Technical report for enhancing business process + presentation

Technical Report for an Existing ERP

By: Abdullah Alshathri 442105936

Dr.Majed Almashari

King Saud University

IS-532

15-Sep-2020

TECHNICAL REPORT FOR AN EXISTING ERP 2

Technical Report for an Existing ERP

Introduction

Employee training and development is essential for any organization because it focuses

mainly on employee's competency, training, and then developing the employee's skills through

education to help satisfy the company's long-term need and goals. Training also helps individuals

to develop their careers and improve the employee value in their current and future employers.

Human resource development is considered the essential part of any organization because it helps

the organization maximize productivity and improve its effectiveness. Every organization should

always track the various training the employees have undertaken and ensure that no employee uses

backdoor means to show they have done specific training while, in reality, the employees have not

done any training. Since every institution's long-term development depends on how well the

employees have been trained and how well the employees are prepared to face the future. The

report aims at providing the way forward on how our company should integrate the employee

development and training module into our existing ERP so that tracking of all certifications and

training the employees have taken should be easily tracked and updated automatically into the

company's system. The report will be submitted to the steering committee for approval before its

implemented and a budget allocated for it.

Problem and Motivation

The main problem facing the organization is that it is unable to keep record of all the

training and development the employees have undergone during their time at the company. Some

employees email the human resource department the certificates they have gained from LinkedIn

study, but there are cases where the employees have forged certificates and sent them to human

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resource managers for record-keeping. The reason why all these are done manually is that the

existing ERP system does not have an automated module that updates all the certifications the

company's employees have undertaken from LinkedIn learning and Udemy. The current procedure

is that employees who have undertaken any form of training in LinkedIn learning or Udemy send

the certificates directly to the human resource department to keep them updated. This process is

tedious, and the HR department is finding it hard to determine if the certificates are original or

fake. Since the organization has several employees, tracking their progress manually will take a

lot of time, and updates may not be recorded because the number of emails being sent to the HR

department are numerous; hence not all of them will be recorded or read on time.

Currently, the organization's management is not able to make instant decisions about

employee development and training because they are not getting real-time information about the

progress the employees are making in their various training. They always depend on the updated

lists from the HR department, which may take a lot of time to compile. Delayed business decisions

may put our organization be at risk of losing its market share, and it can be unable to attract

competent employees available in the market.

Another problem is that not all employees will remember to send their progress to the

human resource department; hence their progress may not be recorded; therefore, the company

will be unable to track the development of the employees and their level of competency. Failure

to capture the employees' progress will raise a problem in the future wherever the company will

plan to promote its employees about employee competency levels.

Giving the employees the freedom to send their certificates wherever they finish their

learning will lead to fraudulent activities because some employees can decide to make face

certificates and send them to the HR department for them to be updated. Some may not take the

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learning at all and yet claim they have already earned the certificates. There also may arise some

errors whereby some employees offer wrong credentials, which leads to some employees not

getting their progress updated.

Since we are in the century where things and systems are automated, it is not a good thing

for our company to lag technology-wise; hence we should automate everything include the

employee development and training section. Continuing to used old-fashioned methods to manage

employees will make our company lose a competitive advantage to our competitors.

Below is the current diagram of our ERP process:

Proposed solution

The proposed solution is integrating the company's ERP with the LinkedIn Learning

platform and Udemy learning platforms whereby if any employee completes or earns a certificate

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from one of the afro-mentioned platforms, it gets updated into the ERP system automatically and

sends an email to the HR department notifying them about the employee progress.

To integrate the two platforms, the internal ERP and the external learning platforms, we

will use API (Application Program Interfaces) of those platforms. The APIs have data structures

and routines together with other components, which will make the communication between the

organization's ERP and the learning platforms communicated effectively. For the integration to be

successful, the company should hire programmers experienced in system integration and help do

the job. Instead of using custom integration, we will go for the development of the integration

because it will be more comfortable, and it will follow or the required rules for both systems. The

reason for choosing the APIs is because they are secured using protected using API keys, and they

are well defined whereby they are restricted to specific information.

We also have the option of using plugins, which are made up of ready pieces of code, which

will be used to extend the functionality of our ERP system, giving it the new features to automate

the recording of employee achievements. However, to use the plugins, we have to code the

integration using the language our ERP system is developed in.

The integration of the two systems will lead to the centralization of employee data, and it

will cause to avoid any chaos in the future wherever the organization wants to evaluate employee

development. Centralized data will smoothen the organization's business process, and it will

reduce the time the employee's data will take for it to be updated.

The report proposes that the Active Directories of the company be amended so that

everything is automated to reduce the number of errors experienced when updating the progress

of all employees. Automating this process will help the HR department to concentrate on other

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important works they are scheduled to do instead of concentrating on updating the employee

progress.

The budget for integrating our ERP system will be low compared with the time the HR

department takes to update the employee progress manually, and the company will not be required

to employ more employees to perform the manual work.

Automating the progress of employees with external learning platforms will reduce the

level of fraudulent activities from the employees because now they will have to study for that

course and will not have a chance to fake the certificates. Hence the company will have the

opportunity to have a record of real skills of the employee; thus, the employee development and

training process will be streamlined, making the company project about its future and its current

market value. Below is the proposed solution:

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Conclusion

Finally, with the current wave of constant technology change, ERP systems also need to

be updated to meets the current technology needs and also be able to satisfy the current needs of

an organization. Employee needs should also be taken into consideration when integrating the ERP

system. In the case of our organization, we will take employee needs into consideration by

integrating the LinkedIn and Udemy learning platforms into our ERP system to relieve the

employees the work of having to inform the HR department about their progress and it will help

all the business processes to happen smoothly. However, for proper integration we should use the

correct integration procedure which will ensure there is a proper and smooth communication

between the two platforms. Training and developing employee skill will pay dividends in the long

run because training improves the productivity of the employees.