Management Case Study: Analyzing Diet Center's ERP Implementation

This report analyzes the Diet Center (DC) case study, a Lebanese family business in the healthcare and nutrition sector. The assignment requires an evaluation of DC's growth strategy, mission, and vision concerning its SAP ERP decision. It assesses the need and role of an ERP system, evaluating the costs and benefits of implementation and its impact on various activities within the firm. The report discusses the future of the firm by analyzing the potential impact of the SAP ERP system on its operations and financial results. The analysis includes consideration of the company's challenges before ERP implementation, the improvements observed, and the overall impact on business operations and financial management. The report also references external cases to support the analysis.

Running head: - ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING
ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction...........................................................................................................................2
2. Question-1..............................................................................................................................2
3. Question-2..............................................................................................................................4
4. Question-3..............................................................................................................................5
5. Question-4..............................................................................................................................6
6. Question-5..............................................................................................................................7
7. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
8. References..............................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction
Diet Center (DC) is an organization that has been operating within the field of
healthcare and nutrition for a long time in Lebanon. Sawsane Wazzan and Rifaat Jabri, who
were a couple, had opened the company in the year of 1990 right after the political unrest due
to the civil war had come to an end (Harwood 2017). The primary reason why the couple had
given rise to DC was the concept in terms of light diet as well as a healthy living that had
been prevailing in United States in and around the year of 1988. Wazzan and Jabri had
primarily taken this initiative upon looking at the obesity rate of the Lebanese population that
had been rising between the year of 1997 and that of 2008 in regards to the civil unrest that
had still existed within the country. The company had three divisions primarily working
among which dietetic clinic that treated patients suffering from obesity, a kitchen for
production and delivery systems in retail outlets for healthy food. In regards to the unhealthy
food habits of the population, Diet Center (DC) offered differently existing dietary menus
having divided into specific counts for the calorie as well as in accordance to the growing
needs of the people (Efe 2019). The company reached its peak of success and had become the
leader within the industry with prestigious clients as a part of its customer base by the year of
2006. However, the company suffered as well as faced some of the problems that has been
properly explained within this report.
2. Question-1
Evaluate the firm’s growth strategy, mission and vision in relation to their SAP ERP
decision.
SAP was the provider for ERP management systems for all the businesses being the
largest software provider to all the business organizations as well as the third largest software
provider that was working independently. The company was also know for the market leader

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within the implementations of the client and that of the server having the possession of the
largest share within the relative marketing industry dealing with such applications (Chauhan
and Jaiswal 2016). The SAP provisions the company with all kinds of financial as well as
managerial functions to be operated within the enterprises.
The software that was provided by SAP was what Wazzan and her company, Diet
Center (DC) was in need. Wazzan had been in worries in regards to the fact of how to
manage all her expenses and get hold of the SAP systems since the implementation of the
software was considered to be costly. However, Jabri was the sales manager of SAP and had
provisioned Wazzan with lenient facilities to pay for the system (Acar et al. 2017). Wazzan
considered it to be a good deal since the system would have costed the company a lot less on
an annual basis in relation to the waste of labour, costs of materials as well as food.
On implementing the enterprise software that was offered by SAP to Diet Center,
Wazzan would have been provided with proper functionalities for performing different
activities as well as acting as a primary contributor towards the growth of the business for
Wazzan. The system will prove as a helping hand towards cost accounting, managerial as
well as financial reporting as well as with an optimal structure for the costs. In addition to
this, the system will also provision Diet Center with management of stock as well as payroll
of the employees belonging to the organization (Olson, Johansson and De Carvalho 2018).
As a whole, the ERP system to be provided by SAP will allow all the data of the organization
to be stored into a single platform that will have the added provision to be accessed by all the
customers of DC and working towards customer satisfaction.

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3. Question-2
Assess the need and role of an appropriate ERP system in the operations of the firm.
Diet Center (DC) has the primary objective to offer all of its customers with a healthy
diet as well as providing with medical services to all the people who are affected with
diseases especially with obesity. The company has been operating since the year of 1990 to
offer health as well as diet nutrition along with serving the entire community with awareness
in terms of health. Diet Center has also been selling low fact as well as low calorie food for
management of weight and treatment against diseases such as the likes of hypertension,
cardiovascular disease, hypertension as well as obesity.
All of the above business activities that are carried out by the company on a daily
basis has the inclusion of multiple data belonging to the organization as well as all the
customers (Chatzoglou et al. 2016). In addition to this, management of every individual
business activity is to be maintained on a prioritized manner with perfection. In regards to
this, the company direly needs an enterprise software that will monitor and properly carry out
all the activities in a proper manner that perfectly aligns with all the services provided by
SAP to the organization in particular.
The SAP ERP system is considered to be the best suited software solution for DC
because of all the activities that is carried out on a daily basis. The ERP software will allow
for a proper accounting of all the costs as well as financial and the managerial reporting that
is needed by Diet Center. Following this, the ERP system will also act as a primary helping
hand towards managing all the stocks as well as the payroll procedure of the company. In
addition to this, the system will have a singular platform containing all the data that will also
be accessed by the customers to the organization (Masa'deh, Mufleh and Alrowwad 2017). In
short, Wazzan has the belief that integration of the ERP system will manage all the business

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operations of the company in a systematic method and will safeguard the company against
cash drain along with the losses that had been previously suffered by DC due to the absence
of such a system.
4. Question-3
Evaluate the costs and benefits of implementing an ERP system.
With the implementation of the SAP ERP system in Diet Center, the following will be
the primary benefits that will be received by the organization in this regard,
 Implementation of the SAP system software will allow the company to lower down as
well as save the cost for all the information and the technological solutions that is
required by the company to provide the customers with the latest technologies and
digitalized solutions (Ali and Miller 2017).
 The ERP system will have a singular platform that will allow for the containment of
all the data that belongs to the customers as well as the organization to be viewed as
well as accessed by the external customer saving the cost for different systems for
such storage of data.
 The company will have a potential helping hand from the ERP system in creating as
well as managing various reports that form an important part of the business activities
such as business as well a financial reports for DC (Costa et al. 2016).
 The system will potentially provision DC with the allowance to choose the features
that is exactly needed by the company and specifically aligns to the activities of the
organization.
 SAP ERP system will particularly serve the customers in the best way possible. The
system will hear to the problem that is faced by respective customers, find out for the
similar solution that is present within the system and then place forward the perfect

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solution for the customer (Altamony et al. 2016). The system will also allow the
customer to choose from a set of services that can be opted by any customer at any
point of time. Hence, this provides the customers with a range of services as well as
features to meet the demands and needs of the potential customers and satisfy them.
 Lastly, the personal data belonging to the customers will be provided to the system
and will be needed for a better service to the customers shall be properly secured to
ensure safety against data leakage (Mahmud, Ramayah and Kurnia 2017). The SAP
ERP system will provision with better data security as well as will maintain the prime
quality of the data.
5. Question-4
Assess the effect of an ERP system on the various activities within the firm.
Primarily, the SAP ERP system was considered to be installed within the firm by
Wazzan to improve the already existing procedures following which the entire work was
being carried out but did not place forward fruitful results. The results had been not that much
effective in terms of business or the customer base (Saade and Nijher 2016). In regards to
this, the company took the necessary decision of utilizing the SAP ERP systems to have a
business growth as well as a strong base of customers who are loyal. As a result, almost every
individual aspect of the business in relation to the firm had visibly identified improvement as
well as growth.
Firstly, the SAP ERP system has allowed the company to have a singular platform for
all the data that has been provided to the company by the customers as a part of the process.
Through this platform, the customers will have the provision to access their own data and
make any changes that is necessary for an update. On the other hand, the company will get
hold of respective customer data in any situation needed to carry out a particular process.

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The system has also allowed as well as helped the organization to manage as well as
create financial and business related reports (Kurbel 2016). In addition to this, SAP ERP
software has also helped the company to keep a check upon the cash drainage as well as to
lower the loss that had been once suffered by the company while carrying out their business.
6. Question-5
Discuss the future of the firm by analysing the potential impact of the SAP ERP system on
the operation and financial results.
In reference to the prevailing situation in the past, the company had been suffering a
lot of barriers while carrying out their business smoothly and efficiently. The procedure of
procurement was not having the integration of inventory as well as accounting that was acting
as a hindrance towards the updates of data. Approved list of the suppliers did not follow any
specific pattern and was completely unorganized (Nelson 2020). On the other hand, the
accounting system used to highlight untimely transactions that usually lead to situations of
misleading data related to the finances of the company. Monitoring over of the purchase,
supply as well as delivery of products was not smooth enough. In this regard, it was the
decision of Wazzan to take the help of SAP and implement an ERP system to bring all the
negative happenings under control.
In reference to the previous situation, the implementation of the new SAP ERP system
has been proved a blessing for improving the business activities of the system (Erkut 2018).
However, the most identifying improvements have been visibly identified business operation
as well as managing all the finances being generated from the processes of the firm. With the
installation of the SAP application, the cost accounting had seemed to be carrying out in
proper manner. In addition to this, managing all the financial reporting along with the
creation of the same had been provisioned with a helping hand from the software. The cost

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structure of the organization was optimised and the projects were allocated costs in terms of
the costs and resulting in optimizing the entire structure of cost (Ayyagari 2019). On the
contrary, the business procedures of the company had been majorly improved with the help
of the ERP system by monitoring over the cash drainage and reducing it. In addition to this,
the SAP software also controlled the losses that had been previously incurred by the company
by having a specific monitoring over the payroll management.
7. Conclusion
Diet Center (DC) had come into play in the year of 1990 when majority of the people
in Lebanon were found to be suffering through obesity due to unhealthy eating habits and low
consciousness towards personal health. By the end of 2006, the company had become the
industry leader having the possession of reputed clients present within the customer base.
However, the report identifies some of the problems that had led towards degradation of
business procedures within the organization. This leads to the report stating that DC opted for
the implementation of ERP software provided by SAP. This is followed by the identification
of the overall business procedures that suffers improvement due to the integration of the
software into Diet Center (DC).

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8. References
Acar, M.F., Tarim, M., Zaim, H., Zaim, S. and Delen, D., 2017. Knowledge management and
ERP: Complementary or contradictory?. International Journal of Information Management,
37(6), pp.703-712.
Ali, M. and Miller, L., 2017. ERP system implementation in large enterprises–a systematic
literature review. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.
Altamony, H., Al-Salti, Z., Gharaibeh, A. and Elyas, T., 2016. The relationship between
change management strategy and successful enterprise resource planning (ERP)
implementations: A theoretical perspective. International Journal of Business Management
and Economic Research, 7(4), pp.690-703.
Ayyagari, R., 2019. Hands-on ERP learning: Using OpenERP®, an alternative to SAP®.
Journal of Information Systems Education, 22(2), p.5.
Chatzoglou, P., Fragidis, L., Chatzoudes, D. and Symeonidis, S., 2016, September. Critical
success factors for ERP implementation in SMEs. In 2016 Federated Conference on
Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS) (pp. 1243-1252). IEEE.
Chauhan, S. and Jaiswal, M., 2016. Determinants of acceptance of ERP software training in
business schools: Empirical investigation using UTAUT model. The International Journal of
Management Education, 14(3), pp.248-262.
Costa, C.J., Ferreira, E., Bento, F. and Aparicio, M., 2016. Enterprise resource planning
adoption and satisfaction determinants. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, pp.659-671.
Efe, B., 2019. ERP Software Selection Based on Intuitionistic Fuzzy VIKOR Method. In
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Models for Website Evaluation (pp. 121-137). IGI Global.

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Erkut, B., 2018. The emergence of the ERP software market between product innovation and
market shaping. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 4(3),
p.23.
Harwood, S., 2017. ERP: The implementation cycle. Routledge.
Kurbel, K.E., 2016. Enterprise resource planning and supply chain management. springer-
verlag berlin an.
Mahmud, I., Ramayah, T. and Kurnia, S., 2017. To use or not to use: Modelling end user
grumbling as user resistance in pre-implementation stage of enterprise resource planning
system. Information Systems, 69, pp.164-179.
Masa'deh, E.Y.R.A., Mufleh, M. and Alrowwad, A.A., 2017. The impact of ERP system's
usability on enterprise resource planning project implementation success via the mediating
role of user satisfaction.
Nelson, M.B., 2020. Evaluating the Learnability of ERP Software in Universities. In Metrics
and Models for Evaluating the Quality and Effectiveness of ERP Software (pp. 200-234). IGI
Global.
Olson, D.L., Johansson, B. and De Carvalho, R.A., 2018. Open source ERP business model
framework. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 50, pp.30-36.
Saade, R.G. and Nijher, H., 2016. Critical success factors in enterprise resource planning
implementation. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.