Week 7 Discussion

Answer to the Question:  The variety and types of user resistance to ERP systems are many.  There are some questions which the top management must ask themselves if they want to control user resistence to an ERP system and they are:

• Who are the resisting individuals and groups?
• What are their needs?
• What beliefs and values do they have?
• What are their interests?

User resistance to an ERP system can cause many problems.  In Short- term, it may hamper the many undergoing production processes which are monitored by the new system.  This is due to the user not knowing about ohow to use the system.  Thus, no new input of data is not given to the system to obtain information about the production processes.  Long-term crisis may include a huge loss of profit to the company due to the stoppage of production and not meeting the desired requirements of the orders which are issued by other big companies and trading houses.  The company may lose profit due to the hamper of rpoduction and also the implementation costs behind the ERP system because of user resistance.  Users’ can raise many questions regarding the huge change which the ERP system has brought in and they are that some users’ might point out computer illiteracy or, may say that they have done a good job for a long time without the help of the ERP system.  Other users’ might think that their jobs are at stake or, they will not know how to the use the system within a completely different environment.  Some users’ might question about power and authority values which can be destroyed by the new ERP system. Although, an ERP system strengthen a company’s position in the marketplace, some companies experience failures by implementing ERP systems because some organizations are not properly aligned with their business processes to chieve potential benefits from the ERP system.  Many companies which wish to implement ERP systems experience difficulties because the organization is not yet organized enough for the integration with the ERP system and the departments within the company also have their issues which leads to conflict with one another.  Companies such as Cisco Systems, East Man Kodak and Textronix have achieved benefits from their ERP systems but companies like FoxMeyer Drugs almost experienced Bankruptcy.  Companies have to change their business processes in order to adapt with the ERP system because that is what the ERP system is there to improve the business.  It is important to know the configurations of the ERP system while implementing.  The main business processes of the business needs to be identified before the implementation so that it best suits the functionalities of the ERP system.  User resistance can even cause a company majorly hamper its processes and lose profits because simply he or she does not want to adapt with the changes which the ERP system brought into the organization.  This can avoided by giving proper training to the employees and give them some tiime to adapt with the new ways of doing things and also with the new functionalities of the ERP system so work processes can go on smoothly afterwards.     

Week 6 Discussion

Answer to the Question:  An informed ERP adoption and selection process cannot be made without understanding what kind of problems lies within an organization.  The Project Managers have to have to look in every available path to decide whether the particular ERP system they are trying to propose for the organisation will be able to meet all the requirements and improve the business processes of the company or not.  The Project managers hae to see through all kinds of opportunities which can be of benefits to the company and which matches with the functions of the ERP system.  If they implement the ERP by overlooking the problems which exists within the company, then the implementation would not be a success because some of the problems are still exist within the organization and the ERP system would not be able to perform correctly if those problems arise.  In other words, the problems will be barriers against the system because the functionalities required to overcome those problems are not integrated within the system.  So, the system does not know how to solve those problems and improve the business processes.  So, the Project Managers have to understand all of the problems and propose the right ERP system which can solve all of the problems of the organisation and give them opportunities to improve its business processes. 

Week 5 Discussion

Answer to the Question:  Events which can trigger alterations in work plans are of various types.  The chain of events which might occur are disturbing events, consequential events, business impacts.  Disrupting events are classified as natural disasters like earthquakes, flood, hurricane etc.; infrastructure failures such as poer failure, fire; enterprise failures like server crash, voice communication failures and finally, human caused failures such as terrorism, biohazard.  Natural disasters like earthquakes, flood , hurricanes ,msnow storms can harm busineses in amny ways and in many ways are also helps businesses such a snow stron would not affect the business if the business is providing games which are being doenloaded froom the Web.  However, a snow storm can cause trouble for the business in other ways and the most consequential result would be the interference of transportation.  It can give problems to to the employees and the customers to get to the office on time and the consequence would be revenue loss of the business since the customers cannot buy anything from the business and the business cannot sell any services to the customers.  A snow storm can cause harm in another way as well and that is the collapse of a roof and snowfall on the roads and for example, a truck may get off track causing an accident destroying valuable equipments; sudden melting of snow may cause floods; These chain of events may cause other harms for the business such as the loss of facilities, loss of a key instrument, loss of important records etc.  All the other chain of events would produce a same consequential result which is the incapability to get to the desired location due to flood, terrorism, biohazard, snow storm etc. causing loss of revenue due to the incapacity of serving the customers.  The business impacts which will normally follow after these events would be the loss of revenue and high expenses.  The loss of revenue are of two types:  ‘Current revenue’ which causes the inability to serve the customers and ‘Future revenue’ which causes the customers to withdraw from the services which the business could not provide due to the events and customers choosing the services of the competitors’ of that business.  High expenses are also of two types: ‘Current expenses’ which will cause productivity losses such as distressed staffs and ‘Future expenses’ which will cause extra insurance and legal action.