Week 7

1. ERP systems are developed based on industry best practices. However, many organisations have their own business processes which are different from their competitors of best practices, and often do not want to change their business processes to suit the new ERP system. If this is the case, can it gain any value from an ERP? What can be done to achieve best outcomes and the risks involved?

Yes, companies with their own prescriptive business processes can gain value from an ERP. Noyes 2004, p. 1 states that by using rule based ERP systems, the majority of enterprise specific values, limits and other parameters are entered into the system and maintained through the use of tables. He goes onto say that there may be several ways to accommodate business specific processes already within the system, but lack of user/IT knowledge is the reason why these solutions are not used.

To achieve best outcomes the implementing company should:

• Minimise the customisation required
• Maximise the satisfaction of the user base
• Reduce stress of choosing an ultimatum (ie. changing business process or modification of system)

The risks involved with this are over modification (including customisations that are not necessary) of the ERP system which may affect productivity of staff and system.

Noyes, JW 2003, ‘The ERP dilemma: “plain vanilla” versus customer satisfaction’, Educause Quarterly, vol. n/a, no. 2, pp. 54 – 55, viewed 05 December 2014, https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0327.pdf

2. Examine assessment item 3. Following on from the previous two weeks, provide a rough draft of your introduction and executive summary.

1.0 Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to “identify causes of ERP [enterprise resource planning software] implementation failure at Waste Management Company [WMC] and provide possible solutions which can be used for future implementations.” (CQUniversity n.d.).

It was found that a vanilla implementation would best suit WMC based on the operational, financial, technical and implementation benefits provided and the company’s ability to avoid the disadvantages associated with this method.

The company needs to ensure they understand the major causes of implementation failure and create strategies to avoid them if they are to succeed in future implementations.

Prototyping as a development method should be avoided in future implementation attempts.

2.0 Introduction

The purpose of this report is to “identify causes of ERP implementation failure at Waste Management Company and provide possible solutions which can be used for future implementations.” (CQUniversity n.d.).

The report begins with a brief outline of chocolate and vanilla ERP implementation methods and the advantages and disadvantages of each method. This provides a basic understanding of the benefits and limitations that may face companies involved in making a decision between: altering business processes to match system functionality or customising software to suit existing processes. For the basis of the discussion it was useful to illustrate chocolate and vanilla implementations as opposite and polar, but it should be noted that they do exist on a continuum.

The report goes on to analyse major causes of ERP implementation failure and, comparatively, those problems experienced by WMC in the case study. This analysis is used as a method to identify causes of failure and provide possible alternative solutions to WMC, which can be used for future implementations.

Following this is a brief discussion on prototyping as a software development method and how this selection may impact the development of and conversion to a fully deployed working system.

From the consideration of implementation methods, the analysis of ERP implementation failure in general and in this particular case study it was concluded that the most suitable option for WMC going forward would involve the selection of ERP that requires changing business processes to match system functionality.