Strategic Process Of ERP Implementation For Data – Supreme Dry Cleaners

The Requirement for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System

Supreme Dry Cleaners are one of the biggest names of Sydney. The company operates six stores in different locations, namely-Earlwood, Ashfield, Rose Bay, Surrey Hills and Drummoyne. The laundry, cleaning and delivery services are being run in a traditional format. The Supreme Dry Cleaners need to implement the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) System for recording the data in an efficient way (Chen, Razi and Rienzo, 2011).

The company needs to anticipate the laundry counts, delivery schedules, orders and provides Laundry management services with its multiple branches to operate with efficiency.

Following points are enumerated below-

1. Invoice ERP system-ERP systems are growing rapidly and the company needs to identify the need of implementing an Invoicing ERP software. The printing and re-printing of invoices and application of Invoice templates is a difficult process that requires the Supreme Dry Cleaners to understand the need for an ERP system. The company needs to hire the talented managers that can effectively work on the ERP system and manage the store. The company needs to understand the significance of intuitive applications and documenting the stock counts requires an ERP system (Hofmann, 200).
2. Billing system- The management of the core billing process is a cumbersome task. The evolution of ERP billing system has changed the way the organizations are running their business. With the launch of customer relationship management systems (CRM), the management can manage the laundry opportunities. The ERP billing system is integral to the success of an organization. The company needs to comprehend the investment prospects. Supreme Dry Cleaners have to establish the database strategy that can manage each laundry customer item. The ERP system have been well-established in the market from 1990s and comprises of a sorting technique that can monitor the product returns over a period of time (Khaparde, 2012).
3. Customer Relationship Management and ERP Modules-The Company must aim at decreasing the expenses and must develop policies for customizing the customer orders. Customer Relationship Management (ERP) is a fast software that takes less than 1 minute to accept the orders. The company employee will be able to search the customer through the phone number or a customer order number if the customer has come to the store twice. The management of the company can charge the payment through a credit card or cash. The ERP system is simple to use and employees can adapt to the system easily. The CRM (ERP) will solve the problem of order mix-ups and the employees will know which order to be resolved first. The customers of Supreme Dry Cleaners are provided with accurate time of receiving their orders. The client does need to wait for a longer period of time and order are processed in an easy way. The Customer Relationship Management (ERP) software processes the cleaning of clothes rapidly (??????? and Kharakoz, 2015).  

The Supreme Dry Cleaners, Laundry Company has been receiving increased numbers of customer orders when compared with past years. The company needs to manage the requests at all the multiple branches. In order to do this, the company needs to understand the best action plan that can manage the customer orders at a reduced expense. The company needs to focus on delivering the value to the customers and manage the customer’s requirements through conducting an ERP feasibility study.

  How to begin with the ERP analysis is the prime question? The company needs to apprehend the current traditional approach of handling the customer orders at various Laundry branches (Beheshti, 2006). Foremost, the company needs to find about the benefits and difficulties experienced in handling the customer queries. The answer lies in implementing an ERP software that can handle the customer orders at a fast pace and data management can be done in a shorter span of time. The Supreme Dry Cleaners Laundry needs to gauge the aggregate demand and determine the return on investment, considering the present cost outlay. It is to be mentioned without the technical expertise the Enterprise Resource Planning System cannot be executed within the company. The company is required to hire the best ERP expertise and trainers to train the present employees of the company and come up with an innovative approach to solve the risks associated within the system (Y?lmaz and Ozcan, 2011).

The feasibility analysis of the ERP project must not be undertaken for a lengthier period. The CEO of the company needs to carry out an assessment of the present conditions and the future circumstances, conditions applicable with respect to cost. One of the key aspects that cannot be ignored are that the IT developers and management committee may not take the same course of actions, and this needs to be resolved with the best possible ERP recommendations/or outcomes. The CEO of the company must take the employees’ opinions before the installation of the ERP system begins. The CEO of the company must form an ERP assessment committee that must find out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the present installed system. The different alternatives to ERP implantation must be considered and possible outcomes must be found. The company needs to take the feedback from all the employees and form periodic goals from now onwards. These roles and responsibilities must be distributed within the organization and primary elements of the installation project must be given due importance (Candra, 2011).

A Feasibility Analysis

The simplest theory behind providing value to the customers is streamlining the business processes and described strategy. The present study is undertaken for Supreme Dry Cleaners Laundry which aims at providing the laundry, dry cleaning services to the community at large. The company follows a traditional invoicing system and records all the transactions. The Laundry Company needs to follow the coordinated approach towards the measurement of different variables that are affecting its overall returns. The company needs to adopt the process management theory to cognize the different variables such as customer order number, date in, date out and total cost payable by the customer. The main challenge is to ensure a smooth flow of different operational decision making strategy and performance management business processes (Hustad, Haddara and Kalvenes, 2016).

An overview has been provided for the different issues arising out of the misalignment of business processes and organizational strategy-

1. The organizations may undergo through the business process disconnect with the strategy formulation. Due to which there are no concise goals and objectives in the organization resulting in the management practice which is not favorable for the company. The Company needs to have an understanding of the conceptual views. The identification of a strategy has to be done with a strategic mapping and must be shaped with operational value chains. A practical framework must be created within the organization setting for performance innovation and improvement (Al-Sabri, Al-Mashari and Chikh, 2018).
2. Detailed business models are required in a corporate setting for streamlining the business process and organizational strategy. The non-existence of inter-relationships between the operational processes, IT Processes and business processes creates coalition with the business management activities. Strategic planning is one of the key concepts that must not be ignored by the company. A specific direction needs to be followed and adopted by the company for adding value in the operational chain. The company needs to define the set criteria according to the product or services offered to the customers. The strategy implementation in the corporate organization must enhance the interaction with its employees and reduce the errors arising out of business processes. The Supreme Dry Cleaners may use the BPM (Business Process Management) tools that can facilitate the strategic implementation in the corporate structure. The different stages of strategic management process must be adhered and information must be made accessible to the employees (Chang, Ok and Park, 2008).

Integration of all business functions into a single system is possible through the implementation of ERP in an organization. The company must comprehend the benefits and limitations associated with the BPR and ERP customization. With reference to Supreme Dry Cleaners, the benefits can be enumerated as follows- 

1. The smooth transition of workflow across all functional departments is ensured through the implementation of BPR and ERP in the corporate structure of an organization. The senior management personnel are able to analyze the information with the unique business reporting system. Cross-functional department activities can be analyzed Enterprise Resource Planning system (Supramaniam, Abdullah and Ponnan, 2014).
2. The Company must be involved with the development of an eCommerce site and integrating the same with ERP. The business processes must be streamlined with the ERP and effective data management is possible. The different modules of ERP system must be implemented as per the requirement of the organization. The company needs to keep track of all the transactions and this possible through the ERP systems. BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) and ERP make order tracking, inventory tracking, sales forecasting easy and user-friendly. The organization needs to develop the centralized security guidelines that are applicable to the ERP systems.

Risks Associated with BPR and ERP –

1. The cost associated with the configuration of a new system is too high. The IT team needs to find do the testing and assessment of ERP within the overall organization and find the best possible solution that can fit with the needs of the management. The company needs to find the payback cost that went on for the implementation of a new ERP business model into the business. The company may not be able to recover the total investment made due to the limitation of employee training or the exhaustive BPR systems and ERP projects (Ravindrakumar Rajput et al., 2015).
2. The data migration is a very time-consuming and hectic process. The company may incur additional costs like-up gradation of WAN, formation of a new IT infrastructure and recruiting new employees in the organization. This may increase the total cost of the ERP project. The companies have to work at the discretion of the single vendor and this increases the disparity among the organization and the relevant party. The assessment of ERP system before implementation is a critical step and this is not possible with the testing done at the initial level (Mahmoodzadeh, Jalalinia and Nekui Yazdi, 2009).  

The Supreme Dry Cleaners have inter-connected business processes that are linked to the achievement of a delivery of a product or service to the client. The company needs to achieve the goals and objectives and list all its current business processes for the installation of ERP in its organization.

1. Product Service/Delivery-The Laundry is operating via traditional systems. The company is worried about the data management services and inter-linked variables where the value automatically generates the ‘null’ value. The CEO of the company needs to understand the importance of delivering value oriented services to the customers where the orders are generated automatically. The company must plan to develop an E-commerce site that can link all the services online. The customers’ orders can be generated in a user-friendly way and the time-in, time-out data sets are easily recorded on the handsets. The customer just needs to log in to the E-commerce site and enter the customer order id number or name or phone number via which the system recognizes the customer and sales generated over the system (Fui-Hoon Nah, 2004).
2. Customer Acquisition-The Supreme Dry Laundry aims at reducing costs and implement workflows that can enhance customer acquisition. ERP has been popular since 1990’s, but the organization is unable to realize the centric value of this software. This is an in-built technology system that can easily handle millions of customers and retain the records. The company needs to incur one time implementation cost. The automation of a process is a tough task and the company needs to focus on BPR Techniques (van der Aalst, 2004).
3. Quality Improvement and Change Management-Transforming through a conventional set of IT systems to modern approach requires a hefty amount of investment at all the functional levels. The Company needs to prepare for change management practices and ensure quality at all levels. The quality improvement is achieved at all functional units only when the central decision making body exists within the organizational setting. At times, the company may not have the he adequate expertise to offer the fact based solution as required. The need is to make a difference with the right approach and management practice that not only result in profit generation and satisfaction of clients. With a viewpoint of implementing the ERP at a central level, the company must evaluate all the costs associated and measurement of defect variables is must. The CEO of the company must record the changeover time and mapping of business processes in a precise way (Nadarajah and Syed A. Kadir, 2016).       

1. Process Mapping is one of the techniques that must be making the effective decision making in the organizational context. Business processes must be analyzed effectively and proposed changes in the system must be implemented effectively. Customer queries are quite extensive and proposed business model must be effectively handled by the ERP system and employees. This is in reference to continuous improvement of the system and IT scenario.
2. The purpose of the project must be enhancing the formal and informal processes. The company must be able to create the different steps for BPR and ERP. The strategic plan of action must be outlined and an evaluation analysis must be provided to the employees of the organization (Trkman et al., 2015).
3. The company must get involved in conducting the market research and encourage employees to communicate in an efficient way. The formal strategic steps must be documented and presented to the management. The company must have a procedure for submitting the invoice and aim at reducing the overall costs.
4. The resolution of a complaint is a significant matter of concern. The missed deadlines, increased stress and inaccurate data management are some of the prime reasons behind the installation of ERP system. The resources present must be effectively utilized to bring the maximum output (Marjanovic and Freeze, 2012).  
5. An impact assessment program must be adopted by the company and the proposed changes must be defined. The Supreme Dry Laundry needs to identify the present and the future conditions, all conditions applicable. This involves defining the investment plans in advance and risk mitigation steps. The company needs to decide whether to proceed with the changes or not? A lot of effort is required on the management part to enforce the changes. The analysis must be focused on the assessment of the people who are more likely or least to get impacted?

The scope of the ERP project must be defined in order to analyze the change management theory (Blasini and Leist, 2013).

Conclusion

The Supreme Dry Laundry needs to understand that an ERP project is undertaken with a need to bring a change in the company. The company needs to focus on reducing the time of implementing the Enterprise Resource Planning system. A detailed Business process re-engineering plan along with the strategic plan must be evaluated to the management committee and reviewed. Management of customer queries is an extensive process and investment in a new business model requires a lot of efforts and critical thinking approach. The project must come within the given budget and experience (Seethamraju, 2012). 

References

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