ERP Implementation Strategy and IT Plan for Skycity NZ - ITIM7.450

This report presents an analysis of Skycity NZ's IT processes, advocating for ERP implementation over cloud-based solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365. It details a situational analysis of Skycity NZ, including its commercial activities, vision statement, and current IT systems, highlighting the limitations of the existing cloud implementation regarding long-term commitments, customization, and security. The report outlines a comprehensive IT vision for Skycity NZ, a gap analysis identifying the drawbacks of cloud services, and a 5-year IT strategic plan with operational objectives and budget plans. It emphasizes the security advantages of ERP systems, the necessary IT measurements and management practices, and the CIO, IT staff, and staff training requirements for successful ERP implementation. The report concludes with recommendations for Skycity NZ to adopt ERP for enhanced data management, security, and business process optimization.

Running head: ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
ERP implementation in Skycity NZ
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Situation Analysis........................................................................................................................4
Skycity NZ and its primary commercial activities..................................................................4
Vision Statement of the organization......................................................................................4
Current situation in terms of Information Technology and Systems.......................................4
High level IT asset register and valuation...............................................................................5
Asset Portfolio.........................................................................................................................6
Strategy........................................................................................................................................6
IT vision for Skycity NZ..........................................................................................................6
Gap analysis.............................................................................................................................6
Operation Plan.........................................................................................................................8
Operational Plan and objectives for the upcoming Financial Years........................................9
Budget Plans..........................................................................................................................10
Security reasons of ERP systems...............................................................................................11
Advantages of using ERP as a system in Skycity..................................................................11
IT Measurement and Management............................................................................................14
Requirements of ERP implementation..................................................................................14
CIO and IT staff and Staff Training..........................................................................................16
Organizational Chart..............................................................................................................16

2ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Staff Training.........................................................................................................................16
Conclusion and recommendation..................................................................................................18
Reference.......................................................................................................................................19

3ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Introduction
Skycity NZ is one of the major convention centres known for the development of casinos
as well as event centres. It is specifically prominent in its establishment in Auckland, New
Zealand with its base located in the Auckland Sky Tower. Being one of the most prominent
casino business centres in the country, it is the second casino in the entire of New Zealand and
the only casino situated in the area of Auckland ("SKYCITY Auckland - Hotels | Restaurants |
Bars | Casino | Entertainment | Conventions", 2018). The organization would thus need a system
to organize the data generated everyday in the business. The data generated everyday in the
business can be huge. The organization has already thought about strategizing to shift the
business process into the cloud using Microsoft Dynamics 365 (Nwankpa, 2015). However, it
can be seen that the strategy is faulty enough and thus this report consists of a replacement
strategy by implementing ERP into the business. The report would cover the reasons why ERP
implementation is better than Cloud and would put forward the situational analysis, strategy of
implementation, security, and IT requirement for implementing ERP as the business process
system to the organization of Skycity.

4ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Situation Analysis
Skycity NZ and its primary commercial activities
Being one of the most prominent casino business centres in the country, it is the second
casino in the entire of New Zealand and the only casino situated in the area of Auckland. The
business is spread over a huge area including a theatre consisting of 700 seats, convention
centres numerous bars and restaurants and two hotels as well. The casino itself consists of over
16,000 gaming machines and game tables over 100 in number.
Vision Statement of the organization
Skycity NZ has the vision to provide their customers with world-class entertainment. It
has a mission to thrill the customers with stupendous excitement, and also to generate the feeling
inside everyone as if they have emerged as a winner. That just not includes the customers but
also applies to the staff and workforce of the organization as well.
Current situation in terms of Information Technology and Systems
Ever since the announcement has been made by Microsoft about its Dynamic 365
product, Skycity Entertainment has used the Dynamics 365 that is expected to roll out the
support to handle over 60,000 staff all across New Zealand (van der Aalst, Li & Montali, 2017).
The business edition of Dynamic 365 mostly targeted the SMBs which consisted of the
following:
 Microsoft Power Apps that are used for the development of customised
applications
 Dynamics repackaging for taking tabs on the employee management system

5ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
However it can be noticed that the number of total employees in the business process
have encountered a huge turnover and the number of employees were difficult to keep a tab on
every time. The contract with Skycity NZ and Cloud implementation by Dynamicx 365 ensured
the focus to the finances and the supply chain management (Liao, Huang & Lin, 2018). It had
confirmed the solution was able to provide the numbers in real time and the analytics for Skycity
that would deliver the insights in accordance to the data that has been delivered till date. This
would enable the clients to set standards for the financial practises that have been around the
organization with the utilization of the best service practice guidelines that had been included in
the Dynamics 365 for further operations.
High level IT asset register and valuation
Asset register and evaluation depends on the complexity of networks, connecting devices
that have the ability to connect to the internet. The following table contains the asset register and
valuations for the organization in New Zealand for the years 2017 and 2018.
Asset register and Valuation for the year 2017-2018
Description (2017) Amount (2017) – USD Description (2018) Amount (2018)
Non-gaming 102.4 m Non-gaming 102.7 m
Tables 119.7 m Tables 131.6 m
Machines 213.4 m Machines 205.5 m
Gaming 37 m Gaming 37.05 m
Table 1: Asset register and valuation
(Source: Created by author)

6ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Asset Portfolio
Some software applications used by Skycity NZ include Microsoft Dynamics 365. It is
used mostly for reporting and the software is used for the employee evaluation. These
applications are used for various purposes. It also uses the software systems in order to manage
the functioning of the back-end telecommunication functions.

7ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Strategy
IT vision for Skycity NZ
Skycity NZ is an organization that aims to provide an experience of fun and frolic to the
customers all throughout the time spend over there. In addition to that, it aims in handling every
employee problem with ease and does not intend to leave any stone unturned in making the
customers have a full blown experience.
Gap analysis
Cloud implementation with the help of Microsoft Dynamics 365 has been recently
revamped in the business process of Skycity NZ (Chang, 2016). This process has been successful
in handling the business process for the organization implementing its utilization to the employee
management system and data handling. However, as per reports, cloud implementation
particularly for this business purpose would be problematic for the disadvantages it already
possesses. These can be figured out as below:
 Potentially long term commitments to the service providers: The
implementation of the cloud services for the business would require paying for the
services and that has to be done in a routine manner. This routine payment would
not fall under any time constraints and sometimes even require payment of the
services over and indefinite future (Sarkis & Sundarraj, 2015). This would
generate further complications regarding the payment methods if any kind of
managerial changes be implemented in the business process. Further it would
create complications for the payment methods and any kind of non-payment
would make the service providers to abstain from further providing of services.

8ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
 Limited Customization or flexibility: Customization is a dire necessity for any
kind of business, and especially for those business processes that incur a huge
amount of data every day. The business process of Skycity involves the spead of
the business over a span of a huge area including a theatre consisting of 700 seats,
convention centres numerous bars and restaurants and two hotels as well. The
casino itself consists of over 16,000 gaming machines and game tables over 100
in number (Kumar, 2018). The organization would thus need a system to organize
the data generated everyday in the business (Kegg et al., 2017). In addition, it is
not justifiable to say that every day the generated data would be just the same and
there would be no need of agility or flexibility to the business process due to the
generated data. Therefore, the business process would suffer a huge problem due
to the rigidity of the system.
 Security issues: Cloud implementation is one of the most agile features of
running a business process. However, it has numerous added security risks
associated with its structure. Cloud interface do not possess any physical
existence. The entire storage capacity of cloud is much more than one can
imagine (Saravanan & Sundar, 2015). Therefore, it falls short on being a secured
structure as there can be numerous incidents of data mismanagement due to the
huge storage area for the business as well as the data handling. Due to the risks
associated with the system, it would be extremely problematic for the business to
put the data and information of the organization at jeopardy.

9ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Operation Plan
Task Name Duration Start Finish
Skycity NZ 1364 days Mon 24-06-18 Fri 13-09-23
Planning 511 days Mon 24-06-18 Mon 08-06-20
Stakeholder Meeting 78 days Mon 25-06-18 Wed 10-10-18
Initiating Project 145 days Thu 11-10-18 Wed 01-05-19
Infrastructure Analysis 134 days Thu 02-05-19 Tue 05-11-19
Planning the Goals 154 days Wed 06-11-19 Mon 08-06-20
Data Collection 311 days Tue 09-06-20 Tue 17-08-21
Defining Terminologies 77 days Tue 09-06-20 Wed 23-09-20
Survey 78 days Thu 24-09-20 Mon 11-01-21
Survey Result Evaluation 64 days Tue 12-01-21 Fri 09-04-21
Literature Review 54 days Mon 12-04-21 Thu 24-06-21
Scope determination 137 days Thu 25-08-21 Mon 23-05-22
Initiating Stage Result Evaluation 110 days Wed 18-08-21 Tue 18-01-22
Decision Making 89 days Wed 19-01-22 Mon 23-05-22
ERP implementation 399 days Tue 24-05-22 Fri 01-12-23

10ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
Requirement Planning 45 days Tue 24-05-22 Mon 25-07-22
Gap Analysis 67 days Tue 26-07-22 Wed 26-10-22
IT device management 89 days Thu 27-10-22 Tue 28-02-23
Project Initiation 54 days Wed 01-03-23 Mon 15-05-23
Project processing 76 days Tue 16-05-23 Tue 29-08-23
Security and risk management 68 days Wed 30-08-23 Fri 01-12-23
Table 2: 5 year IT Strategic Plan
(Source: Created by Author)
Operational Plan and objectives for the upcoming Financial Years
The Operational Plan and objective for the organization Skycity NZ needs to follow the
plan according to the strategies taken and stick to it in order to make sure that the ERP
implementation is not facing any further risks that would most likely increase the budget of the
plan. According to reports, this deal between Microsoft and Skycity had won a competitive
tender that had based it selection on the commitment of Intergen positioning on the working
relationship (Harwood, 2017). The deputy CFO of Skycity, Mr. Richard Smith was however
sceptical about the setup that had been implemented in the organization for keeping tabs on the
employee management as well as the data generated per day given the business structure. There
had been various reasons that would implement advantages on the structure of the business due
to the latest business process; however, there are also added disadvantages that have made the

11ERP IMPLEMENTATION IN SKYCITY NZ
business process fall prey to the various types of risks (Nagpal, Khatri & Kumar, 2015). The
following report would look for the risks that can be found in the business structure due to the
latest implementation in the business process.
Budget Plans
Capital Expenditure Budget Plans
Particulars Amount
Capital Investment -$40,000.00
Less: Depreciation $500.00
Purchases -$300,000.00
Less: Commission -$2,400.00
Less: Transport Expense -$1,700.00
Less: COGS -$900.00
Salaries and Wages -$50,000.00
Employee Benefits -$5,000.00
Indirect Expenses -$12,000.00
Interest -$3,500.00
Insurance -$400.00
Sales and Services $500,000.00
Less: Depreciation -$300.00
Less: Transport Expense -$450.00
Less: COGS -$600.00
Amortization $1,000.00
Loan Principal Payments $1,500.00
Total Profit $83,250.00
Table 2: Capital expenditure budget plan
(Source: Created by author)
Operational Budget Plan
Particulars Amount
Marketing $15,000.00
Staff and Human Resources $24,000.00
Technologies $15,000.00