Integration

The ShopRite Company is a mobile telecommunications company that deals with production and distribution of telecommunication equipment. In its operations, the company has over five hundred employees and different departments. To manage its taskforce and streamline its operations, the company resolved in developing an Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP). This will see the company’s administrative, financial and human resource activities dedicated to the ERP.

Implementation of the system will allow for a unified organization that will be efficient and effective in its daily activities. The main objectives of the ERP system are:

· To establish a clear platform that will enforce a consistent execution and utilization of resource management principles and policies.

· To facilitate an easier decision making process by improving access to enterprise management information.

· To allow Information Communication Technology to support a fully integrated cohesive modern and strategic administrative infrastructure.

· To provide an efficient and effective processes for personnel, performance management, recruiting, payroll and learning through workflow modules that are integrated to encourage collaborative working.

· To provide a transparent system of monitoring the allocation and utilization of resources then comparing them against the expected results which will lead to an optimal utilization of resources available for achievement of particular goals and objectives.

· To improve customer service by formation of a centralized repository for customer information.

· To Use an amalgamated customer data to potentially increase revenues through a better understanding of customer needs.

The ERP system will seek to satisfy the following Business needs of ShopRite Company.

· Payroll.

· Personnel Management.

· Learning Management.

· Recruitment.

· Performance Management

· Support for Customer-centric business practices.

· Support for Sales, Distribution and Marketing of products and services.

· Customer information consolidation.

· Planning and Budgeting.

· Enterprise Reporting and Analytics.

· Results Based Management.

The main objectives of the ERP system will be improving the management of the Human resources in the organization, monitoring the Enterprise performance and Customer Relationship Management. It is from these broad objectives that we generate the major components of the ERP system.

According to Buttle, F. (2009), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy that aims at attracting, growing and retaining the right customers. To achieve a better CRM, an organization needs to understand the needs of a customer and work on fulfilling the said needs. For this to be achieved, the ERP system will need to have a dedicated CRM module that will integrate with other systems to provide a consolidated customer base. This will help ShopRite understand the needs of the customer and optimize its revenue streams.

Human Resource Management is the process of managing the human taskforce in an organization. The activities involved in HRM include recruitment, Induction, Training and providing proper appraisal. In a large organization like ShopRite, a large human workforce can be tedious to manage manually. Integrating an HRM module in the ERP will ensure that the human workforce is properly managed and properly appraised to see a properly motivated workforce and as a result increased work output.

A strategic reporting tool to provide a basis for future reporting and analytics will be integrated in the ERP. This will increase the functionality and structure. To improve accountability, it is imperative to have a strengthened Results Based Management and the introduction of components that will help in budgeting, planning performance assessment and monitoring.

The following are the deliverables that will be required for the implementation of the project.

· Implementation of Planning and Budgeting

· Implementation of Reporting, Analytics, Monitoring and Performance Assessment;;

· Implementation of Learning Management and Career Development;

· Implementation of Recruitment;

· ERP Portfolio Vision, Conceptual Design, Accountability Framework and Delegation of Authority

· Implementation of Performance and Position Management;

· Implementation of Core HR and Payroll

· Implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM);

System integration is the process of assembling the constituent components of a system in a rational and cost effective manner and comprehensively checking all exceptional and nominal paths check out (Reeve,95).

The best practices to be observed during system Integration are as follows;

i. Development of an integration plan during program planning.

ii. Proper requirements and design specifications should be defined at every level of the system.

· Identifying Information: Names, Company names, Account numbers, Social Security numbers

· Contact Information: Mailing addresses, Home phone and Cell phone numbers, E-mail addresses, Fax numbers and Client website information. The database can also contain information pertaining to the client's preferred contact methods.

· Client History: Order history, Customer service complaints, Client feedback and stated client preferences. A database can also contain a section for general notes about a client or customer. 

The primary stakeholder in the company is the client. The system is built around everything for the client’s use such as letting the client to easily access the company’s services. The company owners part won’t be publicly visible to other stakeholders apart from the executive administration and the investors. Financial institutions which will include creditors and banks will be part of the stakeholder title and will be depended on for financial support as the company expands.

System Components and Interfaces

Mobile apps will communicate with services using API’s based on REST interfaces. The key components will be

· Vendor Framework that provide access to device capabilities from the mobile network

· Enterprise Development Kits that provide the ability to support the communication with mobile services through SDK’s that are consumable for mobile developers

The MDM will focus on managing the devices from business to employee scenario and provide services to keep track of the company’s owned devices and also will manage devices that are connected to the company’s networks using the management agents on the devices to provide Enterprise App Distribution, Security, Device Management, and Device Analytics

.

The network components will be the Enterprise User Directory to provide storage for the user, authentication, authorization, and profile data. Enterprise Data, and applications that will run processes and logic within the existing systems The completion of the integration process of the system will see the interlinking of a few sections of the company using different interfaces

Several interfaces will be used in this case as a common system development and in line with the other clients and stakeholders. The greater part of the system will be made available to users through a graphical user interface which the implementation will include:

· UI designers create the UI requirement specifications using text, graphic, illustrations, and relevant multimedia representation

· UI programmers implement according to the specification

· The created UI is verified against the UI requirement specification by UI designers

A UI template generator will be used for UI designers to lessen the workload. The UI template can be reused to create a new UI prototype for a new mobile phone service.

Functional Requirements

The ShopRite mobile client will enable the delivery, creation, and metadata of ShopRite contents on mobile devices. The content will be delivered on the basis of certain search filters, whereas the create content is enriched with metadata specifying certain values of these filters. The ShopRite mobile client will be part of a client-server infrastructure using the ShopRite services.

The correct specification and adherence of non-functional requirements similarly plays at least an equal, if not a greater role in the success of mobile applications for the reasons of:

· Mobile devices are uniquely constrained in several aspects such as multi-tasking support, available network bandwidth, screen real estate etc.

· Mobile applications need to operate successfully within a wide spectrum of operating conditions, such as a range of supported screen resolutions and form factors, network bandwidth situations and network types

· Mobile applications need to operate successfully within a wide spectrum of operating conditions, such as a range of supported screen resolutions and form factors, network bandwidth situations and network types.

· Users expect a different quality of user experience from an application running on the mobile device than they do from their desktop computer.

CPU & Memory

For any given OS, the supported devices could have a very wide range of capabilities in terms of CPU speed and available memory. If the application makes extensive use of arithmetic and logic operations such as streaming and decompression of audio and video and animations, it should specify minimum CPU and memory requirements for the application

Support for different network protocols

Mobile devices can communicate with the network on one or more protocols. For a network application, it is crucial to evaluate each network-enabled feature of the application from the point of view of determining the protocol that is requires

Screen resolution and screen form factors

 Keep a set of target screen resolutions in mind while designing the user interface of a mobile application. Practically, you will need to identify one or more screen resolution (or alternately screen size) families that you want to support. 

Battery usage

On a mobile phone, the battery should remain maximally available for the phone application i.e. for making and receiving phone calls. Your application may therefore fall by the wayside or even get uninstalled by the user, if it drains too much battery.

One of the main assumptions of the system is that all the system stakeholders, especially those actively involved in the interlinking of the payment procedures are in agreement with company corporate protocols and are therefore on behalf of the company authorizing the payments for their own business development. Otherwise the above requirements may never be met. Also, in the above specification, it is assumed that the client or customer is able to use the system from his/her end and understands the logical operations of the system, is clear of mind with the steps offered on the site and is informed enough to know which online practices may not be safe for him/her, especially when it comes to financial authorization. Finally, the above requirements specification are specific to this system, it is however, assumed that all the other general system development requirements are met such as security, administration, monitoring, maintenance are viable from their respective ends.

Pros:

A high percentage of the population use smart phone technology and are app savvy. Apps keep your brand prominent in the market place, ahead of the competition. Apps help increase customer retention and loyalty, as they are always at hand, first port of call. Users tend to spend longer on Apps than on portfolio websites. App technology allows you to demonstrate products and services more creatively, connect with clients, provide more in-depth information and give users a better customer experience. Apps usually load faster than mobile sites. Mobile apps are available offline apart from transactions where users will need to log-in. Their specific use can be targeted to different users – dealers/customers /end-users/ staff.

Most Apps are easy to use: training your mobile workforce to use them will take very little time and effort. Apps can be easily downloaded by your B2B sales leads from app stores such as iTunes, Google play, and Facebook’s app store. Once business clients use your App (especially if it is web-based), you can stay connected wherever your clients are. You can glean valuable user generated data from your app that could help you create even more targeted lead generation marketing campaigns in the future.

Cons:

A mobile App needs to be made to suit each platform, Android, Windows, iPhone, etc. which can be costly and timely. Mobile Apps require on-going care both as regard to fresh content and technological updates. They are not as simple to optimize as a mobile website. Apps can be expensive – the more functionality they have, the more they cost, and can be hard to update. A mobile app that’s just a smaller version of your website won’t work hard enough for you and could even damage the perception of your brand.