Business Issue and Impact
Mackay company has registered low sales returns from its various branches and the head office in recent years. The impact of low revenues has been contributed through the lack of an effective and efficient system that can manage the company’s internal and external processes. In addition, the low sales lead to unattainable organizational goals and objectives since the firm aims at expanding its operations entirely in various parts of the globe. The company can address these challenges by developing and executing a new ERP system, enhancing service delivery, and keeping customers’ accounts and records for tracking and proper management of revenues and other growth plans. It is, therefore, recommended that the company implements this plan to achieve the desired goals within the shortest period.
Strategy and Proposed Solution
Due to MacKay company’s lack of technological advancement, most of the operations have been conducted manually, leading to poor storage of customer data and organizational revenue information. The lack of a proper system has also led to stagnant growth in the company sales activities since improper management of the accounts receivable and payables (Porter & Heppelmann, 2018, para. 3). These challenges are addressed by implementing the current technological improvements, which will aid the organization’s operations and ensure the company performs in its desired direction.
As an IT expert, I have devised a plan for system implementation that will enable the firm to achieve its goals of increasing revenues and expanding its work within the shortest period. In selecting this strategy, I analyzed the cost and revenue benefits of having this system in place in any organizational setup. Through the new system, the company stakeholders are relieved from manual tasks. It ensures that all processes are done using the technology and keeps comprehensive records of various organizational functions.
Solution Details
Ideally, any business aims at ensuring growth and long-term development in its operations. To attain these goals, the company needs to develop a single system for coordinating the key operational activities and monitoring its performance (Montasari & Hill, 2019, para. 1). Using an ERP system solves the challenges that a company has when operating through various systems. The ERP system integrates the firm’s operations and centralizes its operations in a one-unit form to ensure there is consistency in the management of the critical activities.
When there is a need to integrate company activities and management of its resources, enterprises are faced with three critical decisions (Dremel, Herterich, Wulf, & Waizmann, 2017, para. 3). These decisions include; using the in-house resource, outsourcing, or building an analytics system to assist in collecting and managing the company information. Implementing the technological software in an organization aims at achieving results independently from the specific areas where they are involved.
The ERP system allows the organization to coordinate all its activities. It eases the firm’s operations by linking various functional units of a company to aid in decision making and proper planning (Ross, Beath, & A, 2017, para. 1). Therefore, the ERP system supersedes other alternatives available to a firm that seeks to grow and achieve the desired results within the shortest period of its operations.
Funding Request
We will need approximately $27000 for the start-up, distributed to the various cost items for the system purchase. The essential items include payments of license fees paid annually, training of the staff, purchase of the basic features and modules, and customization of the system. The fusing is necessary since it spearheads the initial implementation process of the acquisition and allows the company to maintain the system within its period of operations. The company needs funding to ensure that its staff from all the key departments are trained and equipped to operate the system once implemented.
Anticipated Return on Investment (ROI)
Once a new ERP system has been implemented, the company and its management would achieve the potential growth needs within the shortest duration. The qualitative benefits of ERP implementation result in its fast operations and collaboration of all the business activities to ensure a standard performance from the various departments (Delen & Demirkan, 2019, para. 1). The effectiveness and efficiency of ERP system implementation also improves the productivity of an organization since it will ensure results are achieved faster and with ease.
An important advantage of the ERP system is be the ability to connect and apply any of the modules in a short time. Moreover, the capabilities that are connected to the ERP in this way are added to the system absolutely seamlessly. This is an important difference between ERP and the integration of several software products among themselves or from a system that has grown from a specialized one due to numerous improvements. When choosing an ERP system, the organization will receive a single system for automating various divisions of the company, as well as a wide range of opportunities for development.
The company aims to maximize compliance with constantly changing market conditions and customer needs. Therefore, it needs an operational data exchange between departments and the efficiency of managerial decision-making. In terms of the size of this business, where there are several divisions, a single database and operational data exchange in the face of changing customer needs become critical. It is important that all information is collected in a short time, so a single system with a common database is needed.
The general staff working hours reduces when using the new ERP system enabling the staff to attain results efficiently. Therefore, implementing the new system saves on various overheads and ensures that the company increases its financial operations from the invested capital. The company should implement the new system since it saves on cost management and ensures consistency in operational activities in the firm.
Team and Timeline
The new system implementation will involve key stakeholders from fiancé, human resource, IT, procurement, and marketing departments to ensure that its success is attained once implemented in our company. The new system implementation will take approximately six months to operationalize (Arshley & Viji, 2021, para. 2). There would be three months for software testing and the staff’s ability to adjust to the various weaknesses and strengthen the overall performance of the new system. The adaptability period for this ERP system would be approximately three months since it is projected that the company would spend a year to attain this plan.
References
Arshley, M., & Viji, K. (2021). Thwarting cybercrime and phishing attacks with machine learning. In 2021 7th International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS). IEEE, 3(1), 353-357.
Delen, D., & Demirkan, H. (2019). Data, information, and analytics as services. Decision Support Systems, 55(1), 359-363.
Dremel, C., Herterich, M., Wulf, J., & Waizmann, J. (2017). How AUDI AG established big data analytics in its digital transformation. MIS Quarterly Executive, 16(2), 81–100.
Montasari, R., & Hill, R. (2019). Next-generation digital forensics: Challenges and future paradigms. In 2019 IEEE 12th International Conference on Global Security, Safety and Sustainability (ICGS3), 205-212.
Porter, M., & Heppelmann, J. (2018). How smart-connected products are transforming companies? Harvard Business Review, 93(10), 96-114.
Ross, J., Beath, C., & A, Q. (2017). You may not need big data after all. Harvard Business Review, 91(12), 90-98.