Business Process

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ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), it is a process through which an organization could be moved towards the automated process. In the modern world, every business enterprise irrespective of its size have adopted the technique of Enterprise Resource Planning to develop the transparency in the organizational process as well as it will also help the organization in achievement of the organizational goals and the objectives. Under this process, a set of advanced software is included such as an internal communication process, advanced accounting software for recording the financial transactions adequately as well as to get the error-free results. Generally, this process is practiced in the administration department of the organization and it also helps the management to resolve the various big concerns. Employees’ details could also be gathered from this procedure and it will be the only system for the organization as it will be a mixture of unique software on the basis of unique needs of organization. Under this report, system of enterprise resource planning will be discussed in order to analyse the requirement of the process and to attain that requirement with the help of the enterprise resource planning in the workplace.

In the multinational corporations, this process is quite useful as well as essential also. In a multinational organization, for instance, Apple INC. thousands of employees are working over there. In order to record the data of each and every employee, this process is very crucial in order to attain the objectives of the organization as well as to determine the requirements of the business. Apart from this, in Apple INC. numbers of operations are performed at a time and along with the number of operations, suppliers’ details, buyers’ details, etc. will also be recorded under this process only. The main aim of maintaining and launching this process in the workplace is to maintain the whole data of the organization at one place safe and secure.

Business process of every organization varies and being in the same industry, organizations adopt unique business process in order to make the take the competitive advantage. Apple Inc. is a multinational organization and involved in manufacturing of consumer electronic goods. Their famous products are iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc. Hence, this organization’s business process is very huge and to manage all the functionalities, Enterprise Resource Planning will be a great resource for making the process of Apple INC. smoother and effective (Leon, 2014).

Business Requirements in relation with ERP system

• Research & Development process to make the existing products more effective and efficient.
• Designing of the products in order to meet the customers’ expectations.
• Purchase department thee perform their duties in order to gather all those things which will be required while developing the customer-oriented products (Seo, 2013)
• Apart from these things, functionalities of the promotion and the advertisement department start. These are the most crucial segment of the business process of Apple INC. because it enhances the demand for the new product which is about to launch in the market (Shaul & Tauber, 2013).
• Apart from these functionalities, there are numerous activities are involved in the backstage of the operations.

To record all these activities in one process, Enterprise Resource Planning is being adopted in the workplace in order to ease the work as well as to achieve adequate objectives. Access to this process will be provided by the requirement of the organization. For instance, production manager wants to record the data in relation to the recent purchases then he will be able to see all the sections which are related to the production team and the same goes for each and every department of the organization. The major access i.e. access to the whole system will be with the CEO of the organization only and on the mutual consent, this access can also be shared with anyone. Regulations on the access are imposed to maintain the confidentiality of the resources, information and the key aspects of the organization. Apart from this, there are numerous types of information’s available with the organization i.e. suppliers’ details, clients’ details, etc. and this information could easily be misused. In order to prevent this confidential information from the external as well as with the internal stakeholders, restrictions on the over access to the system are imposed (Tarhini, Ammar & Tarhini, 2015).

All the functionalities of the operations will be recorded in the single system only and it will help the organization to enhance their performance in order to reduce the complications in the work procedures as well as to keep the organization’s information safe and secure. With the help of ERP system, organization could also meet the requirements which are crucial from the perceptive of the expansion of the business in the global market. In addition to this, organization will be able to achieve the success and the growth objective easily. Most of the functionalities of the organization will be performed with the help of enterprise resource planning system hence; chances of errors in recording, auditing, and in other functionalities of the organization reduces. Thus, implication and the execution of the enterprise resource planning system will be effective for the organization and it will help the management of the organization to execute the functionalities with comfort and ease (Hoch & Dulebohn, 2013).

Evaluation of the business requirements in relation to the need of enterprise resource planning in the workplace to make the functionalities of the organization effective and efficient, it has been observed that various multinational organizations have adopted this system already. Enterprise Resource Planning system is very helpful in achievement of goals for the business in terms of various aspects as well as it also increases the chances of the organization in terms of expansion of the organization in the international market. With the help of the implementation of enterprise resource planning system in the workplace, achievement of targets set up by the management becomes quite easy task. Enterprise Resource Planning is the major requirement for every organization in terms of expansion of the business as well as to build the market image in the global marketing. Apart from this, it is also useful in the procedure of attaining the competitive advantage. This system also helps the organization in various ways such as it describes unique ways to save cost of the production. This ultimately increases the demand of the product because decrease in the prices of the commodities will be recorded with the decrease in the cost of the production. Apart from this efficiency as well as the profitability of the organization also increases and this builds the effective way for the organization in terms of developing the adequate way to reaching the desired destination (Hunton, McEwen & Wier, 2015).

ERP’s requirements in relation to business

Furthermore, while evaluating the effectiveness of the process followed by the Apple INC. Before implementing the enterprise planning resource system in their workplace, it was observed that all the functionalities were managed adequately and for every department, a center head was appointed who was held responsible for the performance of the particular department. This procedure was time consuming as well as in the scenarios of critical issues, organizational procedure was not able to resolve those issues. Due to these issues and to maintain the adequate performance in the competitive business environment, organization adopted the technique of Enterprise Resource Planning system. This resolves various types of issues such as it enhance the effectiveness of the internal communication system as well as it also fills the gaps between the relationship of employer and employees (Seethamraju, 2015).

Implementation of enterprise resource planning system in the workplace is not an easy task; it requires various efforts, as well as there, are number of requirements mentioned under enterprise resource planning system which needs to be fulfilled before implementing it into the workplace (Yeh & Xu, 2013). Following are some of the organizational aspects which need to be matched with ERP system’s requirements:

• Financial & Accounting: This is the major requirement of enterprise resource planning system because this is the only procedure which requires being practiced on the daily basis and at the end of the year, this process requires huge efforts. Through enterprise planning resource system, this vast process could be converted into easy and smooth process which does not requires big efforts as well as it also helps organization to save their time at the end of the year while closing the accounts as, through this software, financial statements could be obtained automatically with accurate information. Under this software, organization’s various requirements are fulfilled such as preparation of payroll, payments to the daily wage employees, etc. in adequate time and with effective results (Tasevska, Damij & Damij, 2014).
• Material Management: With the implementation of the enterprise resource planning system, material management also becomes an easy task for the organization. This is big and again a vast task which requires various employees’ efforts and knowledge in relation with resolving the issues such as accurate recording of the available inventory, recording of purchased materials and the same procedure goes for the supplies and the sale of the products. To perform this process in an adequate manner, a certain number of employees is required but while performing the same procedure with the help of enterprise resource planning, it becomes an easy as well as effective task for the organisation. With enterprise resource planning system, bar codes are pasted on each and every product and it is scanned before coming or going out of the premises of the organization. And with the automated process, accurate results in relation to the management of the inventory are obtained (Chofreh, et. al., 2014).
• Production management: While reviewing the scenario of Apple INC. it has been observed that organization requires an adequate procedure through which appropriate quantity of products could be manufactured as per the market demand. Enterprise planning resource system involves various steps which are crucial from the perception of the organization and these steps also help the organization in relevance with analysing the organizational requirements as well as in fulfilling the same. In terms of Apple INC. numbers of materials are purchased from various parts of the globe and some are manufactured too. Hence, enterprise resource planning will help the Apple INC. to make the production management quite easier in relevance with the previous system followed by them (Shen, Chen & Wang, 2016).
• Customer Service Management: This is the part of the organizational process which has the enough capacity to increase the demand of the products manufactured by organization as well as it could also decrease the demand of the same. The better, the customer service will be, the more its demand will be. Hence; enterprise resource planning helps the organization to evaluate the gaps in the customer service management and rectifies them with the view to provide adequate services to the customers (Ha & Ahn, 2014).

Selection process of the adequate software and the vendor from which software needs to be purchased is quite difficult. In relevance with this and to make this process easy and simple, organization develops its requirements and on the basis of those requirements, adequate set of software are implemented in the workplace to obtain effective results. The management needs to adopt the safest software because, after its implementation, most of the tasks will be performed by the system only hence; employees will work only as the maintaining the system as well as to fulfil the requirements of the clients. Inferior quality or the unsafe software may develop various issues such as leakage of clients’ confidential information, leakage of confidential information of the organization, secret formula to manufacture unique products, etc. Hence, qualitative and safe software adaptation will be a good decision in relevance with maintaining the market image in the global market (Kermani & Rouhani, 2014).

For selecting the adequate software considering the organizational requirements, selection of the vendor should be done on the same requirements because the more reputed vendor will be, trust over their software can be easily built up (Kurbel, 2016).

Enterprise resource planning is the system through which organization could enhance its performance and the ability to achieve the growth could also be enhanced adequately with the implementation of this system. Taking Apple Inc.’s example, it has been observed that they are involved in the manufacturing of consumer electronic goods which are basically produced to ease the consumers’ efforts. But there are certain processes available in the market through which organization could also ease their functionalities and those processes are known as Enterprise Resource Planning (Nah & Tan, 2015). Under this process, software is adopted as per the organizational requirements in order to attain the objectives of the organization. Following are some of the benefits available with the use of enterprise resource planning in Apple Inc.:

• Maintenance of the inventory as well as the staff will be doable in more adequate manner because due to huge number of inventories as well as the huge number of staff members, manual recording is quite difficult (Costa, et. al., 2016).
• Implementation of the enterprise resource planning system in the Apple Inc.’s workplace helps them to determine the payroll of the employees as per the number present days of each employee. As this process is digitalised hence; it will be calculated in an adequate manner (Nofal & Yusof, 2013).
• Apart from this, financial and the accounting functionalities of the organization will also be manageable in an effective manner. Manual recording and formation of the financial statements may lead to development of errors but financial statements developed with the help of ERP system will be more effective, adequate and error-free.

Level of efficiency achieved by the implementation of the enterprise resource planning system could be determined with the help of comparing the effectiveness, growth rate and the profitability with the period in which enterprise resource planning system was not adopted. A level up in the efficiency will only be considered when the minimum rate of the overall profits will be raised with at least 25%. Till the time, organization will not be able to achieve 25% more profits after implementing the enterprise resource planning system in the organizational workplace, a level up in the efficiency of the organization cannot be considered (Sarno, et. al., 2015).

After implementation of the enterprise resource planning system, organization’s strength becomes double. This is because those tasks performed by the employees manually are now performed by the machines and with accurate results with no chance of error. Chances of error are more in manually performed tasks. Implementation of enterprise resource planning system helps the organization in achievement of the organizational objectives in an adequate manner. Apart from this, organization is able to develop stronger image in the global market with the adaptation of the Enterprise Resource Planning system (Altamony, et. al., 2016).

There are numerous risk factors are available through which organization is not able to adopt the policy of ERP implementation. The first and the foremost risk factors involved in the implementation of the Enterprise Resource Planning is the customization of the ERP system because it is adaptation software. Various organizations follow the rule of developing the Enterprise Resource Planning as per their requirements rather adopting the latest system available in the market with the view to gain the competitive advantage. But due to adaptation of the customized enterprise resource planning system, vendor may not serve the organization with the after sale services and this could result disastrous situation for the organization because resolving the concerns in relation to the enterprise resource planning system cannot be performed by organizational members. Hence, it may lead to the loss situation (Aslan, Stevenson & Hendry, 2015).

Another important risk factor involved in the implementation of the enterprise resource planning system is adaptation of wrong vendor or wrong software. Adaptation of inadequate vendor and software will lead to the leakage of the confidential and the secret information in relation with the organizational clients and other important members. Theft of data is also a big concern for the organization because adaptation of inferior quality enterprise resource planning system may lead to this situation and this situation could affect the business’ performance in the negative manner (Cao, Nicolaou & Bhattacharya, 2013).

Control measures should be adopted on the basis of risk factors involved in the enterprise resource planning system. As ERP system is a digitalised system consists of certain software as per the requirements of the organization. The basic control measure adopted by every organization who has adopted the system of enterprise resource planning is security software through which data of the organization could be stored in safe and secured manner. Apart from the security measures, there is number of issues available in digitalization of the tasks. There are several procedures through which risks’ impact could be controlled as well as reduced. Ignorance of risk, acceptance of risk and the transfer of risk are the three measures through which risk’s impact over the organization’s performance could be reduced as well as it could also be neglected (Garg & Garg, 2013).

The first stage of dealing with risk measure is ignorance of risk and under this, risk is ignored till the time it does not affects the performance of the organization. For instance, In Apple INC.’s production area, one worker goes on strike due to non-fulfilment of the demands. Hence, organization will be able to ignore this type of risk because absence of one worker will not create impact over the performance of the organization (Eden, Sedera & Tan, 2014). Acceptance of risk is the second stage and in this stage, organization needs to be accepting the risk factors to avoid the great impact over the performance of the organization. If whole worker union will go on strike then this situation will impact the organization’s performance hence; organization needs to settle down these issues as soon as possible. Apart from the above stages, transfer of risk is the third stage in which organization needs to transfer the risk to the third person for making payment in relevance with the loss incurred due to risk factors. For instance, insurance company pays the claim against the loss incurred due to fire, theft, etc. in the organization. The same control measure is being adopted by the Apple INC. in relation to control the impact of the risk over the performance of the organization (Zeng & Skibniewski, 2013).

Conclusion

From the aforesaid analysis, it has been concluded that the enterprise resource planning is the advanced technology which is adopted in the workplace with the view to enhance the business’ performance. Under this report, various types of business requirements have been discussed in relation with the enterprise resource planning system with the objective to increase the efficiency of the organization. Apart from this, Enterprise resource planning’s requirements have also been discussed in relation to the different type of business because requirements of all businesses vary from each other. To implement the most adequate enterprise resource planning system in the workplace, selection of the adequate vendor and the combination of the software will be done on the basis of the organizational requirements. Apart from these factors, significance of the enterprise resource planning system and the level of the efficiency achieved with the help of implementation of the ERP system have also been discussed under the report. Additionally, potential risk factors involved in the enterprise resource planning system as well as the control measures adopted to resolve those risks factors are also explained in this report in order to attain adequate position in the competitive business environment.

References

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