Victoria University ERP Journey: Stages, Benefits, Barriers

This report delves into the concept of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and their impact on businesses. It explores the idea that the ERP journey is ongoing, not a one-time implementation. The report analyzes the varying benefits companies experience at different stages of ERP maturity. It examines why the ERP journey might never end, outlining the possible stages and their respective benefits. Furthermore, the report identifies drivers and barriers that influence a company's progression through these stages. The report emphasizes that going live is not the ultimate goal of ERP implementation. The report also discusses the importance of understanding the stages of the ERP journey to maximize business benefits in a balanced manner. The report uses case study examples to demonstrate different company’s experiences in reinforcing the different benefits and weaknesses.

Running head: GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Going Live and ERP Journey
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

1GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Executive summary
In this report there are intentions to demonstrate the concept of how ERP systems are helpful for the
business to continue and ways the benefits are able to vary. Thus they can investigate the concept
that moving live has been never the ultimate goal of enterprise resource planning. Here, the reason
why the ERP systems journey must never vary is analyzed here. Further, the possible stages of ERP
systems journey are discussed here. Besides, these smart benefits of all the sages are been evaluated.
Besides, these barriers and drivers of the business are there to drive from one phase to on step ore is
intended to be analyzed from the analysis provided below.

2GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Table of Contents
Introduction:..........................................................................................................................................3
The idea of ERP systems journey and the way the benefits can vary:..................................................3
Demonstrating why the ERP systems journey might never come to an end:........................................6
Possible stages in an ERP systems journey:..........................................................................................7
Understanding the maximizing of business in a balanced manner through stages:..............................8
Drivers and barriers for different companies in moving from one stage to the further one:.................8
Conclusion:..........................................................................................................................................11
References:..........................................................................................................................................12

3GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Introduction:
There are many benefits that the organizations intend from the ERP system frequently
happening in due time. This is instead of happening immediately. Various distinct business supposes
that their effective journey of ERP is continuous. Though the ERP systems have been providing few
advantages to many companies, many of them are found to gaining more advantages from the others.
It is demonstrated by analysts and researchers that those differing advantages are to the outcomes of
the companies at distinct steps of maturity or journey of ERP (Lee and Chang 2018). The following
study intends to highlight that idea how the ERP systems of business move on and how the
advantages can vary. It investigates the idea that going live is never the ending of the journey of
ERP. For this, the report describes why the journey of ERP system might never vary. Next, the
probable steps of journey of ERP system are demonstrated. Further, the effective advantages of
every stage are evaluated. Apart from this, the barriers and drivers of the business in driving from a
single phase to the further are expected to be understood from the following analysis.
The idea of ERP systems journey and the way the benefits can vary:
Firstly, the business must place everyone on board. Prior to starting the ERP project, it is
vital to assure that the overall business makes sense of the strategy and reasons behind the moves. As
the decision makers never easily support the necessity of change the resource and budget planning
has been affected negatively. Secondly, one must assure that anyone is eradicating the road blocks.
Sufficient leadership and sponsorship are vital to success. Various concerns are there that have been
stumbling the blocks in due course of the ERP initiative (Kocaoglu and Acar 2015). Next, the rear-
view mirror is to be checked. The business must analyze the business subculture established and the
historical reaction of change. Next, one structure the project appropriately and then clearly deploy

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the roles. Apart from this lack of clarity across the responsibilities, roles, activities and structures
result in resistance and confusion. This makes the project execution highly complicated. Despite ay
clearly developed and project structure that is articulated properly, the team might duplicate the
different efforts. Further, they can leave the primary activities unaddressed. This results in delay
inevitably and prior getting into the gear, and raising costs and then jeopardizing schedules and
budgets. Further, one should be preparing for the detours (Nwankpa and Roumani 2015).
The organizations must be getting back to track fast through denoting the impacts of people
and the different behavioral changes. There are many modifications coming because of ERP
implementations substantially affecting the staffs. Here, success relies on the way how smartly one
can make sense and control the effects of the changes. For gaining the best results, there are
proactively preparing the employee and the entire business before implementing ERP. Apart from
this, a smart hold on the effective changes affects the guiding of the leadership. Training and
communication activities and then prevent the time wastes and efforts for focusing on false
elements. Then must ask for the directions in that way. Then they must develop the networks and
design the internal supports from the grassroots (Ben Laadar, Cherti and Bahaj 2019). Further, one
must assure that one should be delivering proper messages to suitable individuals at proper time. It is
needed to manage and limit the change resistances. For helping the end-users and know what has
happened and why a formal network of influences are to be developed supporting the formal and
normal two-way communications. Besides, one must facilitate the activities of deployments and
controlling the way individuals in those sectors can react to then adapt to the changes. Again,
ineffective communication can originate from the poor timing, targeting wrong audience and unclear
messages (Ward 2016).

5GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
ERP is able to provide notable bottom-line and strategic tactical benefits. Here, some of the
real-life benefits. For instance, any electronics business was able to be smarter than tripling the
smarter inventory turnover from 8 times per year to 26. Apart from this, a high-tech business is able
to double the size in due years. They are able to control the fast growth due to the accuracy and
flexibilities of the ERP systems. Again, any manufacturer with the prior chronic delivery on-time
issue has seen the rise in on-time rate from seventy to ninety percent. This is gain that is impossible
without any sort of real-time data resulting from integrated system of ERP (Hasheela-Mufeti 2018).
At reset at every sector that is significant like more efficient procurement, enhancement of revenue,
productivity improvement and cost reductions, ERP can actually deliver on that promise. Apart from
this ERP can also yield notable return from those unexpected advantages. Here, one of the highest
advantage of the huge change is such that ERP can be virtually impossible for envision every benefit
to be delivered. Furthermore, the ways the benefits can vary is demonstrated hereafter. Firstly it can
bring new benefits. Here, the attitudes and change and the ideas that must be surfacing are to be
identified. Here, the roadblocks can be removed suddenly. Next, one must consider the streamlined
processes. Prior the ERP, the finding of product issue has brought the shipping operations of the
company. This is to stand still till the in terms of issues are seen. Here, the business is able to flag the
units of sub-part in the system and maintain operations. This results in more satisfied customers and
smoother and effective process of production (Yu 2016). Moreover, the benefits can bring improved
visibility. Here, the control of production at one factory has the delivery of customer-on-time as one
of its measures. For the surprise of the company, the staffs can check that rigorously. It provides the
people with power of checking anything and to check that. This must be the way the shareholders
with the access of Internet can follow the stock prices over-line. Having fast access to the data across
the company, the staffs are able to perform anything that is more than only smarter data. Here, they
are able to put in charge. Besides, there is the enhanced cooperation. Here, a company has shared

6GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
data of the integrated system of ERP helping to bind together the departments and people that have
odds previously (Kudriashova 2019). Moreover, they are limited to see the individual world rather
than developing the overall process orientation of the company. Here, the doorstep towards
delivering the discovery environment where the business can create new value. Rather, here the
transformation change is the new energy present in the people (Cooley 2015).
Demonstrating why the ERP systems journey might never come to an end:
It is seen from most of the researches that the ER process is never-ending. This shows
conclusively that second wave actually exists. Here, the fact is that every organizations irrespective
of the fact that they are over a similar journey are able to bring benefits from the knowledge. The
businesses starting out in the first wave require to plan for much comprehensive and rewarding
journey. Here, one of the popular type of integration throughout the enterprise and differentiate them
from the competition and drive new values of business (Kurd 2016). Again, the benefits can move
beyond the reduction of cost. They can touch all the aspects of integrated enterprises. In the
meantime, having the rising body of experience and the smarts practices for drawing, the business
can go through the go-live phase harvesting the benefits of ERP investments. Moreover, the business
anticipates the temporary dip for the performances after they go live. For this focus and time is
required to understand the overall advantages of ER deployments. Apart from this there is the sheer
magnitude of the modification (Parmar 2016). As they go live, the alterations are drastic particularly
people performing the tasks. Controlling the dip indicates the plan addressing the distinct situations
of business beginning with change and training initiatives for those who utilize the systems. At wider
level, the dip actually indicates to the business getting stabilized after performing anything new. At
that sense, the dip in the actual sign of the capabilities and growth indicating bounce that develops
due to levels of performances (Bidgood and Meles 2017).

7GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Possible stages in an ERP systems journey:
The first stage is the stabilizing and securing the base. The business going live must be
working to stabilize the backend of the ERP technology and people charged for working with that.
Here, the task is to fine-tune the latest processes and aster the change at the organizational level prior
to making further changes. Here, the outcomes of the significant development of speed and
reductions of costs to handle the business transactions routinely. Besides, the stage has all regarding
retrieving efficiencies from the smooth running of processes that are ERP enabled (Arasanmi 2016).
Here, the duration three to nine months. Next, in the second stage the synthesizing take place for
building the future. It can be done through including the other abilities and non-ERP for mixing and
putting extra efforts to process and people developments. Here, the aim is to gain targeted abilities
and advantages through creating ERP platforms. It comes with focus on three sects including
complementary applications like data warehouse, EDI or sales process automation and
complementary tasks in process improvements. They must work on training and motivating the
individuals for undertaking the next level of changes. The outcome is to provide distinct capabilities
at new pace. Here, the stage is to understand the extra efficiencies from smarter decision-making
abilities that are afforded by the ERPs (Necas 2016).
At this stage, the phase led has been to be the accurate inventory information through
educating the individuals about the principles of ERP. Here, the duration must be 6 to 18 months.
Further stage three is synergizing in gaining value in usage. It is the other level of change where the
latest competencies are present with refined business process. This kinetic instant action enterprise
can drastically adapt to serving the market of one people. At that stage, the business can gain the
sweeping and e changes primarily benefiting the business. It is transformation in nature that has been
adopting the latest business strategies and development of new partnerships. For instance, this has a
duration of 12 to 24 months (Fredrick and Christopher 2019). At the simple terms, these stapes are

8GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
landmarks encountered by the companies as the further phase of the overall journey goes on at the
time of post-implementations. The advantages of the three stapes can never occur at a glance.
Understanding the maximizing of business in a balanced manner through stages:
The business has gone live to confirm many aspects. As they go live, they face the dip in
their performance. As they know the dip, they can shorten and minimize that. This can change into
the benefit and raise the business to further performance levels. The reason the dip is there indicates
that moving live with ERP enabled measures are notable change of the businesses. They vary
between the business relying on how small they can get prepare for introducing the functionality
(Arvidsson and Kojic 2017). Here, most vital point is that this helps highly for the individuals to
understand the area where the dip is present. Here, dip is natural and can get minimized with proper
type of preparations. Apart from being natural, the dip is the element of process of stabilization the
result of anything new. Similar to the aching muscles as a good workout is done, there is the obvious
signature that the business is including the muscle coming from accessing new area at every new
level of performances. This can occur through totally knowing the place where all the stages can
lead and the ways it can bring advantage to the business (Hasheela 2015). Again, planning through
stages helps in clarifying various things. This indicates precisely where the business is present and
what they have been trying to perform and how they can reach into there.
Drivers and barriers for different companies in moving from one stage to the
further one:
To understand the drivers, the case study of Telstra in Australia. This includes better
capability. This involves the actual real-time decision making through updating the planning of
enterprise resource and capabilities of business process. Further, they must get end-to-end services.

9GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
Here, a complete and managed service must be there combining the scalable solutions of SAP and
one, integrated and supporting model. This involves the quick deployments and the scalabilities.
Here, deployment time must be reduced of the latest SAP systems and ten scales the services quickly
as needed. Next, there is reduced risk that can decrease the great cost of capital investments for
infrastructures and equipment and the effective in-house managements (Armoza 2015). Further,
there is a lower cost of ownership. The OneDrive and SharePoint Online are developed for
decreasing costs of infrastructure management and the overall expense of ownership such that it can
be used at anyplace. At last, security is an effective driving force for Telstra. Their private network
has comprehensive measures of security and here every data is locally stored. Additionally, traffic is
found to be controlled every time. This is for the security apart from the performance of optimal
network.
Again, the primary capabilities of mySAP SCM are found to be helping every aspect of BHP
Billion to manage all the aspects of worldwide supply chains. This enables additional visibility into
the operations. Besides, it can make flexible type of decision making along with integrated plan to
decrease the cost of transportation and inventories. Their vision at BHP Billiton has been making
them to be a demand-driven and move their overall enterprise-wide process into a more customer-
centric approach through decreasing expenses and developing the profitability (Kraljić and Kraljić
2017). Through implementing the mySAP SCM, they are able to raise their flexibility or to react to
the changing demands of the customers and c understand the essential savings into worldwide supply
chains through decreasing inventories and controlling their costs. Here, deploying the mySAP SCM
for their worldwide business has been the initial step of the worldwide project rollout of mySAP
SCM. Further, it has been identified under the timeframe of 89 months and consisted the usage of
various abilities of the SAP APO or “SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization”. Next, at the
second step of the rollout, BHP Billiton is seen to be extending their recent supply chain solution

10GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
model. This involves the execution and planning of transportations. Here, they are found to be
selecting the SAP TSW or SAP Trader’s and Scheduler’s Workbench (Madanhire and Mbohwa
2016). With the BHP Billiton they have generated a total solution of supply chain management
distinct in the resource sector. Besides, here SAP has taken an innovative approach to adapt the
functionality of SAP TSW mainly created for the industry of petroleum closely fitting the necessities
of mining business. Through working jointly with the BHP Billiton, they have tailored to meet the
mining-specific necessities directly.
Besides, there are some barriers for organizations in moving through every step. For instance,
Clifford Hallam Healthcare has been facing relation-based barriers. For them the challenge has been
creating the networked relationships at the earlier phases (Aloini et al. 2016). Then, there is a lack of
attention for the relation-based challenges resulting in complications as the implementation of
enterprise system goes on. Next, there are structure-based barriers. For instance, Ausgrid has been
dilemma whether their ERP systems have been same to their legacy systems. Here, the case evidence
indicates that maximum of users has been interested to understand how consistent a same the latest
ERP systems has been as compared to the legacy systems. Here, the reason has been particularly
because of failures that encountered at few of early ERP deployments at particular parts of the
business resulting having extra activity for the users (Huang and Yokota 2016). Ausgrid it has been
undesirable innovations. This also resulted in huge duplication of efforts and worldwide
inconsistency with constant routines. Again, for Metcash Trading knowledge-based challenges are
there. They have witnessed concerns in controlling the conflicting interests and knowledge. Further,
the implementation of ERP has been an integrative mechanism. This has connected wide range of
departments to deploy the integrated procedures. Because of the design of decentralized
organizational structure with the autonomous scenario, Metcash Trading has developed abundance
of financial systems effective logistics that is largely adaptive under the distinct BUs (Bindeman

11GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
2015). All these BU units, in other words, have their distinct logistic and economic systems that are
to be customized for the services and products for assuring the interest of BU and largely specialized
knowledge are managed effectively.
Conclusion:
It is understood from the above study that only launching the ERP implementation includes a
huge amount of fanfare. At first, there is the necessity of approval of board. Prior the business get
their hands dirty having the deployments, there is the necessity of defining the vision of the project,
setting the targets and defining deliverables and timelines. Thus they can mobilize the individuals
and secure the resources for getting the tasks done. Here, the business requires t sit back and take
stock of how far they have come and the way they calculate that against the best practices in the
markets. Besides, there is notable quantity of uncertainties and risks in implementing the ERP. The
findings from the study indicate that notable barriers are there to deploy the process. The process is
interdependent of various socio-technical constructs that are seen in the business. Apart from this,
the above report has contributed to understanding notable insights on the complexity to deploy
knowledge while the implementation of ERP goes on. On the basis of the research there has been an
easy roadmap for every stage. This involves concerns that must be prepared and intended to be
encountered. Specific actions are there to be considered to denote the opportunities and issues that
are presented at every stage. Here, full benefits can be retrieved from the true destiny of the ERP.

12GOING LIVE AND ERP JOURNEY
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Forces on Post-ERP Capabilities and Users Satisfaction Using Technological Frames of Reference
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inherent benefits, choosing the right one and successful implementation.
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