Background of Welch Food company
Discuss about the Enterprise Resource Management Of Welch Food.
Welch food is an American company which has the business of food and beverages. The company is mainly known for its famous grape juice, jams and jellies. This well known food company has face the digital disruption during the year of 2004. In order to implement the enterprise resource management system in the organization the Welch food company has chosen the enterprise management system developed and supported by the Oracle instead the SAP. The main objective of the implementation of the enterprise resource management is to expand the business and initiate the e-business service of the company. The paper discusses about the problems and opportunities of the organization which has led the organization to took up the plan for the digital disruption. Apart from that the type of the enterprise resource management system the organization has been adopted along with the advantages and the possible problems the company had faced after the digital disruption has been discussed in this paper. The analysis is based on the case study where the situation for the Welch food organization has been described. The further recommendations has been made on the basis of the analysis in the end of the report
In order to evaluate the implemented system in the organization this paper discusses the internal issues in the Welch company y and the steps taken by the company in order to face the challenges those were presented at that time. In order to do this the working of the organization is needed to be known.
The Welch food company is a well known food organization based in America, which is famous for some of its famous products like grape juice, jelly and jams. On 2004 the Welch decided to make the digital disruption in the company. The main objective of the digital disruption was to introduce the e-business service for the several months. The implementation of the this kind of digital disruption was needed the right ERP system in the organization.
In case of the selection of the ERP the Welch company had chosen the Enterprise resource management system developed and supported by the Oracle over the SAP (Niu et al., 2017). The choosing between these to software vendors were difficult as both of the software provider organization are famous for delivering the niche services to the clients (Haddara 2014). However, the selection committee of the Welch had chosen the Oracle Corporation ERP system to implement the companywide. There were certain reasons behind the selection which will be discussed in the paper (Alba et al. 2017). The justification of the choice for the choosing of the Oracle enterprise resource management service over SAP can be identified after the discussion of the existing problems of the Welch company and the opportunities available for the company at that time.
Selecting the ERP system for digital disruption
The main problem faced in the Welch company was that the company was not doing the e-business at that time. The business market situation was indicating that the company should move to the online business in order to expand the business. Moreover there were several advantages for the online expansion of the business. The Welch company was nor getting those benefits as they were the standalone company (Lai, Lai and Lowry 2016). The products of the company were very popular. In this situation the management of the company decided to move to the digital disruption (Sun 2016). In order to implement the digital disruption the right method of the enterprise system management resource planner is needed. In that case, the selection of the resource planner was needed to be done in a right way.
Opportunities for the company:
There were several opportunities for the company available at that time. In 2004 the business market was facing the new era of doing business with the expansion of the use of the internet. At that time going digital in the field of business would be considered as the revolutionary step. There were several opportunities for the business which was going to expand the business to the e-business. Some of those advantages ere:
- Reaching to the consumers: The e-business can be operated and can be controlled over the internet. This feature of the business process helped the organization to showcase their products to the large number of the consumers. The e-business helped the organizations to reach to the large base of the consumer (Lomakin et al. 2017). This helped those organizations to make the new consumer base and expand the business.
- Easy availability of the product: The e-business had helped the consumers to find the products through the web sites of the respective companies. This has improved their purchasing experience, and the good will of the company.
- Saving of the resources: The main advantage of the online business was getting the solutions in the cost effective way. The organizations could showcase their products online. This helped the organization to save up the cost for the maintenance of the infrastructure of the physical store. On the other hand the consumers can view the products from the internet, there was no need for them to visit the shop and to buy the products (Nicolian et al.2015). The whole process saved up a lot of cost, which eventually helped the organizations to save up the cost and expand the business.
- These were the main opportunities for the Welch company that supports the decision of expanding the business to the e-business. Apart from that, 2004 was booming year for the information technology. Development of the e-business plan for the company at that time was considered as the emerging idea. That innovation and te advanced business though would leave a positive impact on the goodwill of the Welch company.
In order to expand the business of the Welch company to the e-business, the managers of the company went for the implementation of the enterprise resource management system. There were several software vendors , which was providing the enterprise resource management system platform. Two famous software vendors providing the ERP system were the SAP and Oracle. The Wech company had chosen the Oracle enterprise resource management system over SAP.
Nature of the Oracle ERP system: The Welch adopted the Oracle E-business suit as the new ERP system. The main objective of adopting the new system in the organization was to create one operating system that will span around the entire system architecture (Moulton et al. 2015). In order to implement the business intelligence system the organization the Welch had adopted the Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Jayawickrama, Liu and Smith 2014). The deadline for the implementation of the new system was up to 2007. The business intelligence platform was tend to be completed around the year 2008.
The successful implementation of the new ERP extends the business intelligence unit of the newly implemented ERP system among the employees of the organization. The main challenges for the company was to make the employees and the users familiar with the workings of the new system. In order to manage the solution the Welch though of real time solution that would enable the users to make the queries easily (Nagpal, Khatri and Kumar 2015). It had been seen the most of the users were less knowledgeable about the working of the Oracle application. The IT team started to introduce the real time solution Noetix in order to make the users familiar with the use of the Oracle application and giving them the proper training(Badewi et al.2017). The training was initiated with the question answer process where the users could determine the reporting element process (Naous et al.2017). The main advantage of the Noetix solution that was used at that time in the Welch organization was that it can generate the report from the Oracle ERP into OBIEE (Das and Dayal 2016). The process became very simple for the users and they can generate report on the basis of the situation form the Oracle ERP. The another advantage of the Noetix was that the system was easy to upgrade , update and modify.
Nature of the Oracle ERP system
A committee was prepared for the selection of the right ERP for the Welch company. According the member of the selection team Larry Rencken the selection of the Oracle ERP had been taken on the basis of certain attributes. However, he also admitted that there are very few differences between the solution provided by the SAP and the Oracle (Omar and Gómez 2016). The functionality of the products provided by the company were almost similar. However, the Oracle had convinced the committee members that the use of the ERP system developed by the Oracle will be more flexible to implement and the implemented system will be manageable for the use (Temur and Bolat 2018). Apart from that the pricing plays the important role in the selection between the two ERP providing vendors. The pricing of the ERP system provided by the Oracle is less than the solution provided by the SAP.
There are many difficulties that an organization can be faced during and after the implementation of the system. Some of these problems are-
Selection of the ERP vendor: The decision about the selection of the ERP vendor was the crucial part for thee Welch company. The accurate implementation of the ERP system is dependent on the selection of the right vendor which will provide the implementation of the requires ERP in the organization. However, in this case selection of the Oracle ERP system has been generated through the voting system of the Welch company. During the choosing between the two well known vendors the selection is done on the basis certain attributes.
Adoptability of the new system. The major problem regarding the implementation of the ERP that had been faced by the Welch food company was the adaptability of the new system in the company. The employees of the Welch company were the primary users of the system. However, the employees of the company were not familiar with the adoption of the newly implemented ERP system (Ali et al. 2017). In that case, they felt problems while working in the unfamiliar environment. However, the Welch company had take care of that situation. The company had implemented the real time solution of this problem which was familiar as the Noetix. The main function of the Noetix was to train the employees about the functions of the newly implemented ERP system in the organization apart from that the main advantage of the Noetix was that it helped the employees and the users to generate the reports directly from the Oracle enterprise management system.
Challenges faced during and after the implementation
Implementation time: The timeline given by the Welch company was relatively short time span. The implementation of the whole ERP system within 2007 indicates the tight schedule for the ERP implementation vendor.
The steps that were deployed in the implementation of the ERP system in the Welch food organization were concerned about the pricing along with the technical issues those were included in the system. The steps were-
Gathering of the information and doing research on the vendor: The requirement gathering is the important phase in the implementation of the ERP. The clarity of the requirement gathering helps to implement the system which will deliver the right outcome (Shukla et al. 2016). The Welch company was specific about the objective and the requirement for the company (Titov and Khomonenko 2016). Apart from that the selection of the vendor for the Welch company had been done after considering the various factors and the comparative comparisons between two software vendors.
High level evaluation of the demonstration given by the vendor: The process of selection of the vendor includes the judging the demonstration given the vendors. In this case the Oracle had managed to convince the members of the ERP selection committee about the usefulness of the ERP system implemented by the this software vendor. Though the most of the attributes between the products of the two companies were same the Oracle got the advantage for presenting the system which is more flexible and manageable in terms of the using.
Analysis of the selection: The selection was analyzed by both the internal and external experts of the organization. According to the internal members of the Welch food organization considered the selection of the Oracle enterprise system as the smart choice, the SAP expert consultant regarded the decision of the Welch as disappointing. The internal experts of the Welch organization considered the Oracle as the good presenter in the bidding process as they managed to convinced the higher authority of the Welch company about the flexibility and the manageability of using the system. Moreover the Oracle was providing the solution to the Welch at the lower cost compared to the SAP (López, Luna and Talavera 2017). These factors played as the advantages for the Oracle (Baymout 2016). The committee member of the Welch group has commented over the competitiveness of the SAP during the bidding process as their presentation of the whole process was not convincing.
Steps deployed in the implementation of ERP system
The implementation of the Oracle ERP system in the Welch was successful as the it reduces the complexity of the previous system used by the company , moreover the newly implemented ERP has expands the chances for the Welch organization for the implementation of the E-business, which in the main objective of the Welch company.
Enhancing the simplicity of the process: The newly implemented ERP system enhanced the simplicity of the whole organizational process in the Welch food company. The employees and the users can generate the report easily from the enterprise resource management system provided and supported by the Oracle.
Expansion of the business: The implementation of the ERP has helped the Welch company to expand improvise the business. This implementation has opened the option for the e-business process for the company which was the main objective of the Weelch. Moreover, the improvement of the IT infrastructure along with the increasing connectivity among the business units in the organization has helped go develop a visionary among the employees and evaluate the impact of the specific process in the performance of the organization.
Conclusion
The original goal of the Welch company was to develop the improvised business process so that the expansion of the business along with the implementation of the e-business can be done in the organization. The adaptation of the ERP system implemented by the Oracle has fulfilled the requirement of the Welch company. In this context certain issues which can be happened in the organization due to the implementation of the ERP system has been discussed in this paper. The selection and the implementation process of the ERP system has been discussed in a general way in this paper. Apart from that the effectiveness of the implemented ERP in the Welch organization has been discussed based on the certain matrices. It can be said from the above discussion that the implementation of the ERP provided by the Oracle aw the right decision taken by the Welch for the goodwill of the company.
References
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Ali, M., Miller, L., Ahmed, S. and Abunar, S., 2017. Divided We Fall: A Case Study of ERP Implementation Failure in a Middle Eastern Country. In Leadership, Innovation and Entrepreneurship as Driving Forces of the Global Economy(pp. 229-245). Springer, Cham.
Conclusion
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