Information Systems Infrastructure (IS3314) 3 rd year BIS 2006 / 2007 Fergal Carton Business Information Systems

Last week Key benefits of ERP ERP: the state of play Key business decisions D 0 – D 6 Davenport handout (link sent) SBP Retail Technology handout (27 Aug 2006)

This week Basic flows of information Common data platform Integration Data issues with ERP implementations

Basic flows of information Organisations are organised in a number of functional areas They carry out complementary missions They interact and collaborate in managing the organisation What are they called? What are their goals?

Examples: Finance: managing the cash flows, providing resources to the firm –sub area: Accounting (books and legal reporting) –sub area: Accounts receivable and payable: deal with suppliers and customers Marketing: promoting the firm and its products Sales: selling the products; dealing with customers –sub area: sales orders –sub area: returns Production: manufacture goods –sub area: purchasing raw material –sub area: quality control

Collaboration / Conflict All areas of the firm must exchange info with the others (just like organisations must interact with the outside) divergence of viewpoints means opportunities for conflict are great managing same resources / using the same assets but with radically different goals

Examples: Quality control versus production: –production want to increase volumes and keep productivity at highest levels –QC want to prevent any “faulty” product to come out of the door In an environment where zero defect is only a remote target => conflict is likely in one organisation, QC were referred to as the Sales Prevention department

Reliable Common Grammar: Examples Sales statistics: –as per invoices? –before returns –adjusted for bad debts –Also, what feed back time? Production figures: –after rejects –adjusted for loss / destruction in finished goods storage –Any possibilities that figures are not reliable? business analysts must talk to everyone to ensure existence of common reliable methods

Key business decisions

What does integration mean? –All users access the application via a web browser –Information can shared between different parts of the business –Users follow the same training programme –The data is stored in an array of database tables

Parameters in ERP implementations Integration –Application –Services Standardisation –Business practices Centralisation –Decision making Control Acceleration –Information flows –Business process steps Cost reduction And the two levels at play are: Top management Users of ERP system: Managers at local level Operators HQ Local

The core of the problem This is how the system works This is how we do business This is how business and software will work together

ERP Resources : data Data clean-up team Data conversion team Data conversion programmer Legacy data team Data quality testing and maintenance …

Data issues … Getting and maintaining clean data –When creating a new customer, who has control? –42 occurrences of Siemens in your customer database, what do you do? –Customers exist in ERP core database, but also in several legacy systems. How do you make sure they are in synch? –…

Resources : Technical (IT ops) Database administrator Systems administrator Operators : core apps Server operators Storage technicians HelpDesk …

Database issues … Guaranteeing “high availability” How often should Test be refreshed? How many environments should I have –Test –Production –Development –Training –Business Simulation –… If I implement a change to Production, do I need to implement the same change across all environments? 20 programmers developing / testing new code every day: how do I track releases to production? …