Q.4 Stuff-Up.Org (fictitious organisation at the time or writing) has an ailing set of in-house developed legacy systems (if you don’t know what a legacy system is – look up the term on the web). It has been decided that the IT department will be tasked to investigate the possibility of adopting an ES. If they recommend ES adoption, then it has also been decided that they will be tasked with evaluating products and recommending a product to the CEO. What might be wrong with this situation? What problems do you see arising?
Over time companies need to decide whether it is time to update or improve upon some of tools that the companies uses in the course of operating a business. In this situation the company has pretty much left the overall recommendation to the IT Department who, while they have superior knowledge about IT related topics, do not always understand that they are responsible for choosing a system that will be beneficial to all users of the company and not just from an IT point of view. Such as choosing a system that is easy to network, meaning less work for them to maintain it, but might not be a usable as some other systems.
Having the IT department solely in control on what recommendation should be made to the CEO leaves out the opinion of the other departments who might not want any changes or might have some suggestion that the IT department should add to their considerations when looking for a new ERP. This means that the company could end up replacing their ailing system for another system they might not fix any of the problems of the last one and cost the company lots of money in the process.
A company’s success is widely built off of team work by its workers, if one department is failing then it will pull the others down, therefore in situation such as this is, there should be a companywide task force involved in deciding what should be done or atleast have a meeting of departments so that they can give their ideas to the IT department to help them find a system to suit all.
Annotated Bibliography
Alan S Brown, Lies Your ERP System Tells You, Mechanical Engineering; Mar 2006; 128, 3; ABI/INFORM Global pg. 36
“Lies Your ERP System Tells You” contain a group of cases were companies ERP’s have given inaccurate information or lied which in turn has caused the company a great deal of problems. Using these cases it is the papers aim to explain how these problems occur and that it is not the fault of the fundamentals of ERP’s but more of the fault of those who use it. Certain experts give their opinions into why these particular ERP’s have failed where others have been very successful. They explain how for the system to maintain its integrity it must be trusted by all those who use it and that the ERP should be used in the way it was designed for and users should stick to a strict protocol so that ERP has all necessary information to do its job properly.
