ERP PPT

Enterprise Resource Planning

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1. How could Organizational Project Management (OPM3) have helped to identify the problems with implementing the demand planning system?

The organizational project management team has the responsibility to initiate projects that are paramount tor organizational processes. The OPM comes to the rescue of the organization in different circumstances (Costa, Ferreira, Bento, & Aparicio, 2016). The OPM can initiate projects that help to know the reason as to why specific events took place. It can also initiate projects that test and assess the accountability of some of the leaders of an organization. In the case of Nike, the OPM could have helped to identify the problems by initiating projects.

One of the issues that faced the implementation of the demand planning system was the complexity of the system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The complexity of a system affects its users. When a system is too complex, the users might have a challenge using the system. In the case that has been given, the complexity of the system affected most of the end-users. It is important to note that end users are paramount to any system because they are the most targeted stakeholders. The system discouraged end users and that is what affected its effectiveness. The project team could have initiated a testing project (Costa et al. 2016). Before the implementation of a system, it is important to know how easy or hard it is to use the system.

Testing the complexity of the system is not a hard task for the project management team before the official implementation of the system; the project management team would have conducted a test using random end-users. After observing the ability to operate the system, the project management team would have collected data that would help to know if it is easy or hard to use the system (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017).

Apart from the issue of complexity, there is the issue of user education. One of the reasons why the implementation failed was that users did not have all the skills and knowledge they needed to use the system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). User education is paramount in any field because it helps users to know how to operate or access a system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The project management team could have helped to know if the users had the knowledge and skills needed to operate the system. A project can be initiated to take data from targeted persons. If there was data that helped to know about the level of education that was possessed by users, the organization would have known that it needed to intensify user education.

The second problem that was associated with the system was the lack of testing. Systems are paramount and play host to many people as well as operations of an organization (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The testing process is critical because it shed more light on the ability of the system to perform the duties it was designed for (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). The project management team can initiate a project that can test the applicability of a system. It is there appears that the project management department had a role to ensure that the organization knows if the system was applicable or not.

2. What were the three primary reasons Nike was successful with the ongoing ERP implementation?

A. Gradual Implementation

Different methods of implementation are at the disposal of organizations that have plans to implement. An organization can implement a plan at once thus reaching all targeted parties. At the same time, an organization can implement its plans regionally. The last option of implementation focuses on individual countries (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). In this case, an organization can decide to implement its plans by targeted the nations of operations. The method or strategy that was used to implement this system was a gradual implementation. The company started to implement the system in the Canadian region (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). According to the case study, the Canadian region was the smallest. It, therefore, means that the organization started by focusing on smaller regions.

When an organization implements its systems and strategies from bottom heading to the top, it gains ad advantages against organizations that use the vice versa method. The reason behind it is associated with costs and knowledge of the attitude of the users. The gradual implementation helps an organization to work within its budget. At the same time, the organization gets to monitor the performance of the system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The organization gets to know if the system is serving its purpose or not. There is the advantage of saving costs in the case of backfire. When an organization implements a plan gradually, it can back down if it realizes that the plan is not working. At the same time, the organization is presented with an opportunity to make changes that might prove not to work as the organization expects (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). It is better to pull out in the initial stages than invest a lot of time and resources and end up implementing a system that is not beneficial to the organization or users. The gradual implementation of the ERP helped the organization to strategize on the next step (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The organization had an opportunity to monitor the whole process and that is one of the reasons why it was a success.

B. Increased Budget

The initial budget of the system was $100 million but the entire project ended up costing the organization $500 million. In this case, it is important to note that the figures are not directly connected to the effectiveness of the system (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). The role that the increased budget played was to perfect the system. The successful implementation of a system is dictated by the components and specifications of the system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). For example, when an organization uses a system that is advanced and has a lot of helpful features, the system becomes easier to implement because it is already appealing to the people that it targets. The increased budget covered all the special needs of the system. Therefore, the quality of the system, as well as its effectiveness, was attractive and appealing to end-users.

C. User Training

As opposed to the demand planning system, the ERP factored in the aspect of teaching its users how to use the system (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). More than six thousand end-users were trained and that means that they had the knowledge and skills they needed to work with the system. In this case, the implementation was smooth because the people who implemented the system knew what the users needed and went ahead to provide it (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). The knowledge of the end-user can affect the implementation of the system. A system is designed to help end-users or collect data from them. When it is hard for the system to help the users, the users tend to seek help from other places (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). As a result, the number of people who use the system decrease by a significant percentage.

3. Why was a phased rollout the correct decision for Nike?

The nature of the system that an organization is dealing with affects the approach that an organization should take. At the same time, the complexity of the system affects the implementation approach. Nike was dealing with a new system and that meant that there was a dire need to have a unique approach (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). A phased rollout is the gradual incremental process of a system or software. When an organization is dealing with a new system, it is risky to design a complete system without knowing if the system will attain positive results or not. The incremental process helps in different ways (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). An organization might implement a system with the expectation that the system will work then the system ends up not working. If the organization had implemented the system in its entirety, it means that the losses would be high because the organization has already spent on the project (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). However, when the organization uses a phased rollout, it is easy to know if different phases are operating in line with the expectations of the organization or not.

The case of Nike is associated with the implementation of a new system. Considering the fact that the organization was working with the systems for the first time, the phased rollout was the best option (Elbarda & Kholeif, 2017). Also, there is an aspect of the nature of the system. Not all systems are favored by a phased rollout. Some of the systems are hard to change gradually or in phases. In the case of Nike, the systems could be increased gradually. The reason behind it was that the systems had different phases and sections (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). The complexity of the system was also another factor that was associated with the approach that was taken (El Hamdi & Abouabdellah, 2018). When the system is complex, it is advisable to make sure that the approach is lenient to help break the implementation process into different and smaller phases. Doing so helps to avoid huge losses that can be incurred by implementing the system in its entirety.

References

Costa, C. J., Ferreira, E., Bento, F., & Aparicio, M. (2016). Enterprise resource planning adoption and satisfaction determinants. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 659-671.

Elbardan, H., & Kholeif, A. O. (2017). Enterprise Resource Planning, Corporate Governance and Internal Auditing. Springer Books.

El Hamdi, S., & Abouabdellah, A. (2018, April). Literature review of implementation of an entreprise resources planning: Dimensional approach. In 2018 4th International Conference on Logistics Operations Management (GOL) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.