ERP Architecture in Candy Manufacturing Company.

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ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
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1ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Table of Contents
Type of ERP System...............................................................................................................................................2
Benefits of the System.............................................................................................................................................3
Challenges and Mitigation Strategies of the System...............................................................................................4
Determination of Preferable Vendor and Business Functions................................................................................4
References...............................................................................................................................................................6

2ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Type of ERP System
The candy manufacturing company in Riyadh, the SugarSquared, Inc. is a growing organization that
successfully produces sweet products and distributes them in various regions of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The number of employees working in the organization is 300 and the company has its manufacturing sites in
three different locations. However, the functional businesses of these three locations are completely separate
from each other and cannot update each other about any information. The data generated by them are
maintained separately in their legacy systems and the three sites are not aware about each other’s business
operations. The company also incorporates an online retail site that helps them to gain customers digitally.
However, due to the unawareness of the operations, the managerial body has decided to implement an
Enterprise Planning System that will connect all the three sites, generate data and extract important information
out of it, thereby reducing the consistent effort of the managers to conduct the operations manually. Now the
most beneficial type of enterprise system for the given organization will be the Enterprise Resource Planning
System that will manage the resources of all the three locations and maximize its usage to conduct the business
operations from one single software package (Giachetti, 2016). The different applications available in the ERP
systems will smoothen out the functionalities of the operational activities and monitoring of the quality of these
activities will be enhanced to a significant rate.
It will be best for the company to integrate a customer relationship software as well as a supply chain
module in their enterprise system. The package of customer relationship will help the organization to manage
three operations efficiently- selling the sweet candy products to a wider range of customers, attending the
complaints and the issues from the customer’s end and adopting digital marketing strategies through this
software (Appelbaum et al., 2017). The CRM systems integrated within the ERP will help to manage the
inventories better than before. Again, the systems of supply chain management will help the organization to
acquire raw materials from their vendors in an organized manner by tracking the goods, storing them in
inventories and supplying the manufactured products to the stores and the customers (Panetto et al., 2016).
Thus, an integrated ERP system will prove to be effective for the sugar candy manufacturers of Riyadh in Saudi
Arabia.

3ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Benefits of the System
The SugarSquared, Inc. organization will incorporate a huge number of benefits if they implements the
integrated ERP system in their company to conduct their business activities in an organized as well as
simplified way. The primary benefit of acquiring an ERP system is to integrate all the processes in one single
software system such that the managers can execute the operations of different departments effectively (Lasisi,
Owens & Udagedara, 2017). Thus, the candy manufacturers can integrate the business activities of three
different locations into one single package for better supervision. The added advantage of acquiring an ERP
system in their organization is the reduction in their operational costs on various aspects such as reducing
labours, reusing the resources, automating the processes and so on.
The company other major advantage incorporated by the company is the ‘visibility’ factor. The senior
managerial body of the organization can access the data of the various business processes and supervise the
status of the inventories on a regular basis. Due to the easy availability of the data through ERP systems, the
executives can collaborate the tasks of the three different sites from one centralised location and thus contribute
to the streamlining of the processes (Dezdar, 2017). Since, the ERP systems are responsible for the
transparency in the data, it will help the departmental managers of the company to maintain a cohesive
approach in their work processes and execute the inter-departmental processes with optimum level of
efficiency.
The ERP system will act as a bridge between the three different sites of the organization and improve
the overall business functions of the organization. The integrated ERP system will allow the organization to
attend the customer issues at a higher rate. The company will be able to track down the issues faced by the
customers and resolve them within a short span of time to gain customer satisfaction (Chandiwana & Pather,
2016). Moreover, they can adopt digital marketing strategies using their CRM software, reach out to the global
market, and expand their business in different regions of the country. The system of enterprise resource
planning will also be efficient in generating reports on important information and in turn help the managers of
the organization to take effective decisions for all the three sites of operations for the company.

4ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Challenges and Mitigation Strategies of the System
The ERP systems available in the market are generalised for any business processes. The companies buy
them from vendors and customise them to align with their own operational activities. The sugar candy
manufacturing company also can do the same while implementing the integrated ERP system in their
organization. However, the problem lies in the customization of the processes (Menon et al., 2019).
Customising the ERP system not only takes extra time as well as effort, it increases the complexity of the
system to a huge level that will be difficult to understand by the old-age employees who are unaware of the
current technologies of this era. Although, the new age employees are aware about the technical functionalities
of the ERP systems, they do not have experience in the business processes and will not be able to align the
operations with the ERP systems effectively. Moreover, the costing of the implementation of the ERP also
increases to a significant level that might become unaffordable for the organizational executives to invest for
this technological venture (Fernandez, Zaino & Ahmad, 2018). The major challenge for the organization will be
if the software systems are not implemented in the organization successfully that might result in halting the
processes of the departments unless the issues is detected and recovered.
Thus, the company can plan their budget before investing in the ERP implementation and make simple
customizations that will be aligned with their software. Moreover, they can monitor the implementation process
and test their methods at each implementation stage such that quality is maintained in the development of the
system and the technological venture turns out to be a successful one (Chofreh, Goni & Klemeš, 2018).
Furthermore, the company should take initiative to train their employees about the functionality of the ERP
system such that they can effectively track down their job responsibilities, manage the inventory section well
and deal their customers in a trained way. The manufacturing company executives should also arrange for
meetings and conferences to motivate the employees of different age gaps to work together and invent solutions
for their business processes and promote an all-inclusive work climate amidst the technological changes in the
organization.
Determination of Preferable Vendor and Business Functions
The company can incorporate the NetSuite ERP software solutions for their business processes and
conduct their operations in a robust way. The ERP software package of NetSuite is not only a pioneer in

5ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
enterprise system solutions but also incorporates cloud computing as an added feature. The NetSuite ERP
solutions is one of the best in the market and is acquired by organizations in more than 100 countries in the
world. The software package can thus help the candy manufacturing company to provide a centralised solution
for the three different locations and help them to manage their operations more efficiently. The software
modules present in NetSuite ERP not only helps the managerial body to supervise the business process but also
makes the lower level employees track their functions on a regular basis to accomplish their tasks on time.
Figure 1: Features of NetSuite ERP System Software
(Source: NetSuite ERP Solutions, 2020)
The automated features of NetSuite solutions will help the managers to automate various business
processes such as generating sales reports or sending regular emails to the employees (Rolling, 2016). The
solution can also track the status of the inventories and update the managers to refill the stock as soon as
possible to maximize the production of the candies. Moreover, the software also accounts for the financial
management and billing of the customers at a speedy rate. Thus, it will be beneficial for the SugarSquared, Inc.
to incorporate NetSuite software package and customise them at a robust level to carry out their business
process smoothly from all the three sites and yet monitor the activities from one central location.

6ERP ARCHITECTURE IN CANDY MANUFACTURING COMPANY
References
Appelbaum, D., Kogan, A., Vasarhelyi, M., & Yan, Z. (2017). Impact of business analytics and enterprise
systems on managerial accounting. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 25, 29-44.
Chandiwana, T., & Pather, S. (2016). A citizen benefit perspective of municipal enterprise resource planning
systems.
Chofreh, A. G., Goni, F. A., & Klemeš, J. J. (2018). Sustainable enterprise resource planning systems
implementation: A framework development. Journal of cleaner production, 198, 1345-1354.
Dezdar, S. (2017). An integrative model for realising benefits from enterprise resource planning
implementation. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 24(4), 423-451.
Fernandez, D., Zaino, Z., & Ahmad, H. (2018). An investigation of challenges in Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) implementation: The case of public sector in Malaysia. International Journal of Supply Chain
Management, 7(3), 113-117.
Giachetti, R. E. (2016). Design of enterprise systems: Theory, architecture, and methods. CRC Press.
Lasisi, M. O., Owens, J. D., & Udagedara, S. (2017). Key benefits of enterprise resource planning adoption
within small family businesses: a conceptual framework.
Menon, S. A., Muchnick, M., Butler, C., & Pizur, T. (2019). Critical challenges in enterprise resource planning
(ERP) implementation. International Journal of Business and Management, 14(7), 54-69.
NetSuite ERP Solutions. (2020). [Image]. Retrieved 25 March 2020, from https://www.google.com/search?
q=netsuite+erp+software&sxsrf=ALeKk01Sc64ErACk8imBigXWRTpTznfX_A:1585109786210&sour
ce=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNu_KN4rToAhVl4jgGHTFyBWUQ_AUoAXoECBEQA
w&biw=1517&bih=675#imgrc=OgSgrRmWMUmzdM.
Panetto, H., Zdravkovic, M., Jardim-Goncalves, R., Romero, D., Cecil, J., & Mezgár, I. (2016). New
perspectives for the future interoperable enterprise systems. Computers in Industry, 79, 47-63.

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Rolling, T. (2016). Using Netsuite in Business Curriculum. Journal of Higher Education Theory and
Practice, 16(5).