Enterprise System: Drivers, Contributions, and Change Management

This essay provides insights into the concept of enterprise systems, including the principal drivers behind businesses adopting them, their contributions to organizational performance, and considerations for successful adoption. It also discusses the importance of change management in implementing enterprise systems.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Enterprise System
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.......................................................................................................................................3
Principal Drivers Behind Businesses in Adopting Enterprise Systems...........................................3
Contributions of Enterprise Systems to Organizational Performance and Ways of Measuring It. .5
Organizational Change Management Considerations for Successful Adoption of Enterprise
System..............................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................10
References:....................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction:
The essay provides an insight into the concept of enterprise system adopted by business.
Enterprise system represents huge scale software packages that are capable of tracking and
controlling complicated operations of business. The systems mostly act as the central command
hub for helping in business automation and ensuring easier decision making and reporting. Small
businesses implements enterprise system for gaining company wide access in attaining business
knowledge, minimize duplication of data and increase in productivity of the employees(Sykes,
Venkatesh and Johnson 2014). The system even enables a business in reducing cost of
information technology and minimizes the manual input of the data. In other words, enterprise
system influence the business by helping them in storing data in the usable format, automate
process of customer service for employees, scale the available resources, minimize the reliability
of the IT infrastructure, secure the customer data, ensure real time access to the information and
reduce the cost of doing the business. The enterprise system is an overall combination of the
computer software and hardware that is used by business for running and organizing the
operations (Rice 2013). It is to be noted that an integrated enterprise system will be capable of
handling innumerable operations in a company thereby facilitating reporting needs of the
management and business.
The report commences with a discussion on the principal drivers of the business in
adopting the Enterprise Systems. The report also discusses about how the Enterprise Systems is
able to contribute to the organizational performance and ways adopted in measuring such
contribution. The report also discusses about the change management considerations of an
organization required for the adoption of Enterprise System.

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Discussion:
Principal Drivers Behind Businesses in Adopting Enterprise Systems
Enterprise Systems are used as the hub of central command in order to automate business
and ensure easier decision making and reporting (Goodyear 2017). One of the principal drivers
for businesses in adopting the enterprise system is ensuring its safety. Often it is found that the
regular system of management provides employees with complete access on critical data
including pay slips and accounting documents. The Enterprise System aids in establishing
minimum control by restricting the accounts to the team by providing access to operations that
seems relevant for the position. Besides, hosting an ERP on private cloud provides higher level
of safety that helps in ensuring protection of data in the cloud.
Businesses are also driven towards the Enterprise Systems for increasing their
productivity. This is because extensive solutions does not always provide a better solution and
can be quite expensive. Besides, an employee performing a repetitive task results in wastage of
time. The Enterprise System helps in deleting the repetitive acts without doubling, tripling or
quadrupling the data entries (Ann Sykes 2015). In addition to this, ERP reduce the need for
entering manual data thereby rationalizing management process. Process automation and
financial transaction is another principle driver for the businesses in adopting the enterprise
system (Powell, Riezebos and Strandhagen 2013). This is because a good ERP helps in
automatically recording the current transactions the moment it occurs. These include invoice
management, inventory movement and calculation of tax, production cost and the spending of
the credit card expenses.

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Businesses also adopt Enterprise System for cost reduction. Task automation helps in
saving lot of things since service grouping not only helps in saving time and money. The
Enterprise System also helps in reducing the intermediaries as all the employees’ remains on the
same platform thereby having quicker access to the information. This ensures effective
productivity. The Enterprise System also helps business in merging all the systems into a single
database with the information source that contains real time data and the precise information
(Nour and Mouakket 2013). It helps in providing a rationalized product without higher cost of
additional material thereby ensuring multiple updates. It puts across an overall image regarding
the company’s performance. For instance, without the precise sales data, inventory management
suffers from the lack of information and hence there lies the need of providing good quantity of
the products at right time and place.
Facilitating the access to data is also one of the reasons for the businesses to adopt the
Enterprise System. This is because knowing the average margin of the sales along with updating
the documents and spreadsheets manually takes a lot more time. Given the pace of the
productivity of present day, employee requires immediate access to the key data. With the
solution of the Enterprise System in place, leaders and the other members have quicker access to
the precise information (Ziemba and Oblak 2013). This allows the seller in visualizing the
transaction history of the customers in the real time without any consultation with the other
department. This also helps in improving the level of satisfaction thereby enhancing the
opportunities of the sale. The system also allowed the customers to not only access their accounts
online but also post online information.
Businesses adopting Enterprise System helps the Information Technology (IT) team in
saving time. One of the disadvantages of having various systems within the company can be

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nightmarish for the IT team. Although, use of several software helps in managing the company
but it involves a lot of staff and time. It has been noted that customization of the system,
integration and maintenance with corrections and the improvements and upgrades can be
complicated. The Enterprise systems help in avoiding such complications.
Thus, the Enterprise System provides suppleness in answering the changeable needs and
allowed the business in making more in lesser amount of time.
Contributions of Enterprise Systems to Organizational Performance and Ways of Measuring
It
Enterprise Planning ensures quicker and better understanding of business performance.
As far as the organizational performance is concerned, Enterprise system aids an organization
with company specific integrated Information Technology systems covering all the functional
areas including the sales, distribution, manufacturing, payables, accounts, receivables, human
resource and inventory. The Enterprise System also automates and integrates the business
process and shares the information at the enterprise level in real time thereby improving the
corporate image and the customer service (Ziemba and Oblak 2013). As a step towards,
organizational performance, enterprise system ensures the complete integration of system not
only across the departments but also across the companies. The systems also helps in bridging
the information gap and focus on key issues like enhancement of productivity, cash management,
customer service, prompt delivery and quality control (Ha and Ahn 2014). In other words, the
enterprise system provides solution for better management of project. Besides, the enterprise
system also puts across intelligence tools like data mining and the early mining, information and
reporting systems thus enabling the people in making better decisions and improving the

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business process. Hence, the enterprise system in addition to addressing current requirements of
an organization also puts across an opportunity for the refinement and improvement of the
business process and performance.
The Enterprise System can be measured by encapsulating both the intangible and the
tangible benefits. Calculation of the gain from investing in the Enterprise System requires deeper
understanding of the organizational strategies, goals and expectations. Besides, the measurement
time is also vital for measuring the success of Enterprise System (Chang 2016). It has been noted
that the initiatives of the Enterprise System lowers the organizational performance after its
immediate implementation and takes a minimum of two to three years in producing sustainable
benefits.
However, the contributions of Enterprise System can be measured with the help of four
models which includes Balanced Scorecard, IT Impact Framework and the Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) Benefit Framework and the IS model.
The Balanced Scorecard put forward by Kaplan and Norton in the year 1992 aided the
balanced attention for measuring all the drivers of company value. This is considered as a
popular approach to the strategic management that embedded long term strategy into the
management systems through measurements. The balanced scorecard helped in linking the
organizational focus on the future success by setting the objectives and measuring the
performance from the four perspectives including the internal business perspective, customer
perspective, financial perspective and the learning and the innovation perspective (Ram,
Corkindale and Wu 2014).

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The IT framework model has been introduced by Scott Morton in the year 1991 for
understanding the impact of the IT on all kinds of organizations. The sole aim was to explore
whether an organization would prosper and survive in competitive environment. It also helped
the overall managers across the world in understanding the impacts that IT on the missions,
operating practice and the organizational structures. The framework mentions that the
organizational strategy, individual roles, management process, skills and informational
technology should remain consistent with one another. Optimal performance is possible provided
there is a fit between the two (Jagoda and Samaranayake 2017).
The ERP Benefits Framework on the other hand provided a comprehensive list of the
business benefits to the enterprise system in the dimensions of five benefits that included
managerial, strategic, operational, and organizational and infrastructural benefits. The framework
helped in identification of the benefits (Moalagh and Ravasan 2013).
Organizational Change Management Considerations for Successful Adoption of Enterprise
System
It is to be noted that change is an inevitable part of a business. Be it in the form of
adopting new technology like the Enterprise System or welcoming of newer employees into
workforce, change might take various forms. However, the constant thing is the aspect of
organizational change management.
The first step in the implementation of the change management approach towards the
successful adoption of the Enterprise System lies in assessing the present state of the business
and some of its processes (Rajan and Baral 2015). The first and foremost thing that needed to be
ascertained is whether the business and the processes have been ready in accepting the Enterprise

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System. In doing so, one should not expect everyone to remain on same page when the concern
revolves around bringing newer ERP software. In fact, there are various options that go into the
understanding why people have different opinions. This aspect is mostly related to the culture of
the company. A tech savvy millennial would view things from a different perspective compared
to a veteran who is not tech savvy. The understanding of differences amongst the culture of
companies represents a successful approach in undertaking change management (Nwankpa
2015). Some of the cultural differences expected to occur within the company includes,
demographics, language, skill level, education and the work personalities.
To ensure successful implementation of the Enterprise System, there is a need for
complete buy in from all the people involved in the process of decision-making. It however
includes both the employees and the management (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). As far as the
management is concerned, it is to be noted that without the entire team on board it is not possible
to accept the implementation of Enterprise System.
The management that remains in disagreement while bringing about a major change
would be considered as unorganized and cluttered to rest of organization that causes the
employees to remain aloof to newer idea. It is also important to consider the viewpoint of the
employees since the implementation would not work if the employees do not seem interested in
using it. In fact, the crucial aspect of the change management while implementing the ERP
system lies in having buy- in from the employees on whether they actually seem interested in
utilizing the system. To convince them it is necessary in calculating the return on investment
they might receive on implementing the Enterprise System. It is also necessary to show them the
success stories of the system by highlighting some of the time saving features. It is also

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necessary to ease out ideas regarding the Enterprise System so that the employees become more
inclined towards a tolerant response.
Another change management consideration for the adoption of Enterprise System
includes training and counseling (Al-Ghofaili and Al-Mashari 2014). Once the implementation
is made it is the time for training and counseling. The vendor of the ERP system should put
across proven methods of training for the company. Some of the training and the resource tools
put across by the ERP vendors includes walkthroughs, training workshops, readiness
assessments, white papers, live demos, live Q&A and the free trials. Throughout the process of
training, communication should remain the key for the successful adoption across all the
departments. It is also necessary to be honest and open so that the employees are easily able to
adjust to the new positions. To measure the failure and the success it is necessary to ask about
the whereabouts of the employees along with sending out surveys for getting general feedback
and reviewing the statistics. This helped in measuring the failures and the success. The only
means of determining whether the employees are doing well lies in the honest and open two way
tactics for communication.
In other words, the change management plan should be formulated for addressing the
transition of the workforce towards the Enterprise System with proper demarcation of the
trainers and the super users (Peng and Gala, 2014). Hence, there should be implementation of
training strategy for taking into account the organization specific nuances, testing and locating
prior to going live. Failure in development of training strategy might have grave implication on
the successfully adopting the Enterprise System.

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Communication within a global ERP project is absolutely vital but incredibly difficult.
While email is very effective, face-to-face communication is certainly more effective (Ali and
Cullinane 2014). For instance, most employees would like to hear about project updates from
their managers during team meetings. Project and communications teams must work in tandem
to deliver the message in a manner those results in expected behavioral changes. Lest we forget,
language, culture and level of education of the end-users govern the communication strategy
employed and its effectiveness
The final step in change management with the ERP implementation lies in not only
assessing the failures and success but also considering everyone accountable for the actions
taking place during before and after the training. It is necessary to determine the reaction of the
employees towards the newer implementation and the impact on the performance and the work
output. It is necessary to set up the meeting time for overcoming any miscommunication or
difficulties when trends are negative. Positive trends should be well acknowledged along with
determining rewards for the employees.
Conclusion:
On a concluding note, it can be said that an Enterprise System also known as the
enterprise resource planning (ERP) system represented cross functional information system that
provided integration and coordination of the sole business process, helping in planning the
resources of the organization. Through the essay one can understand how the ERP system is
driven by ERP software suite having centralized database and set of integrated software. This
software supports the key business process under the various functional areas while the database

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stores the data which is later fed to the various applications that supported the internal activities
of the business.

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Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH 2014) (pp. 135-139). IEEE.
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field study of an enterprise system implementation. MIS quarterly, 39(2).
Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation.
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Goodyear, M., 2017. Enterprise System Architectures: Building Client Server and Web Based
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Planning (ERP) systems in the post-implementation stage. Behaviour & Information
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Jagoda, K. and Samaranayake, P., 2017. An integrated framework for ERP system
Implementation. International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, 25(1), pp.91-
109.

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Moalagh, M. and Ravasan, A.Z., 2013. Developing a practical framework for assessing ERP
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