Background of the company
Innovation is referred to as one of the greatest way that helps to gain success in this digital era. For any business technology can either serve positive impact or can serve negative impact. This report depicts the role of technology and innovation behind the success story of Woolworths Limited’s ERP and CRM implementation. The direction of innovation and its role towards the business success can be demonstrated in different manners (Norton 2015). The positive as well as smarter directions in terms of quality, time and values have proved that the emerging technology can deliver wide success in the business environment.
It is mandatory for any business organization to consider most suitable technical excellence so that is can drive the business to commercial and competitive success. Proper justifications for the success criteria are elaborated in this report with accurate justification and also numerous criteria that can drive the business towards success are also illustrated in this report. Behind the success some critical challenges also exists in the organization that are to be mitigated and for that some recommendations are also illustrated in this report.
Woolworths Limited is one of the well known retail brands headquarters in Bella Vista, New South Wales Australia ad founded in the year of 1924, 22 September. The company serves their products throughout Australia and New Zealand. Woolworth’s mission is to obtain high financial security as well as well being through providing range of competitive, relevant and also price saving services to the consumers (Abunar and Zerban 2016). Apart from this, the vision of the company is to provide high quality financial services for their employees. The moral integrity of the company is to grab more new consumers and also retain the existing consumers with high consistency. Another aim of the company is to provide ethical, user friendly as well as responsive online services to the consumers. Initially, the company has weaker and insecure operational and functional ability. Due to this reason the service center of the company was unable to manage their functions successfully (Sullivan and Gouldson 2017). As a result they have planned to implement an ERP system and CRM support system for managing all their consumers all at a time.
One of the largest food retailers of Australia called as Woolworths Limited is known that an effective supply chain operation provider in central for being able to deliver fresh food on everyday basis to Millions of the consumers across Australia. In order to ensure the effective operation of the supply chain management system that Woolworths Limited deploy in their business to business integration platform for providing real field application level integration with the system of the suppliers (Fernie and Sparks 2014). This platform leverages the protocol of AS2 for the business of business communication that gives a specification for delivering automated order fulfillment between the businesses with the help of the internet.
Discussion on the success criteria
The key success factors that work behind the success of the ERP system include the proper project startup, management commitment, project scope, experienced project team, proper change management approaches, communication and training management program, budget preparation and project closure. Mathu and Phetla (2018) stated that, successful business strategies, IT strategies, ERP strategy review result can give project commitment. The project associates should have proper understandings about the business requirements and they plan according to that to satisfy both the consumers and the employees at a time. Properly proven tools and methodologies are to be selected by the company to make secure relationship between the service providers and the consumers. It helps to design good communication outlines as well as business case so that the system functionalities can be successfully implemented.
One of the major strategic partners of Woolworths Limited is SPS commerce. It helps the company for the provision of Business to Business integration along with the community of the suppliers. After high level extensive certification and evaluation process, the senior business manager of the electronic business of Woolworths Limited has chosen SPS commerce. Due to the already proved track record decorum the company has decided to adopt the service of SPS commerce (Mohammad 2018). For direct store deliveries and high speed transmission of orders this application is very much helpful from the business aspect. In order to meet the requirements of the consumers and the employee proper support from the external and internal supporters are very much crucial (Offor and Cleveland 2018). With the changing time the company is adopting more advanced technology based platform for operating all the system functionalities accordingly. In order to integrate the supplier’s community the company has adopted the SPS commerce.
The ERP success criteria associated to Woolworth limited are elaborated in the below section. The company has adopted the SAP RP for implementing the system successfully for the associate employees of the company. After analyzing the future scope associated to the system the company has adopted the concept of the ERP system. Incredible benefits can be generated by the company if they adopt the application concept of SAP ERP system (Jayawickrama et al. 2017.). Only the suitable ERP system can support the current organizational state of the company. The executives of the company have shown the roadmap of the ERP requirements to their potential vendors. With the best functional prcatices the important operations of the system can be successfully delivered to the working employees and consumers. Within the executive team the purpose of alignments are being foster successfully (Saravanan and Sundar 2015). If any ERP system fails to adopt the unified support system then the entire system may face serious failure. In order to make the employees familiar to the new technology, organized in job training programs are also arranged by the executives of the company.
Critical identification and justification of the criteria
The information management approach of Woolworths Limited was facing serious challenges that are required to be mitigated. The success criteria that are generated from the ERP system are as follows:
Competition: For successful ERP implementation Woolworths Limited has invested a lot. The technology solution of the company has delivered different business processes to make their application more competitive in nature (Qureshi and Abdulkhalaq 2015). As much competitiveness will increase for the company, that much collaborative encouragement will increase.
Forecasting: The ERP system implemented by the company gives the operator a tool through which the consumers will be able to make appropriate forecasting over their functional abilities. The executives of the company has made and delivered successful as well as realistic estimates. This software has touched almost each and every business aspects associated to the company (Fosso wamba and Edwards 2014). The interdepartmental efforts can also be minimized with the facilitate growth of the company.
Scalability: The initial solution developed by the Woolworths Limited has grown a lot over the changing time. Whenever the business is ready to grow with the help of this application different functional growth can also be generated accordingly (Nandi and Kumar 2016). Both the operational and administrative cost associated to Woolworths Limited can be minimized by the implementation of the ERP system.
Streamlined process: The operational complexity of the company increases with the manufacturer’s growth. Cross departmentally the operational cost of the company has minimized with the help of the manufacturing software (Agaoglu, Yurtkoru and Ekmekçi 2015). The business efficiency and the organizational productivity of the company have reduced with the implementation of the ERP system.
Other critical success that has been identified for this particular case is the easy access to the centralized data regardless of the location of the users. With the mobile friendly solution the consumers of the company will be able to access the details of the products regardless of their location and time as well. The application efficiency of the company will increase through the help of this application. The user associate to the system will be able to respond much easily with the data for which the company requested for (Bintoro et al. 2015). The solution used for the company is quite easy to use. This powerful SAP ERP solution is capable to provide timely monitoring changes as well as regulatory compliance to the users also.
Kim (2015) opined that, the ERP system and the CR system developed and implemented by the company is very much user friendly as a result the user can effectively utilize for driving the business success. As the company offers online services to the consumers therefore, their security is another major concern for the company. It has been found that, due to customized services no unwanted users will be able to access data related to the employees and users without permission. A better relationship between the consumers and the service providers will surely give massive success to the company. Not only this but also, for the high security the consumers feel free to buy products online with online payment (Nandi and Kumar 2016). In addition to this for the application details the consumers are capable to deliver powerful and positive Return on Investment (ROI). The company will be able to collect all the relative information necessary for the company success (Jayawickrama, Liu and Hudson Smith 2017). Moreover, it can be said that the successful ERP system can offer streamlined efficient process.
Critical analysis of the case based on the criteria
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be said that, the CRM supporting ERP system that Woolworth Limited use is very user friendly and also helps the company to manage all their operations much easily. Whatever criteria are planned by the company are implemented successfully by the employees involved to the organization. Probably this company delivers the biggest individual payroll implementation platform in Australia. Woolworths Limited has rolled out the success Factor of SAP Talent management suites. On the other hand it is found that, with the help of the SAP merchandising the significant challenges that the companies are facing can be completely resolved. On the other hand, there are no such unplanned outages that are related to the ERP system in the last three months. The hardware failure that the company has faced is completely resolved with the successful implementation of the ERPP system. In order to drive successful productivity of the company Woolworths Limited has put focus leveraging their IT operational and functional criteria.
It has been found that, Woolworths Limited is facing serious level operational and functional challenges due to lack of management abilities. It can be said that with the help of certain operational remedies the issues that the company may face can also be resolved completely. The recommendations given for the company are as follows:
Decision support system: The existing decision support system of the company is very weak thus the company should install certain additional technology to the system so that the associated employees of the company take immediate actions on their services.
Improvement on Supply chain management system: The supply chain management system used by the company requires to be improved to deliver more efficiency to their employees and other business operators. The all time operational threats of the organization can be completely resolved with the help of the advanced supply chain management system of the company. Again, the issues with the adverse logistic activities of the company can be completely resolved.
Peer competitors: With changing time period the competitors of the company should be reviewed. With the help of this activity the company will be able to gain simultaneous, long term and sustainable success. It will help to deliver quality services to the consumers and the employees who are working for the company.
References
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