ERP System: A Case Study On Immigration In Malaysia

Business Process and ERP System

Discuss about the ERP System Process on Immigration.

The business process that would be discussed over hear is about the ERP system. The team would undertake the case study on the area of Immigration in which the process of ERP system will help to make an informed decision for investment in Information System. Therefore, through this system the client will be able to take their business to the next level. The team are well-versed with the challenges of the ERP software initiatives and understood that it is not that simple. This ERP that has found in this study will address different aspects about the client’s business in the area of immigration. Clients might receive cases every day and each of this cases might have a unique circumstances. Immigration is possible based on the qualification, skills and work experience (Erturk and Arora 2017).  The Client might be provided with some general guidelines to mitigate the risk in immigration. The paper discusses about the process of ERP business system and develop the requirements that the business need and decide which systems requirements will be helpful for the client to grow their business (Acar et al. 2017). The system will then select a software and vendor and determine the technologies that the company or organization would utilize and improve the efficiency of the business. With the implementation of the technology the efficiency level will be evaluated and then examine the data breaches and the potential security risks of the business. Finally, the paper will provide the guidelines through which all these risks could be mitigated.

ERP system Business Process

Business process is an activity that function with an input and output with reference to the organization. For example, considering the activity of an expenses, service is the input that the organization avail for and output is the amount of cash that goes out of the organization (Tenhiälä, Rungtusanatham and Miller 2017). When the client start thinking in terms of business processes, it help them to look through the perspective of the customer’s.  The team has involved in preparing the ERP system for the client to identify and list out all the business processes with detailed explanation. Data is required by the business process that defines the instance of the business process. This data can be recorded in the data entry forms.

Scope

The Plan of ERP has enabled with software through which different department and functions of the business process integrated the company into one single computer to serve the needs of various department (Erturk and Arora 2017). Before the implementation of ERP, the department were having their own computer system that are optimized as per the needs of the department. As per the functionalities, the departments are maintaining an application design and separate databases. 

Business requirements

Business Requirements for Immigration in Malaysia

The business requirements as per the case study on immigration in Malaysia are briefly described in this section (Dezdar 2017). The case study shows that the business requirements of immigration are to manage and maintain different information of the people who are migrating for work purpose and they are as follows.

Industry information- The information of which industry the migrants are going to work are required to maintain to identify the authentication of migrants.

Location information- The location where the migrants will live or work is necessary to record as it helps to identify the authorization of migrants to work in the country.

Evidence support information- The evidence support of migrants such as having enough money if financing their own business and family if came along with them.

Details of working- The details of past working and experience in the relevant field for which a migrant has come to work or set up their own business.

Occupational registration details- The occupational registration is needed if the migrant has come to start their own business that make them authorized in the country.

Business track record- The business track record and migrants character is important factors to identify any illegal activities.

Migration policy- The migration policy must be witnessed by the migrants and they should be matched up with the policy in the respective country in which they are migrating.

There are four Functional Areas of ERP system requirement

Accounting and Finance (A/F):

In Accounting and Finance information are needed from all the functional areas. In the account books, all the details regarding the companies’ transaction are recorded. The accounts payable about the purchased raw materials are recorded and when the materials are being paid the cash outflow (Kirchmer 2017). A report is being prepare to summarize the transaction data for the profitability and financial position. People provide data to accounting and finance department. The marketing and sales department provide sales data to it. The Human Resource department provides expense data of benefit and payroll. The Supply Chain Management provide inventory and production data. The accounting and finance department provide data to marketing and sales department to evaluate the credit of the customer (Lichtenstein, Cucuy and Fink 2017). The input of A/F includes accounts payable and receivable data, customers’ payment, production and inventory data, sales data, expense and payroll data. The output of A/F include suppliers’ payment, credit data of customer, financial reports.  

Functional Areas of ERP System Requirement

Human Resources (HR):

In the Human Resources, information are needed from all the functional areas of other departments (García-Bañuelos et al. 2018). It include the process of employee hiring, training, benefits and government compliance that the HR is responsible for. The HR is responsible to understand the need of what skills for a particular job and check the company affordable budget that could be paid employees HR needs personnel accurate forecasts from all the functional units. Thru HR observe the governmental regulations that can recruit, trained, compensate, promote and terminate the employee. The inputs of HR includes skills data and personnel forecasts (Acar et al. 2017). The output includes Sales strategies, pricing of the product and the employment needs

Supply Chain Management (SCM):

In the Supply Chain Management information are needed from all the functional areas such as planning of the production that is based on the information that the product sales that has come from the Marketing and Sales (Eker and Aytaç 2017). The production level is required with accurate data for the raw material and packaging. The order was needed to keep the Inventory levels low and save money. The data and records of Supply Chain Management are provided to the Accounting and Finance department so that they can determine the resources that was used. The SCM provide information about produced and shipped products to support the function of the marketing and sales department (Oseni et al. 2017). The SCM also keep communicating with the Human Resources department regarding the need of hiring an employee. The input of the Supply Chain Management include production plans, Inventory levels, Product sales data, recall and Layoff policy of the company. The output of the Supply Chain Management include orders of raw material, orders of packaging, data of resource expenditure, inventory reports and production, and information about hiring.

Marketing and Sales (M/S):

In marketing and sales information are needed from all the functional areas. The role of the marketing and sale department is to determine the price of the product which would be based on the unit cost and the percentage mark-up. The customer communicate regarding the order to the marketing and sales department through telephone, in person, web, fax, or e-mail. It require to get information from the Supply Chain Management data and the accounting and finance department (Fink, Yogev, and Even 2017). The marketing and sales department need to have an interaction with the Human Resources and exchange the information regarding the hiring needs, personal information, information about the job and legal requirements (Tenhiälä, Rungtusanatham and Miller 2017). The marketing and sales department input the customer data, Order data, Sales trend data, company policy with Travel expense, product availability, status of the data and order, and Per-unit cost. They output the sales strategies, needs of the employment, pricing of the product, forecast and order sales.

Functional area	Accounting and Finance	Human Resources	Supply Chain Management	Marketing and Sales
Business functions	Management of Cash-Flow	Recruit and hire	Goods for Manufacturing	Product Marketing
Allocation and control of cost	Government Compliance	Maintenance of plant	Receiving the orders of sales
Budgeting and Planning	Payroll	Transportation and logistics	Customer Relationship Management
Payment through financial accounting from customers to suppliers	Benefits	Production runs Scheduling	Advertising

Selection and Implementation of ERP System

Table: Functional area and its business functions

Source: (Matys, 2018)

ERP is the core software that the client can use to coordinate the information in their business area. This will help the client to manage their business process. They can make use of the common database and shared management tools for reporting.  The team has to present the client guiding them with the process of software selection (Nisula and Pekkola 2017). For that it is very important to define about the business process, their workflows and the internal controls whenever there is an implementation in the ERP system. In the Market 100 of ERP software are available and for the selection process of an ERP Software, one much have the knowledge about ERP. ERP helps in streamline the business process to build control and measures (Osman 2017). The ERP tool is valuable for the business success. The solutions of ERP streamline the Purchase, Sales, Payments and Receipts. The advance ERPs have Planning, Manufacturing, SCM and lot more. Some of the advance ERP are Oracle Apps, SAP, AcTouch.com and more (Hasan et al. 2017). The client can look into the checklist to finalise the ERP software solution for their business. ERP deployment is time consuming and is also expensive. So, the client need to be very careful is selection of the software.

The ERP vendors suggest that they will handle the software business process side for the client. The vendor would go out of the box and drive the improvements require to make the software. Based on the customer experience certain steps can be followed for the right selection process of ERP Vendor. The first step is that the client need to prepare themselves. The client need to list out the features based on their business practices. They can categories the ‘Good to have’ and ‘Must have’ features. They can then identify the leading vendor selection process from their business. The client then need to identify the decision makers’ stakeholders in the selection process of the ERP software (Baklizky et al. 2017). They need to review the document and spend time to take approval from the senior management. If the client decide to send an RFP then they need to prepare certain questions and get approval from the management. It would be better to identify and evaluate the potential of the ERP solutions. A basic research is required for faster selection process of ERP solution. This can save time when there is a comparison between the vendors selection. In order to customize, deploy and support ERP market it is better to speak to the vendor and customers (Vaidyanathan and Fox 2017). Thus, the client should follow stringent process of implementation that ensures the success of the customer. This enables them to predict the risks mitigation. Later, in the section guidelines will be provided on risk mitigation.  

Conclusion

The ways of utilizing the Enterprise Resource Planning system implementation for the client Business Process improvement are as follow:

Improved Information Management- The management of information is improved through automation provided by the system. The ERP system is helpful in providing automation to the business resulting in better calculation of sales margin and revenues along with easy access to shared data. Thus leading to better decision making for the organization.

Improved workflow- The workflow is improved where employees acquire relevant data easily using the system. The interfaces of ERP system is user-friendly that helps to make employee’s job simplified and easier. This leads to better productivity from employees towards the organization.

Process are streamlined- The ERP system has major feature that integrates all the business functions at one platform. This helps to access data efficiently and effectively without any complexity. The processes of ERP system are streamlined and centralized to provide greater efficiency to the organization.

Business accounting is simplified- The accounting processes is simplified through ERP systems as it helps to do accounting procedures easily and effectively. The ERP system is used to integrate and analyze organizational data for financial accounting that reduces manual work and time without any delay.

Transparency in organization- The ERP system is used for making the organizational working process safe and secure as it gives authority to only authorized people to access information. This results in improved privacy and security of data in the system.

Redundancies are eliminated- The redundant data is a common problem that leads to confusion and inconsistencies. The redundancies are eliminated through use of ERP system where redundant data is rectified in an organization.

Reason to implementation of ERP

There are many befits of the implementation of ERP within the proposed case study those can be listed as following:

Forecasting: ERP software is helpful for the users to utilize the on demand software tools and services those can contribute in forecasting the predictions related to the output and production of the organization.

Efficiency: this is a helpful software that eliminates the redundancy and performs the mathematical calculations in much accurate and faster than human beings. It is helpful in streamlining the processes incorporated in the business for performing the collected data for the beneficial results for the organization.

Competition: the greatest concern of the present time is the competition in business and thus, organizations needed a better option for fighting this lagging factor and it can be boosted through the implementation of ERP in the existing system of the organization. Scalability is another positive aspect of the ERP including cost saving, collaboration, productivity, mobility, and many more. These aspects make it as a better option for enhancing the business processes.

Mobility:

Objectives of ERP implementation

Following are the objectives of the ERP implementation:

• To identify the real time information related to the strategies involved in the business field
• To propose an option for better planning and management of the resources
• To present the estimation and prediction of the Return on investment
• To fight the competitive world and being tough competition for the competitors
• To enhance the quality service

Effect of ERP implementation

The ERP will be helpful in eliminating the identified problems and establishing a system that is capable of digging all the benefits necessary for the enhancement of the business processes and daily operational activities of the organization (Liao, Huang and Lin 2018). The ERP will allow the organization to be in the competitive field and provide better and enhanced services to the consumers.

Change of efficiency after ERP implementation

The proposed system with implemented ERP will be helpful in enhancing the performance and output of the organization in much better and efficient manner (Gupta et al. 2017). Human errors will be limited to zero degree as the calculations will be executed through computers only. The compliance of the ERP is much efficient than other software and tools due to its scalability and variant features those can boost the management and business processes.

Examination of data breaches, potential security risks

For the client business ERP software is the integral tool that helps in managing and regulating the significant volume of the business data and the operations. The security risks of ERP system mainly happens during the implementation and migration stages. Thus, it is important to be cautious about the implementation of ERP (Alhawamdeh 2017). The common data braches and potential security risks are security barriers, poor data and communication goofed up. If the client is dependent on the cluster of systems or any other tools like the spreadsheet even after the implementation of ERP software, then it is simply critical that the business is at risk (Fowley et al. 2017). Thus, it is important to map the archaic systems and their processes to the newly ERP software implementation.

Clients may be afraid of the potential failure with the ERP implementations. It may blow up their budgets and scheduled timeframes. The ERP implementation risk could be mitigated in five ways:

1. The ERP implementation need a business approach rather than a technical approach. The technical approach and the business approach both are treated differently. The one that are of technical approach are likely to cut the corners on things that are most critical to success and is most likely to fail such as the organizational change management and the business process reengineering (Gupta et al. 2018). On the other hand, Business approach are likely to succeed as it focus on the actual thing not the software. The complexity of the ERP systems is easy on the technical aspects of the projects. Thus, the client do not need to hire a system integrator or technical VAR, it will not succeed the project.
2. The client may opt for on-premise ERP software or may even opt for cloud ERP software (Data Security Risks during ERP Implementation: Playing Safe, 2018). The main concern over here is the secure host for the business operations and it data. On-premise have dedicated technical crew that manages the system whereas the cloud ERP solutions have vendors that take care of all the burden (Rouhani and Zare Ravasan 2017). In terms of data security, ERP system hosting on the platform of cloud seems to be counteractive. However, it is not, since the vendors of cloud based ERP or SaaS are equipped as per the means of data security. It ensures the data to be secure for dedicated resources and practices. If the client think about investing sufficient time and money on ERP data security, then ERP software that are based on cloud would be the best option for the client.
3. The newly ERP software if rolled-out in the organization for everyone does not mean that the staff member are allowed to fully access the system and control them. At some particular instance, the sales crew require an access on the inventory but might not need not need access to the production data (Rajah, Chiam and Azizul 2018). It is advisable to set certain protocols to limit the access for a specific set of employees. The employees can work with the ERP vendor who create password protected dashboards.

Conclusion

This study has concluded that the client business should seek the supply chain integration for the immigration business had higher level of performance and supply chain maturity. The client can invest billions of dollars in the ERP systems. Throughout the study it was interesting to know that ERP system has a large transaction process to promote the business communication. The ERP system are instrumental that establishes strategic performance that improve economic outcomes. The client need to implement the ERP system for end-to-end supply chains, in collaboration with the supplier from customer order management. The design of the ERP system integrate transaction in A/F, HR, M/S and SCM. The deployment of ERP system give several benefits to the client business. The ERP system implementation enable the business organization to use the system in navigating back the channels. It force people to immigrate though an authorized channel and force them to approve contracts and suppliers. Through this a better accuracy is drive that leads to better analysis and provide some efficiency with the implementation of ERP and keep control of the business spend. 

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