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You have now arrived at a point where you are ready to present your findings to your senior management team and convince them of your recommendations

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You have now arrived at a point where you are ready to present your findings to your senior management team and convince them of your recommendations. Major activities in this final stage would include user acceptance, time frame, completion of initial training, and institute user support among others. Your final report (max 2000 words, excluding references and appendices) should include the following sections:

1. Coversheet
2. Table of Contents
3. Introduction
4. An overview of the key findings of your needs assessment (completed in Module 5)
5. A prioritized list of system functionality and implementation considerations needed to meet the objectives identified by the senior management team (completed in Module 7)
6. Description of specific products/solutions that your team recommends for implementation & recommendations
7. Conclusion
8. References
9. Appendices

Course Project Information The Situation You and your team have recently been hired as business analysts to optimize the business processes by implementing a new enterprise information system. Your team will choose which organization to focus on for this implementation. The goal of this implementation is to enhance organizational effectiveness and efficiency and help improve the competitive positioning of the company. For this assignment, your team will be in the role of external consultants. It is important to provide the senior management team with information that is tailored to the organization of your choosing. You will need to explain how the implementation of this enterprise system will be of value to the organization and how it will align with their organization's strategy and objectives. In order to prepare your report, you will need to undertake research. However, you should ensure that you use the information gathered to illustrate your argument; you should not simply describe your research findings. Please ensure all sources are appropriately referenced with APA standards. Objectives After completing a needs analysis of the organization’s vision and objectives, your team has been asked to prepare a report for the senior management team to recommend an enterprise system architecture to help the company achieve the following objectives: • • • • Improve process integration Improve management reporting and decision making (visual analytics & predictive analytics) Increase efficiency of cross-functional business processes Improve customer satisfaction and retention Project Brainstorm Discussion In Module 1, you will review the course project and deliverables that will be due in the following weeks of this course. Discuss with your classmates the ideas you may have regarding this project. What types of enterprise systems do you think you may use as an implementation? Do you have any prior knowledge or experience (even as an end user) with implementing enterprise-wide systems? What has the impact been on you as an end user or within any other additional roles in your workplace? What advice would you have if you were an implementation project manager based on your own experiences? Your team is required to turn in a comprehensive report describing your recommendation to your management. The topic must be approved by the instructor in Module 5. You can refer to Chapters 10-13, as well as the technology guides, in your textbook as a starting point for your project. This project includes the following graded deliverables: Module 5 – Proposal Outline & Needs Assessment Proposal Outline You will submit your desired topic to your instructor for approval as a one-page bulleted outline. See the required report sections listed below for your required items. Needs Assessment In addition, you will complete a draft of your Enterprise Information System Implementation Plan where you will include the project title as well as project details that include the project team, sponsors, and core functional areas. Overall, this 3-4 page needs assessment draft should include the industry type and name of the company you selected with a description of its current systems and the problem you will try to address. Please ensure all sources are appropriately referenced with APA standards. Refer to the following points for some guidance in preparing your first draft. Core Business Functional Areas • • Core business functional areas include marketing and sales, accounting and finance, human resources, supply chain management. These areas may have outstanding requests for (CRM, ERP, KMS, SCM, etc.) Purpose and Objectives • • • • Current Situation Business Objectives Project Objectives Proposed approach Project Scope • • Scope Out of Scope Module 7 – Tool Selection and Implementation Plan Overview Your group will need to explain how the implementation of this enterprise system will be of value to the organization and how it will align with their organization's strategy and objectives. In order to prepare your assignment, you will need to undertake research. As the business analysts, your group will devise an implementation plan to help management react faster to market conditions and get the right data/information and knowledge to the right people when needed. Decision-making would be improved along with the competitive position of the organization in the market. Tool Selection and Implementation Plan Your team will prepare a prioritized list of system functionality and implementation considerations needed to meet the objectives identified by the senior management team. You will present the design layout of your proposed solution. You will describe the methodology, architecture, customization (if it is an option), IT strategy, and human factors, in addition to selecting your information systems. In preparing the report, the senior management team would like your team to compare the products/solutions offered by at least TWO vendors of enterprise application software. Your justification of particular vendor(s) should include a scored feature analysis and a high-level cost/benefit analysis. You should state any assumptions that you make and provide the necessary explanations to back up your recommendations (3-5 pages maximum). Please ensure all sources are appropriately referenced with APA standards. Refer to the following points for some guidance in preparing your second draft: • • • • • • Link to Organizational Strategy Mitigation Strategies Assumptions Issues/Risks Resources Needed (Staffing, Hardware / Software, Funding) Comparison of two systems & cost/benefit analysis Module 8 - Final Report At this stage, your team will be ready to present your findings to your senior management team and convince them of your recommendations. Major activities in this final stage would include user acceptance, time frame, completion of initial training, and institute user support, among others. Your final report (max 2500 words, excluding references and appendices) should include the following sections: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Coversheet Table of Contents Introduction An overview of the key findings of your needs assessment (completed in Module 5) A prioritized list of system functionality and implementation considerations needed to meet the objectives identified by the senior management team (completed in Module 7) Description of specific products/solutions that your team recommends for implementation & recommendations Conclusion References Appendices Always ensure that you use the information gathered to illustrate your argument; you should not simply describe your research findings. Please ensure all sources are appropriately referenced with APA standards. Upon submission, your assignment will automatically be evaluated through Turnitin, a plagiarism detection tool. Your paper will be checked against a database of millions of written works and provide feedback on originality. You may view your originality report; however, you will not be permitted to submit your paper a second time. A score of 10% matching or lower is allowed, anything higher is not acceptable for any of the Turnitin assignments in this course. When answering questions, do not repeat the question in your essay. Ensure your work is entirely your own and cite your sources, if applicable! Review the Final Group Project Rubric associated with Activity 8.4 for detailed grading criteria. Please note, you will be also required to submit a peer evaluation on each of your team members at the end of the project. 1 Proposal Outline and Needs Assessment Team 6 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University MGMT320 2021.4.17 2 Enterprise Information System Implementation The Outline Topic Redesigning Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) modules in financial and accounting, human resources, sales and marketing and the supply chain management to improve the automation process in Saxon LLC. Background Saxon LLC is a plastic manufacturing company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The company relies on enterprise resource planning software for an array of needs. ERP systems have contributed significantly to the success of businesses in numerous ways. ERPs have mainly been critical in automation processes within organizations (Ali & Miller, 2017). However, the available technology limited the scope of ERPs as far as automation of processes is anything to go by. For instance, back-office automation processes were the order of the day. Currently, institutions have the leeway to customize tools for the all-important reason of improving performances in different areas of an organization, such as: • Finance and accounting • Sales and marketing • Human resources • Supply chain management 3 There are several examples involving customization that organizations can benchmark to improve different functional areas of an ERP. These include: • Finance and accounting: redesigning ERP tools to accommodate revenue report visualizations, real-time billing, and payments. There is also the issue of updating the organization’s financial statements as well as forecasting that the current ERPs are handling. • Sales and marketing: expansion of details pertaining to sales order which is further enhanced through the inclusion of shipping address, rate of taxation, discounts, serialization mechanism to enable serializing of items for purposes of tracking items while on transit. Also, streamlining inventory management is an essential factor that needs to be improved because it helps in reducing the risk of out-of-stock. • Human resources: customization to include employee training, ranking, and rewarding. There is a need for organizations to have a standard mechanism for rewarding employees for eliminating patronage and favoritism. Day-to-day management of employees and their affairs would be important if included in the system. For instance, weekly attendance reports and accompanying visualizations would make the work of the human resource manager easier when reviewing productivity reports and promotion factors. Similarly, discipline issues, as well as common problems such as redundancies, would be well managed by the ERP tools if allowed to do so. The overall advantage of the inclusion of all the above into the many modules and functions of an ERP system is because of the homogenous treatment of the outcome (Jagoda, & Samaranayake, 2017). The system only interacts with the data to give an outcome. 4 • Supply chain management: this is the area where ERPs are needed than any other area in an organization. Supply chain right from inventory to the distribution channels and management of partners require faster tracking of data as well as making sense out of the same data as quickly as possible. Customizing the current tools to improve tracking and timely delivery of goods and services is no longer a competitive advantage because all businesses or organizations have guaranteed it. This is because the role of the information system in the supply chain is interpreted as the enhancement of client retention and the probability of repeating business deals. Also, the ERP system, when improved, would help in the analysis of the customers' buying habits, creating a better customer experience. Analytics help businesses cultivate their best customers and understand their needs more. Together with the marketing team, account managers can play an essential role by offering discounts and special offers for loyal customers on certain products they usually buy by tracking their history of purchases. Moreover, sending them emails shows how important they are to the company, such as wishing them a happy birthday. 5 Needs Assessment Improving the ERP performance of Saxon Company Details of the project Project Team • • Sponsors The Project The Company Manager Management Project Team Core Functional Areas • accounting • Leader • IT Developers • Marketing Team • Account managers Finance and Sales and marketing • Human resources • Supply chain management 6 Purpose and Objectives The current situation The company adopted its current ERP system more than two years ago. The system has been formidable in a number of ways. However, the system has had a number of limitations. Some of these include the inability to track orders, payments, revenues as well as managing bills. Also, there are several needs addressed in the outline that the company would want to have within its system. The company's ERP equally does not support the timely delivery of goods and services. Business Objectives To redesign the company’s ERP modules in financial and accounting, human resources, sales and marketing and the supply chain management to improve the automation process in Saxon LLC. Project Objectives The following are the specific areas the redesign process will target: • To redesign the ERP tools to accommodate revenue report visualizations, real-time billing, and payments. There is also the issue of updating the organization's financial statements as well as forecasting that the current ERPs are handling. • To redesign the company’s ERP tools to expand the details pertaining to sales order which is further enhanced through the inclusion of shipping address, rate of taxation, discounts, serialization mechanism to enable serializing of items for purposes of tracking items while on transit. • To customize the tools to include employee training, ranking, and rewarding. There is a 7 need for organizations to have a standard mechanism for rewarding employees for eliminating patronage and favoritism. • Reengineering Supply Chain and sales module to improve tracking, monitoring, and timely delivery of goods and services. Also, to increase customer’s retention and satisfaction. Proposed Approach The development process favorable for this kind of work is the Agile Development Method since it accommodates inputs from different independent teams while at the same time enables revisiting and making amends to development stages already attended to. Similarly, the Agile Method is incremental in nature hence allows modification of user requirements as development continues. Project Scope The extent of this project covers the already highlighted improvements touching on four areas of the system, which include finance and accounting, sales and marketing, human resources, and supply chain management. 8 References Ali, M., & Miller, L. (2017). ERP system implementation in large enterprises–a systematic literature review. Journal of Enterprise Information Management. Jagoda, K., & Samaranayake, P. (2017). An integrated framework for ERP system implementation. International Journal of Accounting & Information Management. 1 Tool Selection and Implementation Plan Team 6 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University MGMT320 2021.5.4 2 Software Management The main objective of the management was to redesign the Company's ERP modules in various departments of the organization, including finance, accounting, human resources, sales and marketing, and the supply chain. In essence, the project aims at improving the Company's automation process. It is essential to note that software is increasingly changing in the face of businesses today. As a result, businesses need to ensure that the transition and embrace changes with speed. Businesses are required to innovate; this, however, is significantly determined by the speed at which the software can change. The methodology identified for the implementation of ERP is agile. It is essential to note that enterprise resource planning solutions are a vital aspect of any organization. However, the implementation and transformation aspects of many ERPs remain time-consuming and complex. The agile methodology holds the potential of streamlining ERP projects. ERP projects are usually considered too big and complex to be managed with the agile methodology; however, this is not the case (Bingi et al, 1999). The agile methodology makes it easy to implement ERP processes throughout the organization. Saxon LLC stands a chance to benefit immensely through this integration and implementation. It is vital to note that the Saxon LLC ERP software program is to be implemented with the agile methodology. However, the agile methodology presents some significant risks that need to be assessed before, during, and after the project. First, the organization is likely to face budget risks as a result of an ineffective cost estimation process. The agile methodology assumes constant changes to suit the needs and wants of the consumer. As a result, the budget and cost estimation might be more than the initial plan. Secondly, the organization might experience 3 scope changes during the development. This will consequently lead to a shift in timelines, deliverables, and budget increases. This is known as scope creep; scope creep is an issue since it interferes with the initial plan of the project hence directly influences the actualization of the set goals and objectives. ERP systems exist to support the business processes of the organization. As a result, organizations need to define the optimal processes and then leverage technology to actualize their set goals and objectives. To overcome these presenting risks, the organization needs to identify and implement processes that will ensure success and effectiveness when it comes to ERP implementation. For instance, Saxon LLC can start by treating the implementation as a business transformation imitative rather than a technological project. There is a distinct difference between projects treated as business initiatives and those treated as technology projects (Shanks, 2000). When the organization treats this project as a business initiative, they are more likely to take each phase seriously. Things such as the budget and scope of the project will be highly defined; even in the face of changes, the organization will be able to efficiently conduct analyses to determine the best effective measures to implement. Secondly, the organization can leverage ERP experts in the process; Saxon LLC wants to transform almost every department within the organization. As a result, outsourcing or employing experienced and skilled personnel to help with the process can prove effective. To successfully implement ERP, the organization will require a significant amount of resources. First, the implementation necessitates financial resources; Saxon LLC will require investments from C-level executives. Implementing ERP will require investments in the form of time, money, and resources. The organization needs to consult with the stakeholders, prepare a budgetary presentation and obtain the necessary funds required for the successful 4 implementation of the system. Secondly, the organization will require human resources; this implementation will only prove successful if the people behind it are skilled and knowledgeable. Implementing ERP using the agile methodology is often considered complex. As a result, the organization needs to identify knowledgeable and skilled personnel to help with the implementation. The two vendors identified were SAP and Microsoft. Microsoft has been a leader in the ERP software market for many years as a result of its product offerings and dynamics. Some of the most popular ERP solutions have originated from Microsoft and include Dynamics NAV and Dynamics AX. On the other hand, SAP has over 42,000 customers and operates in more than 180 countries (Elbhari et al, 2019). They offer various solutions for seemingly any organization size and people worldwide. Microsoft is considered the better vendor as it offers better features at an affordable price. To understand the advantages of ERP implementation, it is essential to consider the cost-benefit analysis. In this case, the benefits and disadvantages of ERP implementation will be considered. There are various benefits that can be accrued from the implementation of ERP within the organization. First, the business will benefit in terms of enhanced business reporting. The organization will receive better reporting tools with real-time information. The database system will be integrated into every business process. Secondly, the business will benefit in terms of better customer service. The customers will have better access to information, fast response rates, and improved time delivery. Additionally, the order accuracy will be enhanced. One important factor to note is that all the business processes will be streamlined. The networking process of the organization will greatly be enhanced, which will consequently influence how the business operates and functions. 5 Lastly, the data and information security in the organization will be enhanced. It is essential to note that the ERP implementation is expected to influence a significant number of departments in the organization. As a result, the flow of information will be enhanced; this necessitates security which will be provided through the integration of the ERP system. One cost associated with the implementation of ERP is slow software implementation. Adding a new ERP system can often consume time, especially when dealing with outdated software. It is common for some ERP implementation to take up to two years in implementation. This is highly dependent on the scope of the software. Secondly, there is a possibility of experiencing slow data migration. This might negatively influence the business processes and consequently influence the functionality of the business. 6 References Bingi, P., Sharma, M. K., & Godla, J. K. (1999). Critical issues affecting an ERP implementation. IS Management, 16(3), 7-14. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1201/1078/43197.16.3.19990601/31310.2?journalCode =uism20 Elbahri, F. M., Al-Sanjary, O. I., Ali, M. A., Naif, Z. A., Ibrahim, O. A., & Mohammed, M. N. (2019, March). Difference comparison of SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft solutions based on cloud ERP systems: A review. In 2019 IEEE 15th International Colloquium on Signal Processing & Its Applications (CSPA) (pp. 65-70). IEEE. Shanks, G. (2000). A model of ERP project implementation. Journal of information Technology, 15(4), 289-303. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02683960010009051 Shang, S., & Seddon, P. B. (2000). A comprehensive framework for classifying the benefits of ERP systems. AMCIS 2000 proceedings, 39. https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1452&context=amcis2000