improve customer satisfaction. SAP implementation affected
every aspect of its operations. Although the culture change may not be accepted immediately but
people eventually figured out that it would take place.
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