1INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT Introduction El-Alamein is a leading organization in printing as well as packaging industry. It is approved supplier for biggest international organizations in industry of fast food. There was no reliable network, infrastructure, storage or servers in the organization. No IS/IT department was there in organization chart. After reviewing several ERP systems as well as scoring against requirements of the company, E-Business Suite of Oracle was selected as best ERP for meeting business requirementsand information of the organization. Description of Systems The systems that have been described in the case study are IT/IS systems and mainly the ERP system. El-Alamein did not have any IT/IS department and was facing various challenges as the company lacked in proper infrastructure, network, storage devicesandservers.Tilltheyear2006,theorganizationdidnothaveanyIT department and was dependent on separate PCs. The work duties were facilitated with end-user designed excels sheets. The company had been a victim to many attacks that resulted in loss of orders, inaccurate inventory and mismanagement in between the various functional departments. In the year 2006, the CEO of the company decided to shift to digital platforms which required establishing various infrastructural components that include computer network, security policy along with a backup system. ERP systemwastobeimplementedalongwithtimeandattendancesystems.The implementation of these systems was seen to solve the problem of time consuming operations. The company has come up with a website which helps many of the functional departments that include marketing, sales, customer services as well as sales.
2INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT Oracle E-Business Suite has been chosen as the ERP system that can help the company to manage informations along with business requirements. Valuable Information provided by systems The systems to be implemented will help the business to go digital mainly the attendance, time management as well as the ERP system. The time and attendance system has been integrated with the ERP system thus provide advantage to the company. Oracle E-Business Suite was selected ERP system which could meet up to theexpectationsofthecompanyandcompatiblewiththevariousbusiness requirements.TheinformationthattheERPsystemcanprovideareplanning, inventory,marketing,humanresources,purchasingandsales.Thiswillhelpin managing the various business operations as it is centralized as well as integrated in nature(Lowry & Wilson, 2016). The Oracle E-Business Suite that has been selected by the organization customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and other computer applications that can either be developed or be acquired (Motiei, Zakaria, Aloini & Sekeh, 2015). The information about the time of the tasks being done and the attendance of the employees of the organization are two valuable informations that can be obtained from the system. Risks facing El-Alamein in implementing the ERP system Implementation of the ERP system by the company has faced different difficulties the main being employees reluctance to adapt to the changes. Employee turnover is the major problem that the company faced while implementing ERP system. The company has lost six of his valuable persons during the process of implementation of the ERP system. Knowledge management is considered one of the vital factors in case of implementation of ERP system. Organizations are implementing the new system in
3INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT order to enhance their business operations but as they are not considering some major aspects, these are failing. The reluctance of the employees to adopt the new technology and specifically to learn more is one of the main reasons for the failure of the project. There are lot of instances where the project implementation fails due to the only reason thatorganizationalworkforcearenotwillingtoacceptthechangesthatthe management wants(Chakravorty, Dulaney & Franza, 2016). The backbone of an organization is its workforce and in this organization the reluctance of the workforce can be well understood from the fact that it has lost six of its employees during this process. Value added by IT/IS investment to El-Alamein The IT/IS investment has added a lot of value to El-Alamein as this brought in reductions in the investment risks, strengthened the process of integration, brought in improvisations in productivity at the same time enhancing the efficiency related to inventory management. With the IT/IS investment the company has been able to establishstrategicrelationshipswithdifferentmultinationalcompanies.The establishment of IT/IS department has increased the company’s value by a value that is more than EGP 10 million. This is said to be five times of what was spent till date on IT/IS and the return on investment has exceeded 500 percent. The production time and attendance of the employees can be tracked properly thus given the company to handle the operations in a proper way. The implementation of the technology has helped the company to streamline various operations thus improving the productivity of the firm. The firm has been able to build relationship with various multinational companies and thus in this way has succeeded in expanding its business. The new technology has supported operations such as customer services that are considered as one of the major aspects that contribute to the growth of the organization.
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4INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT Conclusion After a year of the ERP system’s implementation, two modules only went live: HR module and financial module. Several difficulties were experienced by the project. For reducing the risk, organization took several steps. Employee turnover could cost organizations huge amount of money which was faced by the organization during time of implementation. Establishment of IT/IS in the organization resulted in increase of company value.
5INFORMATION STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT References Chakravorty, S. S., Dulaney, R. E., & Franza, R. M. (2016). ERP implementation failures: a case study and analysis.International Journal of Business Information Systems,21(4), 462-476. Lowry, P. B., & Wilson, D. (2016). Creating agile organizations through IT: The influence of internal IT service perceptions on IT service quality and IT agility.The Journal of Strategic Information Systems,25(3), 211-226. Motiei, M., Zakaria, N. H., Aloini, D., & Sekeh, M. A. (2015). Developing instruments for enterprise resources planning (ERP) post-implementation failure model.International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems (IJEIS),11(3), 68-83.