Page 168 - DCAP302_ENTERPRISE_RESOURCE_PLANNING

Enterprise Resource Planning

notes provides the clarity to foster understanding and communication among all parties involved,
facilitates effective and high quality maintenance support to the system users or stakeholder
in general, and therefore helps in reducing the effort and cost of maintenance. Although there
are several standard software maintenance models, they are designed for internally maintained
software. There is a lack of standards for maintenance model for large commercial off-the-shelf
software, particularly ERP, which is “co-maintained” by both the employing-organization and
the software vendor.



Case Study ten guidelines for strategic mis planning

Robert V. Head, a consultant on MIS planning, provided ten guidelines to help MIS
executives who are on the threshold of experimenting with strategic MIS planning:
1. Make provisions in the systems plan for taking small steps rapidly. “Don’t have a
plan with goals extending so far into the future that there is no way of tracking it.”
2. Develop alternative plans when significant contradictory trends are discerned in
business objectives or technology.
3. Interface the systems plan with the corporate plan, modifying both appropriately.
4. Document the systems plan in a format intelligible to top management and arrange
for personal presentation.
5. Establish a formal mechanism for review and reiteration of the systems plan.
6. Develop a system for tabulating and forecasting utilization of installed data
processing (DP) equipment.
7. Fix the organizational responsibility for systems planning.

8. Rotate the assignment of technical personnel to the planning staff in order to avoid
an “ivory tower aura.”
9. Budget for research and development.
10. Set up a comparative systems intelligence activity.
Question

1. What can be the drawback of having a formal system as mentioned in point 5?
2. Can transparency make organizational responsibility more effective?
Source: Himadri Barman, Centre for Management Studies, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh 786 004, Assam.

8.6 summary

l z Different companies may install the same ERP software in totally different processes.
l z The same company may implement different ERP software in the same approach. There
are three commonly used methodologies for implementing ERP systems.
l z Companies layout a grand plan for their ERP implementation.
l z The installation of ERP systems of all modules happens across the entire organization at
once. The big bang approach promised to reduce the integration cost in the condition of
thorough and careful execution.
l z This method dominated early ERP implementations, it partially contributed the higher
rate of failure in ERP implementation. Today, not many companies dare to attempt it
anymore.

162 LoveLy professionaL university