MIS 7003 MBA Core Course in MIS Professor Akhilesh Bajaj The University of Tulsa Reading Discussion ERP & Collaboration Systems © Akhilesh Bajaj, All rights reserved.

Central Themes For Discussion Campus ERP example: typical in most ERP installations. Refer to our discussion on build versus buy: power shifts. Universities have a fiefdom type power structure. Off The shelf software: SAP 20,000 installations. Other players: Oracle, Peoplesoft (taken over by Oracle), Microsoft Great Plains, compiere (open source), zoho, GNU ERP system (open source). Benefits of ERP: Centralized information, non-redundant  better data quality, more efficiency, removes misinformation. Done right, ERP can also make processes uniform across the organization, reduce staff, make reports available to senior management that come from low level data. E.g. Turner & Los Angeles. ERP systems are modularized Accounting & Finance: General ledger, A/c payable, a/c receivable, budgeting, asset management, financial reporting, inventory Production and materials: demand forecasting, production scheduling, job cost a/c, quality control, machine management HR: Employee data, hiring, firing, benefits, OSHA compliance, taxes

Different components of ERP Systems CRM: Customer Relationship Management Customers can log in and update own information, track orders, etc. Customer service people talk to them via phone or online. E-business: e-logistics manages the tracking of goods either from suppliers to us, or from us to customers. E-procurement deals with business to business exchanges that facilitate the identification of suppliers and the management of bids and contracts. Supply chain: Look at information from your suppliers (inventory and production schedules) and customers (inventory levels and when to replenish) Business Intelligence: Helps in mining all the operational data in the ERP and creating reports that can show trends, aggregations etc. E.g., Sales of all bicycles in the Tulsa area. Then drill down to only sales of all mountain bikes in Tulsa are. OR drill down to sales of all bikes in zip

© Akhilesh Bajaj, All rights reserved. Central Themes For Discussion Page 305 of chapter talks about fit matching, using only a high level description of business processes. What’s missing here is the data used in each process. We need a detailed description of the data we use versus what a new system needs, in order to do the same process. Merely knowing a system supports a process is not enough. Fun facts: About $15 million is TCO (range 400K to $300 million), 23 months to implement on average. 66% “failure” rate. What is failure? 8-18 months to realize any benefit. What can Dow Corning do to realize benefit? Common ERP benefits: Integrate financial/HR/order entry information, reduce inventory, speed up processes Common Risks: Political failure, gross mismatch between data needs of company and system. Question: How can I quantify the revenue offered to me by the new system? Customizing: What can be customized in an ERP? Why? Reports usually.

© Akhilesh Bajaj, All rights reserved. Central Themes For Discussion Collaboration Systems: -Companies can specialize and form flexible partnerships to meet contracts. -Information sharing is key. Split the business processes across organizations. Question: What kind of contracts work here versus a pure supplier relationship? Knowledge Management System: Capture employee’s knowledge about company, suppliers, customers and collaborators. Make it available so others can use it. Questions: How to incentivize it? How to codify it? How to share it? Content management system: Share the company’s information (alpha numeric and multi-media). Use data mining to identify interesting trends. Workflow Management systems: Automate business process execution via or a centralized database. Groupware Systems: Meetings, calendar. IM: Instant messaging. Used for knowledge sharing synchronously. Future: Virtual Reality?