1. What is the business of Sinosteel, what are its major challenges, and how would an ERP system address the challenges they face?
2. Why did Sinosteel pursue the development of an ERP system? What were the objectives? What challenges (risks) does ERP address for Sinosteel ? [The CEO is difficult to understand on some of the objectives, but later in the video an IT manager is clearer and reflects the CEO’s position almost exactly. You will need to listen carefully]
3. What factors were important in the choice of Oracle?
4. How did business processes change in order to implement this ERP system?
5. What do you think some of the implementation issues and risks might have been with this system?
6. How did this investment in ERP systems help Sinosteel achieve operational excellence?
7. What do you think were the benefits of installing this system give the substantial costs involved?
1. What is the business of Sinosteel, what are its major challenges, and how would an ERP system address the challenges they face?
The business of Sinosteel is to produce and process the metallurgical mineral resources, trading and logistics of raw materials, and it is also in providing engineering technical service and manufacturing equipments.
Major challenges are improving the management and overwhelming its lack of centralisation. Gaining efficiency in building customer relationship and managing human resources.
Through ERP the internal management can be improved and optimised by common sharing of information, with SCM resources can be better managed and through CRM company can achieve high customer satisfaction
2. Why did Sinosteel pursue the development of an ERP system? What were the objectives? What challenges (risks) does ERP address for Sinosteel ? [The CEO is difficult to understand on some of the objectives, but later in the video an IT manager is clearer and reflects the CEO’s position almost exactly. You will need to listen carefully]
Sinosteel adopted ERP system because there was lack of standardisation, the information was decentralised and managing the corporate information was getting risky which would lead to dangerous misunderstandings.
Objective was to gain efficiency in all functions of business by sharing the information.
3. What factors were important in the choice of Oracle?
Oracle is a leader in enterprise resource management with excellent applications and advance technologies and relative flexible platform. Also it is easy to learn, administer and maintain
4. How did business processes change in order to implement this ERP system?
They change in order to deliver a business inside, adapting to the industry processes and gaining superior ownership experience. Thus through ERP system efficient management of all business processes and functions can be achieved.
5. What do you think some of the implementation issues and risks might have been with this system?
The major risk is to integrate the systems of companies which Sinosteel has merged with. For integration proper staff is required and handling the resistance of staff to adopt new system will also be a major risk.
6. How did this investment in ERP systems help Sinosteel achieve operational excellence? What do you think were the benefits of installing this system give the substantial costs involved?
By increasing the speed of response, information quality and high degree of automation and reducing the business costs.
Benefits will be improved competitiveness, improved decision making and reduction in business cost.
7. What are some common types of malicious software, or malware? What best describes the “man-in-the-middle” type of attacks?
Adware, bot, bug, ransomware, rootkit, spyware, Trojan horse, virus and worm are malware.
A “man-in-the-middle” describes how attacker intercepts messages in a public key exchange and retransmits them, submitting his own public key for the requested one, so that the two original parties still appear to be communicating with each other.
Provide some examples of each type of authentication factor. What are your personal experiences with each?
Authentication factor is a piece of information which is used to verify the identity of a person requesting access to a restricted area. Example is Personal factor which is used to recover passwords. Till date I have no personal experience for such technology.
Can you think of any drawbacks of the ZTIC device?
Drawback with ZTC device is that it initiates transactions on computer with malware installed by compromising the security. The padlocked areas of internet which is secure can also not protect against it.
How might malicious attackers try to get around devices like the ZTIC?
Hackers through malwares modify the data when it is sent to bank’s web server but displays the information to consumer intended in the browser. Man-in-the-middle attacks is also effective even if the customer s using OTP. ZTIC bypasses the browser and goes directly to bank and ensures accurate data exchange.
Do you foresee a future where malware is completely eliminated, or protections are so good that malware is no longer a threat? Explain your answer.
With the growth in technology cyber attacks will get common and will become difficult for the anti-malware companies to protect us from cyber crimes. Thus I completely believe that malware practices will not be completely eliminated and in coming future with advancements in internet it will become a major threat.
Which business process are the most important at Summit Electric Supply? Why?
The most important business process is ERP software, NetWeaver BW data from SAP. The importance of these processes for Summit Electric as it connected 19 locations, satisfied business requirements. It helped the company in staying more organised and controlling how much information has to be produced and distributed.
What problems did Summit have with its old systems? What was the business impact of those problems?
The old system was delaying the supplies. The old system was complicated as it separated different categories which made difficult to combine when needed. The impact of old system on business was that it was not able to keep up with the business, limited the business to handle few numbers and locations, brought delays and took lot of time in task completion.
How did Summit’s ERP system improve operational efficiency and decision making? Give several examples
It was improved by advancing the operations, the supplies were built and distributed faster on time. The old system was very time consuming, for eg collecting and reviewing the invoices took a month’s time and increased the stack of invoices to be given to vendors. With new ERP the invoices were produced more fastly and accurately. The ERP system provided tools to company to evaluate the sales-channel which benefited the company to evaluate the profitability inters of branch wise, sales person and customers.
Describe two ways in which Summit’s customers benefit from the new ERP system.
Customers can now rely on company for their needs and products. Customers can receive their orders in short period of time. They can also track how much wire they have ordered and from which manufacturer it is coming from.
Secondly large customers who are having long-term job sites are getting benefits from new ERP system. The company has built on-site temporary warehouses to supply electrical products to customers by creating parent-child warehouse relationship. Through this, it will prevent anybody from selling the consigned inventory into the warehouse.
Draw diagram Summit’s old and new process for handling chargerbacks.
With the old process company was losing money and was not making profits. A lot of manual work was required, as they have to go the customer invoices for detailed manufacturers to identify which chargeback they can claim. Whereas the new process for handling the chargeback was efficient as it automatically reviewed the Summit’s billing activity and compare it with all chargebacks agreements loaded into SAP system. So when there was any match they are able to claim it. Thus this full automated ERP system has increased the company claim by 118% over the old system.
Identify and describe three major enterprise applications.
Enterprise system: It is based on a suite of integrated software modules and a common central database. It utilizes enterprise software’s to support finance, accounting, HR, manufacturing etc processes. Its benefits are improving the management reporting and information sharing, decision making and efficiency in customer-driven approaches.
Supply Chain Management: helps company in managing its supply chain by proper planning, sourcing, production, delivery and return of items. It also helps the firm in generating demand forecasts for its product and developing sourcing and manufacturing plans for that product. Its benefits are improved customer service, responsiveness, cash utilization and cost reduction
Customer Relationship Management: CRM helps firms to maximize the benefits of customer assets. It can be classified as operational or analytical. Operational CRM refers to customer facing applications like sales force automation and Analytical CRM deals with analyzing the customer data to provide information for improving the business performance. Its benefits are increased customer satisfaction, reduce direct marketing cost and more effective marketing.
Describe the challenges of global supply chains and how Internet technology can help companies manage them better.
Firms use intranets to improve coordination among their internal supply chain processes, and extranets to coordinate supply chain processes shared with their business partners. Using intranets and extranets, all members of the supply chain can instantly communicate with each other, using up-to-date information to adjust purchasing, logistics, manufacturing, packaging, and schedules. A manager can use a Web interface to tap into suppliers’ systems to determine whether inventory and production capabilities match demand for the firm’s products. Business partners can use Web-based supply chain management tools to collaborate online with suppliers and customers. Sales representatives can access suppliers’ production schedules and logistics information to monitor customers’ order status. The Internet has introduced new ways of managing warehousing, shipping, and packaging based on access to supply chain information that can give companies an edge in delivering goods and services at a reasonable cost.
Distinguish between a push-based and pull-based model of supply chain management and explain how contemporary supply chain management systems facilitate a pull-based model.
Push-based supply chain is based on production master schedules which are based on forecasting from product demands. Pull-based supply chain is based on actual customer orders or purchases so that suppliers can product that amount which is required by the customers. Pull system is better because there will no wastages.
Describe how partner relationship management (PRM) and employee relationship management (ERM) are related to customer relationship management (CRM)?
PRM uses same data, tools and systems as CRM to enhance collaboration between a company and its selling partners. If a company do not sell directly to customers but rather works through distributors or retailers, PRM helps these channels sell to customers directly. ERM software deals with employee issues that are closely related to CRM such as setting objectives, employee performance management, performance-based compensation and employees training
Describe the tools and capabilities of customer relationship management software for sales, marketing, and customer service.
Sales: The sales force automation module helps sales staff to increase their productivity by focusing sales on profitable customers, it also provide sales prospect and contact information, sales quote, product information etc. Better coordination between sales, marketing and delivery department.
Customer Service: Tools to make more efficient call centres, help desks and staff support, include capabilities for assigning and managing customer service requests and also include web-based self-service capabilities.
Marketing: supports direct marketing campaigns by providing campaigns by providing capabilities for capturing prospects and customer data, providing product and service information. Tools for analyzing marketing and customer data, identifying profitable and non-profitable customers and identifying opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling and bundling.
You have been hired by Santori, Inc., a small company that imports and distributes an Italian sparkling water. The company is interested in what benefits an enterprise system would bring. Would an enterprise system be appropriate for this company? What steps would you take in determining this?
For smaller companies enterprise software packages should be used because enterprise systems are expensive. Therefore to implement an enterprise system in an economical manner a hosted enterprise application must be used. In order to determine appropriateness of Enterprise system for Santori I will first analyze the existing business processes, whether they are meeting the efficiency and gains competition with other businesses in their niche. Then I will review the existing hosted applications to check whether they match up with Santori’s. Thus it is important to compare the cost of instituting the new business processes with the benefits and cost savings.
List and describe the information requirements of HPC’s new management system. What problems was the new system designed to solve?
Information Requirement
Problem was the new system designed to solved
Reliable report
Report that are able to accurately measure management performance and provide useful, accurate information for increasing sales and reducing costs.
Unsanitized Data
Report must be up to date, no need to sanitize to look better to senior management
Fast Report
Anytime access to report and from anywhere
Enterprise wide visiblity
Can access and share data easily across the various business units and fucntions
To what extent were “people” problems affecting management decision making at HPC? What were some of the management, organisation and technology issues that had to be addressed by the new system? How did the systems’s designers make the system more people friendly?
The HPC managers were playing with the numbers and preparing stale reports so as to make their department look better to senior managers and presented the reports in periodic intervals. Managers were delaying the reports and do not wanted to be overloaded with unnecessary data.
The new system should be user-friendly, show updated information in meetings, provide access to data at any time with more accuracy and timelier picture of organisation’s performance.
The system is designed people-friendly by providing access to multiple locations, user friendly screen and data entry forms, easy and simple updations, easy troubleshooting and more efficient.
What role did end users play in developing HPC’s new system? How did the project team make sure users were involved? What would have happened to the project if they had not done this?
The end users played the role in helping the project information systems department by providing them the existing report that they already used.
The project team ensured that the users attended training program for accessing new system. They also encouraged the new users to start using the new system and discussed the benefits of using new system. The information system department also ran campaigns to ensure that the users are using the system in most effective way.
If it has not been done than the new system might fail and will not achieve the management objective and project will be a white elephant and the result will be wastage of time and money.
What other steps did HPC take to make sure the system was successful?
The various approaches are:
Phased approach: To implement the new system HPC used phased approach. HPC waited till the company get use to new ERP system and confidence in data quality and collection and processing methods.
Benchmarking: HPC emphasized the importance of benchmarking with other companies before designing and implementing the executive facing system
What types of system-building methods and tools did HPC use for building its system?
SAP Business object Dashboards: is a drag and drop visualisation tool used for performance management, planning reporting query and providing access to self-service access to data from database excel spreadsheets.
SAP business Objects web intelligence: it is an ad-hoc query reporting and analysis tool used to create queries.
What were the benefits of the new system? How did it change the way Honam ran its business? How successful was this system solution.
Benefits: The benefits are timeline decisions, personalised delivery of information, measurable watch-up indicators across all business areas and improved accessibility and readability.
Now executives are no longer limited to stale data in an outdated presentation format. The system is very successful and helps to solve the problems occurring at HPC. The system reduces the time required to collect process and track the data so that rapid executive decision making take place. The HPC information system is now ready for global information sharing as the company expands.
This system solution was successful for HPC as it gave the company a competitive advantage.
You are consulting for the information technology division of a state university to guide and facilitate the design of a new system for handling college applications, which has previously been handled entirely with a paper-based process. They would like to set up a system by which prospective students can apply online. Describe in detail their first steps and any studies they should perform before designing the new information system.
The college should perform system analysis, by identifying the primary owners and users, problem of existing system, examining the documents and procedures. Feasibility study to check whether the proposed system is feasible and achievable from financial, technical and organizational standpoint. Should identify several alaternative solutions that organization can pursue and the process then assess the feasibility of each.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of prototyping? Describe the steps in prototyping. Give at least two circumstances under which prototyping might be useful.
Prototyping gives proper clarity and feel of functionality and suggest changes and modifications to the users. Its disadvantage is that needs to much user involvement and too many changes can disturb the rhythm of development team. It is useful in Waterfall model.
Describe the advantages and disadvantages of using outsourcing for building information systems.
Benefits: Through outsourcing a firm can have skills, resources and assets which client do not have, cheaper than hiring, training and maintain the in-house staff. Through offshore outsourcing the costs has reduced.
Disadvantage: Firms hiring outsourcers are underestimating the cost of identifying and evaluating the vendors, transitioning to a new vendor and cost involved in improving the internal software development methods to match those of vendors.
Some have said that the best way to reduce system development costs is to use application software packages or fourth-generation tools. Do you agree? Why or why not?
The decision to purchase a fourth generation tools depends on various factors like whether the packages are vailable in market, are able to solve 80% of system’s functional requirement. Wheteher they are compatibel with current orgnaisation’s system and cost of purchasing, installing and maintaining should not be more than cost of custome development and maintenance.
References
Camilo Amracy. 2012. Building information systems. [Online] Available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/105081588/Building-Information-Systems#scribd
Honam Petrochemical’s Quest for Better Management Reports.
Lazarus Payne. IBM Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZITC). [Online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPZrkeHMDJ8
KL Manu. 2014. Honam Petrochemical Quest for Better Management Reports. [Online] Available at https://www.scribd.com/doc/221423102/Honam-Petrochemical-Quest-for-Better-Management-Reports#scribd
Koffka Khan. 2012. Tutorial 9. [Online] Available at https://www2.sta.uwi.edu/~anikov/info1400/lectures/09-ITF-tutorial.pdf
Maryam Ahmadi. 2015. IBM Zone Trusted Information Channel (ZTIC). [Online] Available at https://www.termpaperwarehouse.com/essay-on/Ibm-Zone-Truated/362690
Sinosteel Strengthens Business Management with Oracle Apps. [Online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5rBGljckjw
Summit Electric Lights up with a new ERP system. [Online] Available at www.panayainc.com
Williams. 2010. Build, Manage and Globalise projects. IE 332 Computing in Industrial Engineering. Spring 2010.
Yuri Brigadir. 2014. Prototype Model: Disadvantage and Advantage. [Online] Available at https://www.ianswer4u.com/2011/11/prototype-model-advantages-and.html#axzz3aC5KBCDd
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