ERP Implementation at ABC Mining Company Case Study PDF

ERP implementation at ABC mining company Madhavi Nandi and Santosh Nandi 1. Setting Madhavi Nandi is based at...

ERP implementation at ABC mining company Madhavi Nandi and Santosh Nandi 1. Setting Madhavi Nandi is based at the Information Technology On May 15, 2016, Raj Guru – General Manager of the Production division – walked into his and Systems Management, office at ABC Mining Company’s (ABC) headquarters as early as 6:00 a.m. to resume University of South Carolina working from where he had left last night at 9:00 p.m. In the past 15 years of his association Sumter, Sumter, South with ABC – a public-sector mining company, he had successfully led several challenging Carolina, USA. projects related to mining and operations at different mining sites and production centers. Santosh Nandi is based at Given his rich understanding of ABC’s operational requirements and excellent track-record the Business Administration of handling challenging projects, the managing director of ABC entrusted him with the and Economics, University of South Carolina Sumter, company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementation initiative about two Sumter, South Carolina, months ago. Although Guru never considered himself as a technology expert, he whole- USA. heartedly agreed to undertake this new assignment when the managing director explained the upsides of an ERP-enabled organization. As a result, Guru teamed up with Sheila Rai, Senior Manager of the Information Technology and Services department (ITS) , to prepare the ERP implementation business proposal. Rai joined ABC about a year ago and was still learning the nuances of functioning in a public-sector company. Her past experiences included working on ERP implementation projects in private-sector manufacturing firms. The duo was well aware that the ERP implementation project was not going to be free from exigencies, given the implementation complexities and long implementation period of ERP. They were also aware that ABC’s practices were so unique and rigid, given its public-sector status, which would only add more to the complexity associated with ERP implementation. In the previous years, ABC had faced a variety of operational challenges, concerning the operations and sales related process inefficiencies. ABC’s corporate office lagged in pulling the latest information on mining stock and machinery status from the mining sites and regional offices due to its inadequately integrated information systems. As a result of this lag, the sales team had repeatedly faced pushbacks on dispatching mining orders. Late dispatching of mineral ores from dispatch centers often created clogging of stocking spaces. The subsequent unavailability of inventory stocking space led to the extraction of mineral ores in low quantities. To add to these production incapacities, whenever machinery breakdowns occurred, it took longer than expected time to repair due to the slow pace of information flow. From a customer’s standpoint, ABC was not the sole option to purchase mineral commodities in the region, but its reputation in delivering high-quality mineral ores had kept its demand intact. ABC’s top management was fully aware that customers were Disclaimer. This case is written frustrated with its current business processes, and therefore, was concerned about losing solely for educational purposes and is not intended to represent their customers to competitors in near future. successful or unsuccessful managerial decision-making. For the past four years, ABC’s top management had been continually informing the state The authors may have disguised names; financial and government about their operational inefficiencies and requesting funds to invest in business other recognizable information process automation. In December 2015, the government finally bought into ABC’s argument to protect confidentiality. DOI 10.1108/EEMCS-04-2020-0133 VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021, pp. 1-22, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2045-0621 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 1  that the state-owned mining company’s revenue growth was linked to the region’s overall economic welfare in several ways. Subsequently, the government allocated financial funds in the 2016 state fiscal budget to actively pursue the digitization of ABC’s business processes. Furthermore, it provided additional support for financial funds upon justification of any cost over-run. The state government specifically mentioned in the budget that “the objective of allocated funds to ABC is to ‘centralize existing business processes’ and to ‘simplify existing business workflows’ by implementing ‘state-of-art’ information technology (IT) system.” In other words, the state asked ABC to implement an ERP system, which in layman terms, is a centralized database where users can universally view and/or enter real- time business information on multiple user-interfaces and, measure productivity and profitability aspects. An ERP system is an integrated software system that enables an organization to manage the resources effectively and efficiently by enabling the information flows required for business processes spanning across organizational functions such as production, finance and accounting, sales and marketing and human resources (Aladwani, 2001; Alsene, 2007). ERP systems enable enterprises to quickly react to competitive pressures, realize market opportunities and reduce inventory (Bingi, Sharma, and Godla, 1999). Over the past several weeks, Guru and Rai had worked on identifying all possible technological and financial concerns related to ERP implementation that were likely to be raised in today’s 10:00 a.m. meeting with the board of directors. A few of the major concerns that were worrying Guru were – “Will this ERP implementation solve all existing business and operations-related problems? How much would the project cost? What kind of IT infrastructure was best suited for ABC given its size and scale? Should ABC adopt the traditional model or the cloud model of ERP deployment? Will the people at ABC be able to handle the magnitude of change that comes along with this project?” 2. Background of ABC mining company Established in 1956 by the government of Odisha, ABC Mining Company operated as a major mining company in the eastern part of India. It had acquired mining leases from the Odisha state government and had undertaken exploration, processing and sale of mineral ore such as iron ore, manganese ore and chromite. Through its sale of minerals, it fulfilled the requirement of mineral-based industries such as steel, sponge iron, pig iron, ferromanganese and ferrochrome, both in India and overseas. Its annual revenue amounted to US$50m in the 2015–2016 fiscal year. Considering the strong market demand for minerals, ABC was expecting its annual revenue to increase up to US$100m in the next three to four years. However, this revenue growth was possible if and only if ABC’s business processes could fulfill its customers’ increasing demand for minerals. Besides ABC Mining Co, the mineral ore market in Odisha had three more players – two private companies and one public sector company. Each year, the state government of Odisha awarded mining contracts to these firms based on several factors that included quoted price for mines, the on-time delivery performance of minerals, safety and hazard record and market credibility. Due to its market reputation and financial performance, ABC’s mining contracts had consistently been renewed in its current areas of operation over the past several decades. ABC was also considering expanding its operations to other locations in Odisha in the coming years. However, the planned expansion requires a great deal of improvement in its operational efficiencies, requiring a complete make-over of the current processes and investments in IT infrastructure. 3. Organization structure The company was headed by a team at its Corporate Office (CO) comprising of personnel from Human Resources (HR), Finance and Accounting (FA), Production (PD) and Information PAGE 2 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 Technology and Services (ITS) departments. There were six Regional Offices (RO), which overlook the activities carried out in 23 Mining Centers (MC) and 23 Processing Plants (PRP) spread geographically all across the state of Odisha. Some of the MCs and PRPs were located in remote parts of the state. The ROs also had Regional Warehouses (RW) tagged to them and were responsible for managing the inventory in RW. Each RO was headed by a Regional Manager (RM) and had one employee from the PD and HR departments. Each MC used three, four or five engineers depending on the size of the field. At MCs, engineers were responsible for supervising extraction work using several contract mining laborers and also for keeping track of the quantity of mineral extracted. Each MC was tagged with a PRP, which was located within a ten-kilometer radius. Each PRP had three operators and one employee from PD. The PD employee was responsible for recording information on incoming and outgoing material and other expenses of PRP. ABC’s reporting structure is presented in Figure 1. Also, an organization chart is presented in Exhibit 2. To comply with the human resource policies mandated by the state government, ABC employees were transferred at regular time-intervals from one location to another location to gain familiarity, knowledge and skills unique to each location. However, employees associated with certain specialist functions were normally not transferred. 4. Key business processes 4.1 Mining process The mining process as shown in Figure 2, started with the mining of ore at different mining fields tagged with MCs. The extracted ores were sent for processing to the MC’s Figure 1 ABC’s reporting structure Corporate Office Mining Centers Regional Offices Regional (23 nos.) (6 nos.) Warehouses (6 nos.) Processing Plants (23 nos.) Figure 2 Mining process Material Flow Information Flow Information on quantity of mined ore is recorded Ore is mined at MC and at MC and that of processed ore is recorded at transported to PRP PRP Ore is processed at PRP and Information files of mined and processed ore is transported to RW dispatched to RO on daily basis Customer picks up the RO verifies information on mined, processed, material from RW warehoused and dispatched ore, and reports to CO on weekly basis VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 3  corresponding PRP. The PD employee kept track of information on incoming and outgoing material and reported to RO daily. The output from these processing plants was then stocked at their corresponding RW. The PD employee at ROs collected information on the quantities of ore mined, processed and stored in the warehouses based on information provided by the PD employees at PRPs. The aggregated information of all the MCs and PRPs was then sent to the CO every week. So far, ABC had managed its operations using manual and paper-based systems. Information related to mining stock and accounting of MCs and PRPs was maintained by the respective MCs. Copies of these files were physically dispatched to ROs by the PD employee at the MCs. Once the information was verified at ROs, an employee from each RO traveled to the CO for attending weekly update meetings and for delivering relevant paper files to the CO. The CO controlled inventory management and sales processes. 4.2 Sales process To purchase mineral ore from ABC, a customer was required to place an order at least 30 days ahead of the desired delivery date. An advance of thirty percent of the transaction amount was required to be paid to confirm the purchase order. The next step was for CO to notify the customer when the mineral batch(es) was ready for pick-up at the warehouse location. Upon notification, the customer was required to make their arrangements for mineral batch(es) pick-up. Once the mineral batch(es) were picked up by the customer from the warehouse, CO was required to raise a final invoice and send it to the customer through the mail. The invoice contains a description of the product ordered, payment terms and conditions, payments received and payments receivable. Based on these details, the customer paid the remaining balance to CO via check or online bank account transfer. The entire sales process, as depicted in Figure 3, currently took a month, which was significantly more than that taken by its competitors. The management was aware that customers were frustrated with ABC’s processes but continued to receive orders given their reputation and limited supply of mineral commodities in the region. ABC also faced huge constraints on the production end due to clogged stocking spaces resulting from their slow Figure 3 Sales process Customer places PO# 30 days ahead of desired delivery date and pays 30% of the PO# value on proforma invoice CO notifies customer when material is ready at the RW Customer organizes for material pick-up from the RW CO receives dispatch information from RO CO raises final invoice and mails to customer Customer makes the remaining 70% payment PAGE 4 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 material dispatch process. This resulted in the utilization of only half of the company’s total production capacity. This was further compounded by frequent breakdowns of machinery in the mines and processing plants. At the time, there was no recorded information on the running capacities of the machinery, thus, making any major production improvement recommendations difficult to execute. The low performance of the machinery was a concern at the CO as well. 4.3 Procurement and vendor selection process ABC practiced a three-staged procurement approach for goods and/or services that were estimated to cost greater than US$20,000. Through its three-staged procurement approach, ABC ensured bidding vendors with an unbiased quality and cost-based vendor selection process. Additionally, this approach helped ABC to avoid being obligated to choose the lowest bidding vendor. A tendering committee was formulated to accomplish the entire procurement process. Call for proposals were advertised through the company’s website and published in national newspapers. After the release of a call for proposal, a pre-proposal public meeting was conducted wherein all issues/clarifications sought by interested bidders were discussed and finalized. Bidders were then asked to submit their bids in two parts – a technical proposal and a financial proposal – both in sealed envelopes before a decided due date. The first stage of selection required vendors to meet certain pre-qualification criteria, such as annual revenue threshold, company registration, quality compliance certificate, prior technical experience certificate, not-blacklisted certificate, earnest money deposit and other requirements. Failure to meet pre-qualification criteria led to outright rejection. The second stage of selection required vendors to meet or exceed a technical score determined by evaluation of their technical proposals based on pre-identified criteria, such as similar prior assignment experience, vitae of experts, approach and methodology of the proposed assignment. The qualified vendors were then called to attend a meeting to undergo the third stage of selection. On the day of the meeting, the technical scores of the so-far qualified vendors were disclosed. The next step was to open the envelopes with the qualified vendors’ financial bids in the presence of invited vendors. A financial score for each vendor was then derived using the lowest bidder as the benchmark. A final score for each vendor was computed by summing technical and financial scores. The vendor with the highest final score was considered as the selected bidder. Finally, the selected bidder was invited to the negotiation of terms of reference and signing of a contract. In event of failure to negotiate with the selected vendor on terms of reference, the next highest score vendor was invited for negotiation. 5. The enterprise resource planning landscape – ABC and its competitors ABC’s spending on IT infrastructure had been negligible so far. Key processes were predominantly performed manually using a paper-based file system. The FA department used a desktop-based financial accounting system installed on three stand-alone desktop computers in the CO. Given this limited IT infrastructure and paper-based processes, embarking on a risky project such as ERP implementation presented a giant leap for ABC. Such an effort calls for a thorough analysis of prevailing ERP options, their suitability to ABC’s digitalization project goals and associated risk factors. ERP systems emerged as disruptive technological systems at the beginning of the 21st century, as organizations dealt with legacy systems and Y2K issues (Nandi and Nayak, 2008). These software systems provided the opportunity for organizations to centrally manage their resources and processes using real-time information. Organizations in developed nations have come a long way in implementing ERP systems and moving on to the next generations of ERP. Despite this success, failure of ERP projects is not uncommon VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 5  when firms overlook some of the key factors such as costs and stakes associated with ERP projects, mismatches between the organizational processes and those encapsulated in the ERP system and lack of process standardization (Fruhlinger et al., 2020). Some of the relatable failures in recent times include those of Lidl, Leasingplan, MillerCoor and Vodafone (Fruhlinger et al., 2020). In a developing nation scenario, poor infrastructure facilities, cost affordability and cultural barriers add more challenges to ERP initiatives (Rajapakse and Seddon, 2005). Guru and Rai have spent quite a bit of time reading ERP- related literature to gain a thorough understanding of ERP implementation. In this pursuit, they also studied ERP-related IT investments made by ABC’s competitors. One of their closest competitors, XYZ Mining Co – a federal government-owned public- sector organization – was using a custom-designed ERP system. XYZ’s custom-designed ERP system was developed keeping the organization’s specific requirements in mind and had been successful in catering to their business requirements. However, XYZ started facing a growing number of IT maintenance issues within the next few months of ERP implementation. Since its implementation, several IT patches were installed on this ERP system as new bugs were discovered on an ongoing basis. Over time, these patches had induced more complexities in the ERP software’s source code, thus making the overall application unreliable and cumbersome to maintain. To add more problems, several of the initially involved IT personnel had left the organization without proper trouble-shooting documentation and knowledge transfer to new IT personnel hires. As a result, the newly hired IT personnel found it extremely challenging to incorporate any new customization requests leading to process delays and dissatisfaction among ERP users across departments. Another competitor, PQR Mining Company, was a privately-owned mining company and was comparatively smaller in size than both ABC and XYZ. PQR had implemented a pre- packaged ERP system from a leading ERP vendor. It was satisfied with the performance of its ERP system. However, Guru and Rai figured out that PQR had much simpler and more streamlined processes than ABC and XYZ. Guru also found that PQR’s average age of employees, 35 years, was much lower than ABC’s average age of employees, 45 years. PQR’s employees were more technology savvy in comparison to ABC’s employees, who had limited exposure and/or knowledge of computers. These observations had raised doubts in Guru’s mind about whether ABC’s employees can smoothly switch to an ERP- based organizational environment irrespective of opting for a pre-packaged or customized ERP option. From her prior ERP implementation experiences, Rai had already advised Guru that pre-packaged ERP software systems were built around industry-specific ‘best practices’. Several academic studies have confirmed that the success of a pre-packaged ERP software system depends on the implementing organization’s ability to adjust its existing business processes rules to that of the ‘best practices’ rules pre-configured in the ERP software (Davenport, 2004; Nandi and Kumar, 2016). All these observations had ultimately made Guru realize that he should consult with management professionals to help him create different business scenarios that he can present to the board of directors. As a result, Guru had engaged two experts from a local management consulting firm – Nathan Das and Aakash Kamble – to help him out with refinement of technical specification, process adjustment requirements, and associated budgeting scenarios of the planned ERP project. 6. Management consultant report Das and Kamble were locally renowned for their consulting services to public sector companies. Based on an audit of ABC’s existing business processes, they had prepared a business report that specifically outlined: all groundworks needed before ERP implementation, recommendations for customized versus pre-packaged ERP options, implementation plan for both scenarios and tentative costs scenarios for implementing a PAGE 6 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 pre-packaged or customized ERP system. The consultants had charged ABC a consultancy fee of US$2,500 for their 10 working-days of consulting services (i.e. at the rate of US$125 per person per day) offer to conduct process auditing and report preparation. Given the low computer literacy skills among the employees of ABC, they had advised ABC to only carry out minor changes in the present processes and warned the company against undertaking any major business process reengineering (BPR) initiatives. They had recommended implementing a pre-packaged ERP software from a leading ERP package vendor that met their business requirements. Also, the consultants had tentatively indicated the following modules to be implemented – finance and costing, material management, production planning, sales and distribution and human resource management. However, the final decision on the implementation of modules was to be decided by ABC’s management based on business and cost priorities. In terms of deployment options, they had suggested two options – on-premise and in the cloud (in public versus private cloud). Finally, they had suggested certain contingent costs that the ERP project was likely to incur, such as the need for computer proficiency training to those staff who lacked basic knowledge of operating computers. 6.1 Enterprise resource planning deployment type: on-premise An on-premise ERP deployment required ABC to opt for perpetual licensing offered through an authorized ERP package vendor. Since there were several licensing options, it was hard to determine an exact licensing cost until the final specifications were sealed. For assessing the deployment options at this stage, the consultant duo had suggested some rough estimates for ERP software perpetual licensing and related computer hardware costs. On the licensing requirement, ABC was suggested to procure both developer user licenses and professional user licenses. The developer user licenses were meant for performing necessary customization, configuration and maintenance initially by implementation consultants and later by ITS department employees. The professional user licenses were meant for carrying out routine business operations by ERP users from different departments at different office locations. Das and Kamble suggested ABC purchase three ERP developer user licenses for ITS employees, one professional user license for each PRP location, three professional user licenses – one each for RM, PD employee and HR employee – at RO locations, three professional user licenses – one each for FA, HR and PD departments and finally, one professional user license for the managing director. The costs for perpetual ERP software licenses for a single developer and professional license were US$7,500 and US$3,000, respectively. Apart from this, a one-time package fee of US$45,000 was also applicable. To receive support for future upgrades, an annual recurring fee of 6% of the total initial license fee was to be charged as a user maintenance fee. Concerning IT hardware requirements, the consultants suggested that a data center was required to be set up that would include two quad-core servers with a capacity of at least one hundred terabytes of storage capacity. One server was required for hosting the ERP application software and the other server was required for managing the database, which is the database management system (DBMS). The cost of each server was approximately US $14,500 that included the server hardware, a pre-installed operating system, and other necessary hardware and networking software systems. The cost of a DBMS license was US $14,500. The cost of IT infrastructure and maintenance was estimated at US$2,000 per year. For high-speed internet connectivity at the CO location, a 50 Mbps bandwidth dedicated leased line was suggested to be procured from a reputable telecommunication service provider. The cost of a dedicated leased line was approximately US$17,500 per year. Besides leased lines at the CO location, a satellite-based internet connection, known as a ‘very small aperture terminal’ (VSAT) link, was suggested. This would ensure that the ERP computer terminals in MC, PRP and RO locations that were spread out in remote VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 7  mining locations within the state of Odisha remained connected to the main ERP server at CO. The cost of each VSAT link along with its router was US$ 750 per year. Finally, desktop computers compatible to install ERP professional licenses were suggested to be purchased for ERP users. The cost of each desktop computer pre-loaded with basic office applications was approximately US$750. 6.2 Enterprise resource planning deployment type: software as a service enterprise resource planning hosted on public cloud Starting in 2015, several ERP vendors had started offering ERP in the ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) model. As an alternative to the on-premise ERP purchase model, this renting model was gaining success in catering to the resource planning requirements of small and medium enterprises (SME) because they were constrained in IT budgets and lacked the technical expertise required for a full-scale on-premise ERP implementation (Ray, 2011). Hence, the model required the user organization to pay a monthly subscription fee for using ERP infrastructure and applications that were installed, maintained, and upgraded in the cloud by the SaaS ERP vendor. The SaaS model required SME’s users to access their data through web browsers (Ray, 2011; Valacich and Schneider, 2012). The monthly subscription fee for SaaS-based ERP deployment for recommended modules by consultants was US$100 for each developer user and US$50 for each professional user. From ABC’s perspective, it appeared to Guru that implementing the SaaS version of ERP might be relatively easier than on-site package implementation, as well as take significantly less time to install. Rai informed Guru that the peers she knew through her network, who were working in SMEs in other industries, were satisfied with this deployment option, given the SaaS version ERP’s easy-to-use interfaces. However, large organizations with complex business processes and operations lacked confidence in allowing an external agency to manage their data in off-premise public cloud settings. Their major concerns were related to data security and breaches and perceived loss of physical control on software customization and upgrades thereafter (Kranz et al., 2016; Nandi and Kumar, 2018). Das and Kamble had recommended ABC not to deploy the SaaS-based ERP option without consulting the most-recently updated guidelines , issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), about cloud adoption by public sector companies. However, they had suggested that ABC might consider the option of using ‘private’ cloud services from those ERP vendors who were pre-approved by MeitY. 6.3 Enterprise resource planning deployment type – hosting on private cloud Based on the consultants’ suggestions, Guru felt that a private cloud ERP deployment might strike a balance between on-premise ERP deployment and SaaS-based ERP deployment options. He learned from Rai that a private cloud option can have a private server environment just like an on-premise deployment. Rai explained to Guru that the security controls of the ERP application can be configured as per the company’s requirements. She further explained that the cloud option facilitated the load balancing of the ERP server capacity based on usage patterns. This option can reduce the dependencies of in-house IT personnel for infrastructure maintenance when compared to that of on-premise deployment (Ray, 2011; Valacich and Schneider, 2012). Kamble and Das also opined that the pricing plan in this type of deployment is competitive. Besides competitive pricing, this option provides flexibility to easily scale up the resources in the future. Private cloud hosting costs include three components – virtual machine costs, database storage costs, and data transfer costs. Das and Kamble estimated the virtual machine costs and database storage costs to be US$200 per month and US$400 per month, respectively. The estimated cost for inbound and outbound data transfer, assuming a limit of 500 GB, is approximately US$15 per month. Finally, the ERP user license, desktop computer, high- PAGE 8 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 speed internet and VSAT cost components would remain the same as an on-premise deployment. Guru was quick to understand that the private cloud option might not face major IT infrastructure-related challenges, as well as budgetary constraints because it involved much lesser initial capital costs on IT infrastructure spending when compared to those of the on-site ERP option. However, it required monthly coordination with the finance department for timely payment of usage bills that might fluctuate in amount depending on usage. 6.4 Data migration and other implementation costs So far, ABC had the practice of storing all information in physical format in paper files. The first step in data migration was digitalization. Next, these converted digital records were to be uploaded into the DBMS system. The management consultants had suggested engaging two full-time data-entry operators at approximately US$3,000 per month to accomplish data migration tasks. These two data-entry operators were required to visit each office location to gather files and digitize them into appropriate data tables. The job was expected to take one month. The consultants suggested that service costs related to ERP interface customizations usually accounted for 50% of ERP’s license. This cost might exceed by another 10% if customization tasks are major. Besides this, documentation and training costs were estimated at US$600 per user. Before the ‘go-live’ date, ABC was required to halt the mining operations for two days as a measure to prevent any data lags between ongoing manual processes and the ERP system. Guru was unsure about how to convince the board on this point because halting mining operations for two days would mean an opportunity loss of approximately US$6,500 in terms of daily production. 6.5 Post-implementation maintenance costs For on-premise deployment, a team of approximately three IT professionals would be necessary to maintain the IT infrastructure and provide support to the ERP application. The average salary of these professionals is US$20,000 per annum. For private cloud hosting, two IT professionals would be sufficient to manage the hosted space and support the ERP application. 7. Enterprise resource planning project governance Guru and Rai were envisioning to formulate an ERP task-force that would represent two experienced employees per department including Das and Kamble. Besides, the consultants had proposed constituting a separate IT department with two IT personnel at CO for ERP-related maintenance tasks, such as troubleshooting and resolving technical challenges at various office locations. IT personnel were also expected to liaison with local computer service providers to provide timely support for any routine computer issues that they may face during and after implementation. These computer service providers were to be paid on a per-issue resolution basis. 8. Management dilemma It was about 1:45 p.m. when Guru and Rai assumed that they should walk to the meeting room as the board meeting was scheduled to start at 2:00 p.m. The duo had worked very hard in making the business presentation for today’s board meeting. Based on the final inputs from today’s meeting with the board members, Guru was supposed to formally initiate the vendor search process for ERP implementation. Guru felt confident, at least for one part, that Kamble and Das had already agreed to offer their professional services of 15 VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 9  working days to prepare the request for proposal (RFP) and to assist in the subsequent vendor evaluation process. At the meeting, board members were impressed with the ERP-related information that he had gathered so far. As soon as he finished his business presentation, board members were ready with the following questions: 1. A: By implementing an ERP system, what were the operational and business issues that ABC Mining Company was planning to address? 2. B: What were the pros and cons of customized ERP versus pre-packaged ERP? Which of the two options suited ABC most, and why? 3. C: Considering a three-year timeframe, what cost components needed to be Keywords: considered to prepare a detailed cost analysis sheet for the ERP project with: Enterprise resource 䊏 On-premise deployment planning, 䊏 Private cloud deployment Project management, Capital investment/ resource allocation 4. D: Considering various costs and risks associated with this project, which deployment decisions, option would have suited ABC most – on-premise or private cloud? Strategic management/ planning, 5. E: Finally, what were the possible short-term and long-term organizational challenges Supply chain information that might have arisen in ABC Mining Company as a result of the ERP implementation systems initiative? Notes 1. Refer the list of case actors and acronyms in Exhibit A. 2. http://meity.gov.in/content/guidelines-government-departments-adoption-procurement-cloud- services 3. Calculated based on the revenue lost for two production days with US$3,250 of revenue loss per day. 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Case actors and acronyms List of case actors and designations 䊏 Raj Guru, General Manager, Production Department; ERP Project In-charge 䊏 Sheila Rai, Sr. Manager, Information Technology and Services Department; ERP Project IT In-charge 䊏 Aakash Kamble, External Management Consultant for ERP Project 䊏 Nathan Das, External Management Consultant for ERP Project List of acronyms (in alphabetical order) 䊏 BPR: Business Process Reengineering 䊏 CO: Corporate Office 䊏 DBMS: Database Management System 䊏 ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning 䊏 FA: Finance and Accounts (Department) 䊏 HR: Human Resources (Department) 䊏 IT: Information Technology 䊏 ITS: Information Technology and Services (Department) 䊏 MC: Mining Center 䊏 MeitY: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology 䊏 PD: Production (Department) 䊏 PRP: Processing Plant 䊏 RFP: Request for Proposal 䊏 RM: Regional Manager 䊏 RO: Regional Office 䊏 RW: Regional Warehouse 䊏 SME: Small and Medium Enterprises 䊏 VSAT: Very Small Aperture Terminal VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j PAGE 11  Exhibit 2. ABC mining company organization chart Figure E1 Managing Director ITS HR Regional FA PD Manager Manager Managers Manager Manager ITS Staff HR Staff RO Staff RW Staff FA Staff PD Staff RO Staff PRP Staff About the authors Dr. Madhavi Nandi is a Senior Industrial Engineer at Continental Tire Americas – Sumter and an Adjunct Professor of Business Statistics at University of South Carolina Sumter. Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at T. A. Pai Management Institute (India). She has earned her Doctorate in Information Systems from Xavier University, and also, an MS degree in Manufacturing Engineering from University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and a Doctorate in Information Systems. Besides her demanding industry hours, she continues to stay involved in researching topics related to human computer interaction, enterprise systems implementation, and technology diffusion. Dr. Santosh Nandi is an Assistant Professor of Management at University of South Carolina at Sumter. He earned his PhD in Business Administration from University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, and also, an MBA from Xavier University and a BS in Architecture from IIT Roorkee in India. He specializes in teaching Principles of Management, Organization Theory, Management and Operations of Small Businesses, Strategic Management, International Management, Operations and Supply Chain Management and Business Analytics courses. His research interests include topics related to operations management, sustainable supply chains, circular economy business models, blockchain technology and mobile commerce. Santosh Nandi is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] PAGE 12 j EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES j VOL. 11 NO. 1 2021