Activity 2.3

Activity 2.3 Module Review Questions and Module Practice

Part 1: Answer the module review questions listed below. These questions were chosen to demonstrate your understanding and help you assess your progress.

1. What are functional silos and how did they evolve in organizations?

· Functional silos are categorize organization’s tasks and activities in different groups to improve efficiency of work in the organization. They are generally known as such departments as accounting or HR, each having its own goals and responsibilities. When organizations grow in size and complexity, they’re divided in horizontal functions and vertical layers. Horizontal grouping is called functional divisions, and vertical grouping of management functions is called management hierarchy.

2. Compare and contrast centralized, decentralized, and distributed IT architectures. Which do you think is most appropriate for ERP and why?

· Centralized: all information will be share and control by server put in the central. One might have two DNS servers in every department of a company. Centralization is an attempt to improve efficiency by taking advantage of potential economies of scale to improving the average.

· Decentralized: means breaking away from the prevailing hegemony, revolting against the frustrating bureaucratic ways of old, decentralization is an attempt to improve speed and flexibility by reorganizing to increase local control and execution of service to improving the best case.

· Distributed IT architecture allows sharing of applications and data resources between the client and the server computers. It combines features from the centralized and decentralized architectures.

3. List the horizontal and vertical levels of systems that exist in organizations.

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3. Describe at least five steps involved in systems integration.

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4. What is the role of ERP systems in systems integration? 

Part 2: Pick an organization that you know of or where you are/were working and provide examples of logical and physical integration issues that were faced by the organization when they broke the functional silos and moved to integrated systems.