Week 1 Discussion

Answer to question 1: There are six elements in business process re-engineering and they are:

• Business processes which computerize the activities of day-to-day business.
• Integration which combines business processes.
• Technology which which uses advanced technology to redecorate business processes.
• Cross-functional coordination which redecorate the developments of daily business.
• Timing which upgrade processes and
• Objective which applies market-driven policies created to offer a competitive edge.

If a business does not want to change its business processes and sets a goal that it will improve without embracing any values from an ERP, then the business will surely fall to its demise and will not improve. It will face a lot problems and risks if they do not change their processes and do not apply the ERP within the organisation. The risks that the business will encounter will be wastage of a lot of money because the ERP system which they ordered took a lot of time to built and the business ordered it by paying a lot of money. So, the business has experienced a great loss instead of profit. They will gain no profit if they do not use the system. Another risk is that the business will lose a great amount of their resources. The business has spent a lot time thinking about improvements within the organisation and alot of changes has been made in the previous sytem to invite the new ERP system. If they do not use the ERP system, then all the resources like time, money, manpower which they used to improve the organisation will be a big wastage and no profit will be gained.

Answer of question 2: There are some ups and downs between Best of breed and ERP implementations. The best of breed tends to emphasize on the buyer’s perspective. For example, If a business wants to purchase some parts for is system, would it buy the parts from different marketplaces? The Best of breed has the tradition of acquiring diffrerent things from different buyers’. However, the ERP system only emphasizes on a one-stop approach in order to buy all the parts needed for the system of that particular business.

The advantage and disadvantages f both of the approaches are given below:

The advantages of ERP system:

• One-stop approach – It gives the option to the buyer to correspond with one supplier.
• Viability – Established ERP firms can capture the market when they see possible opportunities to make profits.
• Broader offering – many companies which acquires financial solutions need more products along with it such as Hr, procurement, order entry etc. and ERP firms are offering those products to those businesses.

The advantages of Best of breed system are:

• Expertise – The buyers’ choose selected product ranges which best suites their core competencies.
• Time – The system can be implemented easily without having to worry about the final decisions made by the executive board.
• Choice – The sellers’ of this system have more opportunities to offer the requirements of the buyers’.

The disadvantages of the ERP system are:

• Time – The implementation of the system takes a bit of time.
• Diversity – there are too much product ranges’ available by many vendors’ in the marketplace. Therefore, at a point, their entrance in the marketplace will cause their demise as many products will not be needed by the buyers’.

The disadvantages of Best of breed system are:

• Consolidation – If a seller is not favored by the buying organization, the the relationship between them is broken and the seller makes no profit.
• Interfacing options – The system needs interfaces to pass information. However, some interfaces are complex and hard to implement. So, choosing a proper interface is time consuming.

Additional considerations which would affect the decision of which system to choose are Cost. Costs are always important when it comes to selecting a particular system. When it comes to selecting between ERP and Best of Breed, the business needs to calculate pricing options and should determine what would be a predictable cost to buy the system. Implementation costs are also important in order to successfully apply the system within the organization and maintaining the standards of it.