presentation proposal for implementing ERP

WHAT IS ERP AND ITS VALUE IN THE ORGANIZATION

An Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) is software design that expedites the movement of data amongst several functions in the organization. In addition to that, ERP enable data distribution across different platforms and geographical areas and institutional locations. With implementation of ERP in the institution decision-makers will be in a position to have an enterprise–wide understanding of the data they want in a timely, steadfast and constant mode. The main value of ERP in an organization is to provide the backbone for an enterprise-wide data system. At the center of this inventive program is a fundamental database or central database which pulls data from and distribute information into integrated bids that function on a conjoint computing podiums, in this case normalizing business procedures and information designations into an incorporated setting.

With the presence of an ERP software or system in the organization, information demands to be entered only on one occasion. It runs the steadiness and prominence or openness through the total organization that uses the system. The main or rather primary value of ERP is to easily have the right of entry to a dependable and unified data. Also there is an issue of eliminating redundancies in information and the validation of procedures which are the outcome of extensive cost reserves.

PURPOSE OF ERP INTEGRATION

One of the strongly purpose of integrating a system is the access of information. Information is by itself the backbone of profit making in the organization. An organization that is in a position to centralized their databases in a single platform or entity will be in a good position to oversee their data easily. Integration amongst occupational facilitates announcement and data distribution, which in returns they gain in production and swiftness.

GUIDELINES TO IMPLEMINTING AN ERP AND ITS EVALUATION

There are various steps that should be followed when implementing and evaluating an ERP system in every institution. The purpose of these guidelines is to avoid unnecessary mistakes and to minimize expenses, failure and errors. Failure to adhering to these procedures might cost the entire organization or industry a catastrophic failure and lose of information that is already in the system. These factors or steps include;

· The entire board of directors or managers should or must conduct a full viability research of the existing situation to evaluate the association’s demands by examining the obtainability of hardware, programs, databases, and in house computer experience. After analyzing, they should be a position to make decision of either implementing the new ERP where incorporation is of importance. There should sets goals and objectives for improving the establishment for the implementation and a spread of a break-even and the profits that will be established from the costly IT speculation.

· The major factor that should be considered during implementation and evaluation of ERP is training. Training caries a major part when introducing a candidate ERP. It deals which eliminating the fear of change and introducing the know-how of the new system in the organization.

· There is also a step where mangers consolidate amongst themselves to form a development team that will steer up the implementation process. This team should consist of steering committees and expert from the entire functional areas of the organization.

· Upon agreement to implement ERP, a group of system advisors will be appointed to assess the suitability of instigating ERP system. The team also will be entitled to selecting the preeminent enterprise software suppliers and the best method to instigating ERP. In this scenario, the consultants team will choose the best software relating to the objectives and demands of the organization (industrial, financials, human resource, logistics and forecasting), the issue of system alignment, and trade-to-trade presentations such as distribution-chain management, client association administration, e-procurement and e-marketing.

· There is an aspect of enough employees and manager preparation that should be provided to the entire business, shareholders, managers, end users, clients, and also the vendors earlier to implantation of the ERP.

· There is a system installation procedure also that is of important which will discourse the subjects of programs configuration, hardware procurement and program analysis.

· In this step data and all the information in the organization databanks must be transformed to the set-up used in the candidate ERP system and servers and links need to be elevated. There should a post instigation appraisal to guarantee that all the trade goals generated in the period of preparation stage are attained. The demand for changes or adjustment are being monitored in this stage too.

ORGANIZATIONAL NEEDS

The George Washington School District is highly populated in terms of the number of schools and students. The district has implemented a traditional structure of information and resource management that involves redundant storage of data and decentralized management. As the district grows, it has become increasingly harder for the present IT team to manage all the relevant systems for the 40 individual schools and the various departments in the district office. Each school consists of its own information system and a set of hardware that require constant support. The decentralized set up also makes it difficult for the overall management to keep track of resources allocated to the schools.

An enterprise resource planning system refers to a common database system used by personnel from different sections or business units of the same organization. The needs of all the employees are addressed from the same system. The most common functionalities in the majority of ERP systems are automation of processes such as payrolls and hiring of new employees, incident tracking, and generation of reports for business, customer relationships management and dashboard overview of the business.

ERP systems use data collected from the various points of the business and consolidates it to provide reports such as the history of customer relations, financial reports for accounting and auditing and inventory reports indicating what the business has acquired and for tracking the products in the business. With the introduction of the new ERP into the district there will be more ways to manage the schools and meet their demands. There are much more benefits to introducing the new system compared to retaining the current system. Also with the increase in population and the analysis that has been conducted on the performance of the current system, the entire district will be in a big challenge monitoring the number of schools with the old unintegrated system in the district.

Based on the analysis of different vendors and the amount of grant donated we can analyses and discussed on how the entire process will take place with the chosen ERP and the best provider.

BUDGET ALLOCATION FOR IMPLEMENTING A CANDIDATE ERP

The grant allocation of $100,000 dollars is one of the biggest milestone that will assist in introducing and implementing a new system to George Washington School District. Based on the population and demand for an upgraded system in the district schools, we can say that we shall consider selecting an effective system from a vendor and put in place. The main aspect while choosing the system is the amount of budget, objectives and goals, flexibility, compatibility, ease of and more so the time that will take to implement the system. The actual budget that should be allocated is mainly on the side of acquisition of the software which is the ERP, hardware peripherals, training of the mangers, ends users, clients which are the students in this perspective, installation of the system, testing the system, evaluating the system and system maintenance.

This budget can be split based on the requirement in every section. When the issue of acquisition arise the consultant team as mention before in the guidelines of implementation the system is entitle to the task of finding a relevant vendors or providers to provide the ERP basing on the objective of the organization. In addition to this, the expert team are entitling with training the personnel which in this case happen hand-in-hand during the installation of the system.

Considering purchasing the ERP system from Oracle ERP system, installation of the system, maintenances and training and implementing the system in place, then we can roughly put and estimate budget of $75000. This cost will gather for the entire procedures and still the district will have the $2500 to be used on the other remaining part of the project. As mention in the guideline also the IT professional will be in a position to follow the process correctly avoiding challenges and complications. Breaking down the budget;

· The cost of purchasing software and hardware requirement is estimated to $40000.

· The cost of training and installation is estimated to $20000.

· The cost of maintaining the system is estimated to be $15000.

With this budget the District will be a position to acquire a new system and work away from problems arising with the old system challenged by the number of population increase.

USE CASES

ERP systems are more common in businesses with high capacity of customers. This is because of their need for a system that efficiently manages all their customer requests and services as the rest of the staff concentrates on serving their needs. The ERP systems reduce the amount of time taken for an internal inquiry to take place between two staff members of different departments as the information is readily available in the system. This ensures more customers are served more satisfactorily within a given amount of time.

School districts are catching up on the need for such a system as the needs of education in the community increases. Business needs to keep running smoothly despite the increasing number of students. The number of people employed in the school system is also increasing and the once straightforward method of sharing information may not be effective anymore.

The education system is also evolving with technology to modified business models where more transparent reports are demanded from the teachers and staff for student progress and effects of implementation of new teaching methodologies. Data is required to support the reports presented for evaluation in order to assist in more proactive decision making. In view of this, an ERP system is needed to assist in the management of all these processes while teachers’ focus is not diverted from delivering quality education to the students.

BENEFITS ASSOCITED WITH NEW ERP

An ERP system comes with the following advantages:

It provides a history of transactions within the organization, this helps keep track of the happenings of each section of the organization and proves to be a readily available information base during auditing.

It assists in tracking the allocation of revenue and other resources in different schools and departments ensuring minimal wastage and facilitates accounting.

It allows all employees to have access to the system minimizing the amount of time it takes before a task is accomplished. Incident trackers ensure that a specific person or team is assigned responsibility for a given task.

It minimizes the need for manual synchronization of data.

It enhances the security of data stored as multiple security mechanisms can be implemented within the same system.

However, it would be naïve to ignore the challenges that would present themselves with the implementation of such a system:

Implementation of such a system is more difficult in decentralized organizations in the school district because the different sections have different business models and consolidating all of them into one system may lead to a major disruption of the activities of the affected sections. Depending on the specific needs of the school district, the system may need to be customized. This may cost more due to the need for a specialist to implement or due to the need for a more upgraded license.

In light of the above issues, the system needs to be rolled out in phases to allow for testing of suitability in different environments. The relevant staff members must be involved to ensure that the system is compliant with their business processes.

A two-tier approach where two ERP systems should be implemented; one for the schools and one for the district office. This way, only functions that cut across both sections will have to be manually integrated while the rest remain independent. This ensures less customization and needs for smaller systems which cost less.

CONCLUSIONS

The main goal of the ERP system is to use technology to run business processes more efficiently by improving access to data and introducing new tools that make tasks easier to accomplish while the stakeholders concentrate on delivering quality education to the students. The information in the ERP system provides an opportunity for proactive business decisions where the management can use the data present to make more informed future decisions. Smart management of the grant would ensure implementation of the system to fruition. Phased implementation would ensure learning from mistakes and adjusting the process to make it more successful. Most of all, members of the staff should not be left out of the process as they understand best how the business processes work.

REFERENCES

Do you know what ERP is? Learn how ERP can help your business with this informative article. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/erp/what-is-erp.shtml

Haplin, J. (2016). Wanted: Smarter ERP Systems for Schools. Retrieved from http://www.govtech.com/education/news/smarter-erp-systems.html

What is ERP? | Oracle. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.oracle.com/applications/erp/what-is-erp.html