ERP System Implementation and Challenges: A Comprehensive Analysis

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students succeed.

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING SYSTEM
1

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Enterprise Resource Planning..........................................................................................................4
1. ERP system journey never ends...............................................................................................4
2. Stages in an ERP systems journey and potential benefits of each stage..................................6
3. Drivers and barriers for companies to move from one stage to the next.................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
2

Introduction
ERP software started growing rapidly in the market in the year 1990. In the year 2000
various problems are faced by the system and also the introduction of the euro leads to an
impact on the legacy system. It also helped in focusing on the functions of the bank office
so that it will not directly affect the customer. The given case study is related to the ERP
system. Enterprise Resources Planning system is software that is introduced and designed so
that the integration of the main function can be unified by the organization. It is core
software which is known as modules. The main aim of the software is to focus on all the
essential business area such as HR, Finance, customer relationship management, material
management, and production. The benefits of this system can be analyzed and can be seen
after a long duration of the time not immediately. It also helps in finding the journey of the
company.
3

Enterprise Resource Planning
1. ERP system journey never ends
One of the information technology-based firms helps in providing the solution related to the
IT sector to their customer that is Infosys. It also helps in providing the solution through
online to their many companies such as Becton, Dickinson & company in the Hybris
platform and also helps in providing the solution. Infosys implemented ERP on Hybris basis
and also provide an SAP platform which required to be continuously developed. It is done
because of the support to the post-production which is required as the project will go for a
long duration after the development. Time changes resulted in the changes in the technology
which is changing in very huge so it is necessary to implement the changes into the
development of the ERP system (Abdinnour, and Saeed, 2015).
ERP was implementing and Hershey’s was the biggest failure as the issues are related to the
management of the project, testing, and scheduling of the project. Various mistakes are done
by the company in estimating the demand of the users and omitted the main key activity
such as testing of the project and training of the users. The approach that was followed by
the Hershey’s is a big band which is wrong because step by step implementation should be
done. It resulted in the failure of the outcome that was achieved. As per the information 30
days’ time was demanded by the Hershey as compare with the estimated time of 48 hours.
All the errors that were faced by the company while calculation and estimation leas to the
failure of the project of the company (Ali, and Miller, 2017).
Therefore it is easy to say that ERP journey is a never-ending process and it is a non-stop
process. The project will never end even the completion of the process. Various activities
regarding the project should be taken seriously so that errors can be minimized and the
4

proper quality of the work and proper performance of the system can be possible ( Fredrick,
and Christopher, 2019).
Final Documentation
It is one of the most important documents which are required by the company for the later
purpose, not only for the reference but also helps in understanding the issues at the later
stage of the project. At present, it is very much difficult for every project to analyze the
issues at present time because all the issues which are faced should be analyzed at the
development stage without any presence of the user’s manual.
It is the document which doesn’t cover only the highlighted document but it should also
include the information that is based on the decisions which are made during the life cycle
of the project (Abdinnour, and Saeed, 2015).
Help Desk & On-site Support
There are various issues that are faced after the development of the project which is related
to the implementation of the particular function and also it leads to an inability to fulfill the
requirement of the errors. The implementation of ERP is based on the different organization
as it cannot be defined and there are no general guidelines that are provided to the users. It
also helps in finding the requirement of the help desk that should be set up so that the
problems can be resolved and also the solution can be made available (Ali, and Miller, 2017).
Additional Training
It says that it is not compulsory that the resources are implemented at the time of the ERP will
be same at the end of the project. Many new resources can be added between the processes or
5

after the go-live stage. Therefore the organization should carry the entire training document and
also all the material related to the training so that it will help in the end (Fredrick, and
Christopher, 2019).
6

2. Stages in an ERP systems journey and potential benefits of each stage
 Planning and Discovery Stage: - it is one of the 1st stages of the journey of the ERP. It
helps in initiating all the designs and also helps in the implementation of the ERP system
in addition to the company. The main need of the business is to find out the goals and
objective and also proper analysis and studies in many meeting so that it can easily do.
The main aim of this stage is to identify the team members that are involved in the
project. It also helps in allocating of all the duties and responsibilities to the team
regarding the project. This stage also helps in finding the overall journey of the ERP. The
entire documentation requirement is done in it only. The main benefit of this stage is to
identify and finalization of the ERP system. It also creates an understanding between the
top-level management regarding the requirement and all the specification of the project.
Deloitte also provided its review for this system is that this is the most significant stage
and should be following in the same approach so that proper completion of the ERP is
possible (Abdinnour, and Saeed, 2015).
It is the first phase is to discover and to plan and it is started during the main sale phase and it
should be continued till the post-sale. There are various meetings and also all the related
documents that are to be developed because the official team is working for identifying the
issues and along with their solution. It also works as the guiding principle for the remaining
work of the project (Ali, and Miller, 2017).
 Design Stage: - it is the 2nd stage which followed by the company after the planning &
discovery stage. All the master records which are provided by the client are properly
analyzed in this step. The step also includes the orientation and walkthrough which helps
to the shareholder of the company and also it will beneficial for the project resources of
the company. The main advantage is that it helps in identifying the designs and defines
the role of the user which is linked with the ERP system (Fredrick, and Christopher,
2019).
7

In this stage the team starts their working; they all will come with the various issues and
problems related to the system. They also help in defining the roles and the entire document
related to the standard procedure which is associated with the process.
 Development stage: - the main of this stage is to build the development of the
environment so that it helps in creating the ERP system with also developed as per the
specification and needs of the project. Its customization includes scalability, flexibility,
and adaptability. The codes are made so that it helps in making the system ready and
testing is also done so that any issues occur can be detected will get resolved. There are
very benefits because as the ends product and ERP system totally depend upon their
performance of all the activities that are performed in this stage. The main process of the
validation of the development system is provided and helps to ensure all the changes that
are identified (Ali, and Miller, 2017).
Under this stage development related to issues are resolved and also it helps in preparing the
entire system so that it can be made live. It also contains various activities such as importation of
the information and developing the training of the users. By proper use of ERP system all the
conflicts that are faced can be resolved by preparing the code in writing (Abdinnour, and Saeed,
2015).
 Testing & development Stage: -it is the stage that helps in verifying and validation of the
specification and requirement by the system. It has its similar objective as for the system
validation and all the functions which are implemented against it and all the requirement
that are provided by the client. The aim of the stage is to establish proficiency for all the
end-users. It also covers the various activities such as acceptance of the testing which is
being carried by the testing team. Many other testing is to be carried out such as
performance testing, system testing, and security testing. The applying of software is not
so easy because it should be developed and make changes according to the change in the
technology so to match with the current technology (Fredrick, and Christopher, 2019).
8

Testing helps in finding all the issues related to the software that is going to be implementing in
the project so that it helps in minimizing the issues which benefit in the proper functioning of the
project. The main aim of this stage is that all the new changes that are made as per the change in
the technology in the ERP system that should be analyzed and a decision should be made so that
proper functioning can be done after the implementation and also no problems are to be faced by
the user of the system (Ali, and Miller, 2017).
In the end, after implementation of the system, the team can access the situation so that it will
help them to make a proper decision to follow it or not. Before deciding and making a final
decision all the data should be proper loaded by the team and it should be validated. It should
also be followed by every stage when any other employee is provided training by the respective
team regarding the work for a new system and stop or pause the work on working on the old
system (Abdinnour, and Saeed, 2015).
9

3. Drivers and barriers for companies to move from one stage to the next
1. Lack of vision: - decentralization is one of the best-known advantages of the ERP system
but there are some problems that are caused such as transparency which was affected in
the sending of the invoice. All the organization that is based on the matrix whose
functions are very much specialized but the main problem is that horizontal
communication and collaboration seems to be a problem with all the invoices (Jagoda,
and Samaranayake, 2017).
A vision is an activity that should be continuously improved so that all the opportunities
can be handled according to the need and can help in making better a day. Works are
done in various function and different process which are locally developed and they are
not building on the greater processes. It implements that the work should be performed as
per the requirement of the local but it should also include the global improvement and it
also helps in analyzing the view of the users as they are not getting any benefit of using
such an unorganized system as there are only limited benefits. The vision also helps in
setting the goal, goals can be measured so that they can easily able to track their work and
also it should be highlighted so that in future improvement can be done (Ali, and Miller,
2017).
2. Lack of processes: - inadequate transparency is one of the reasons that help in identifying
all the issues that are related to invoicing. Lack of transparency then it is very difficult for
the employees how their errors will affect the others. It also doesn’t contain any kind of
feedback implementation the behavior of the employee will never change and the
problem will future carried. By making the proper understanding it helps in improving
the transparency because every employee can able to see their working and its overall
process. Because of the lack of the formal process resulted in the barrier to the benefits of
the ERP system (Fredrick, and Christopher, 2019).
3. Resistance to change: - ERP is based on the technology which means that this system is
not fixed or permanent. It will get change according to the change and also as per the
demanded in the market. Most of the small industries use this system for better
10

functioning of their activity and also issues can find out before the implementation. It is
the system which is based on working on the business process of the company. Change at
every stage will create uncomfortably to access the system and produce the outcome. It is
the most important challenge that is to be faced by the ERP system to get updated itself
as per the change in the technology and get advanced so that it can be easily used.
Without changes in the ERP will affects its result and it will fail to obtain the result.
4. Inadequate Sponsorship: - for making a successful ERP system a proper sponsorship
should be made. It means that for the success of the ERP system proper support should be
required from the top-level management so that it can be worked as per its potentials. It
needs consistency and strong support for making it successful. Lack of support and
consistency will create a negative image of the system and many problems may be faced
by small scale industries (Fredrick, and Christopher, 2019).
5. The expectation is more: - usually, small scale company expects that by implementing the
ERP system will help in reducing all the problem but it is not possible and over
depending on the system sometimes leads to the problem in the organization. The main
thing to reduce the barrier is that don’t get over depending on the system so that it can
able to work according to it (Jagoda, and Samaranayake, 2017).
6. Lack of proper Project Management: - a project is very much complex because the
implementation of the ERP system requires proper project management. It says that after
the implementation of the system proper management is not been done which creates a
lack of management. ERP is an advanced system that should be managed by the
experienced employee of the organization so that it can smoothly manage and the
benefits can be taken of implementing the system.
7. Lack of proper changes: - time is changing with introducing more technology for
everything. Any technical software requires to be updated at a regular interval of time so
that it can able to fulfill the demands of the business. For better working of the ERP
system in the company, regular changes should be made so that it can match the
technology changes. Changes should be proper and with proper support should be
implemented. If without any need in the ERP system the change has done it will
sometime lead to an inverse impact on the company (Nwankpa, 2015).
11

8. Lack of skills: - ERP is online software which is based on technology. It means that it can
be managed by that individual who has knowledge regarding the technical field and also
it should have some knowledge in the IT field. As the change in the technology, the
software will be updated by the technical team, but if they don’t have any knowledge
about the change in the technology and don’t have any knowledge in IT field then it
creates a problem to the company. One of the failures of the software is because it was
implemented on the IT project and assumed to run the IT project (Jagoda, and
Samaranayake, 2017).
9. Lack of management program: - ERP is the software that is based on the changes at a
regular interval of time. Without making changes in the software it will not able to all the
benefits that are expected by the company. So for getting all the benefits of the software
it should be get updated according to the need. Changes cannot be accepted by the
software naturally. It should be implemented by the management team those who are
managing the software (Fredrick, and Christopher, 2019).
12