Q.2 Using Sumner (2005), read the article on pages 149 – 150. Answer the following: a. What aspects of BI have been employed in this case example? b. What would you expect to be the challenges facing the development of a BI approach for such a large organisation? c. Would Dow Corning be a suitable candidate for a shared services approach using an ASP? Justify and argue your answer
Following on from the previous week develop a rough outline of your presentation. Post this rough outline to your blog.
Post an entry to your blog that answers the following questions:
What was the most difficult assessment item you completed so far in COIS12073 this term?
What was difficult about it and how would you suggest it could be improved?
If you could provide three (3) pieces of advice to a student who will be doing this course next term what would they be?
How will you be able to use this knowledge/these skills in your future career?
A) Dow Corning Corp has employed aspects of business intelligence through integrating their global business process by implementing a “Basic ERP backbone”. This means replacing the current legacy systems that are running on mainframes and incorporate R/3 SAP AG which will enhance the capabilities of the business intelligence.
B) As with all large and diverse companies, ensuring that the implementation phase is as well planned out as possible and that plan followed will be a challenge. As the amount of users and variety of different types of applications used throughout the business will increase the likely hood of problems, this detracting from the potential benefits of the business intelligence.
C)
Difficult project
By far the most difficult project of the course would the Case study, as it required a high level of research and reading to form ideas and arguments to properly argue the case, added to that it had a 5000 word limit making it the largest assignment of the course.
What I found difficult was finding relevant journal references to help support my argument, while I did find some useful journals that did help my argument they didn’t contain as much detailed information as I was hoping.
The 3 pieces of advice I would give to students who will do this course next term would be to try and keep up with the required reading as much as possible to help give as much knowledge about the subject and better prepare you for the assessment. The second would be that the assessment pieces require more time to complete as they do need thorough research to achieve a satisfactory mark. The final piece of advice would be try and find real life examples of the topics in the course to gain a better understanding of them, this will help you better prepare your arguments in your assessments pieces.
This course has given me a good grounding of knowledge about the benefits and problems of ERP systems, and as many businesses around the world make use of ERP it will valuable knowledge to prepare me for working in an industry that makes use of ERP or if I have any involvement in the implementation of an ERP, I will at least I will know of some of the dangers of implementing them.
Presentation Outline:
I will be arguing that the university has spent too much time and money on this project to give up now and that with better management of the project the ERP can be salvaged and made a beneficial asset to the university.
To justify this argument i will need explain why the ERP will be beneficial to the univeristy and if these benefits are worth the risks of a second attempt. I will also need to identify the problems that have lead to failure and how these problems can be corrected to ensure that this time the project will be successful.
My powerpoint should helpful include useful information and data such as graphs to support my finding in great detail.
