ERP Customization and Strategies PDF

w6 Understand the controversy of customization 1. Can lead to implementation delays and increased budget because customization is time-consuming and risky, requiring exhaustive testing. 2. Requires increased support, maintenance, and internal resources. 3. Limits capacity to upgrade ERP as customize...

w6 Understand the controversy of customization 1. Can lead to implementation delays and increased budget because customization is time-consuming and risky, requiring exhaustive testing. 2. Requires increased support, maintenance, and internal resources. 3. Limits capacity to upgrade ERP as customized code will most likely not be supported. 4. Requires a skilled technical team with ERP knowledge. 5. May be more difficult to integrate with other systems, especially those used by external partners. Discuss the pros and cons of customization 1. To preserve competitive advantage. 2. Custom functionalities may be required due to compliance, regulatory, reporting, or legislative requirements not addressed by the system. 3. Differences in culture, product offerings, customer behavior, etc. Customization helps to improve user acceptance. 4. Not all "best practices" are truly best for all businesses. Functional misfit. 5. Lack of knowledge or experience with the ERP system. Define vanilla implementation A vanilla implementation is the decision to implement ERP as it is and modify business processes to match the system Understand the difference between single vendor and Best of Breed (BoB) strategy Single vendor systems provide functionalities from a single vendor. Best of Breed (BoB) strategy refers to getting the most fitting modules from different vendors to fulfil the functionalities of an ERP system. Discuss the pros and cons of BoB strategy w6 1 Certainly, here are the problems associated with Best of Breed (BoB) solutions with added spaces for clarity: 1. Additional costs required to integrate BoB solutions. 2. Corporate information is distributed across multiple applications and platforms. 3. Higher costs of supporting technology acquisition and maintenance. 4. Different solutions have distinct or unique security models, making it harder to maintain security and privacy. 5. Users must learn different user interfaces and systems. 6. Common data is replicated across multiple applications. Discuss the decision considerations for BoB strategy Decision Considerations w6 2 • Cost • Integration capabilities • Flexibility requirements • Ease of Use requirements • Degree of fit – alignment with organizational requirements Certainly, here are the reasons for considering Best of Breed (BoB) solutions now, with added spaces for clarity: 1. ERP systems cannot be everything to everyone. 2. Improvement to integration technologies. 3. Immaturity of cloud-based ERP systems. 4. Proliferation of specialized Best of Breed solutions. 5. Easier to implement agile implementation methodologies. 6. Flexibility is a success factor for digital transformation. Identify and describe different variations of 2-tiered ERP strategy w6 3 Two Tier, Option 3: A core ERP in Tier 1 + a different ERP product from same vendor in Tier 2 (e.g. SAP Business Suite in Tier 1 + SAP Business One in Tier 2) Two Tier, Option 4: A core ERP in Tier 1 + a different ERP product from different vendor in Tier 2 (e.g. SAP Business Suite in Tier 1 + MS Dynamics in Tier 2) Two Tier, Option 5: A core ERP in Tier 1 + different ERP products from a limited list of vendors in Tier 2 (e.g. SAP Business Suite in Tier 1 + MS Dynamics/Oracle/Epicor in Tier 2) Two Tier, Option 6: A core ERP in Tier 1 +different ERP products from different vendors Instance Strategy An ERP instance refers to an installation of ERP system. • Single instance: one installation of ERP system that is used for the entire enterprise • Multipleinstances:multiple installations of ERP systems (e.g. an ERP installation for each region/ division) Why multiple instances? w6 4 Merger and Acquisitions Technological considerations: o Downtimes are more costly and may last longer with single instance o Performance issues on databases and infrastructure with single instance Differences in business units o Difficult to align diverse business processes and master data structures o Differences in operating environment Different legal and operating environment, telecommunications infrastructure w6 5