ERP And Business Processes - A Case Study Of Wesfarmers, An Essay.

Introduction to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Discuss about the Strategic Information System Of Wesfarmers Company.

Important decisions of the company are being taken by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), this system also centralizes the data for those users who can access the system. To develop the business measures most of the companies use this systemic approach that is ERP, for the immediate and efficient result in their business. ERP also helps in creating a competitive advantage for an organization.it helps a company by providing cross-functional business processes to them. ERP also aids to the improvement in behavioral changes of the particular organization (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta, 2016). In any organization, Enterprise Resource Planning systems also personalize all the business methods according to the particular needs of the industry. Although ERP systems help any organization in so many ways it has some limitations too.it is possible to attack ERP systems due to lack of security and they are prone to hacker's attack like D-DOS attacks (IES 2016). Any hacker can easily attack the privacy of the system because of the old version of the system and minimum security. This report includes the fact how the Enterprise Resource Planning systems are used for a particular organization. This report also includes the details how Wesfarmers Company is using the ERP systems and how it is useful for them and how it helps in enhancing their business methods.

All the organizations perform different strategies and activities in order to achieve their business goals and all these activities which are performed in a systematic manner, therefore, are called Business Processes (Cassidy, 2016). There are some particular rules which Business Processes are composed of, and that should be followed by every organization. This also leads to the improvement of the economic value of the company as compared to their market competitors. It helps the company to maintain a particular value among the market. There have been so many changes in the globalization of the past so a company should give priority to handling all the business procedure effectively.

Manufacturing- this form of business process emphasizes on producing the better product quality wise on the demands of the buyers. In this particular business process, one has to focus on the development and maintenance of the produced item (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). In any new project, most of the times manufacturing include the external stakeholders in order to initiate a new deal. All the internal stakeholders, however, have to take care of the machinery and all other resources.
Finance-It deals with the processes of risk management in any organization according to their account status. All the billing procedures come under the financial business processes. Each and every day a company has to make a lot of transactions whether it is the payment received from the customers or the payment which has to be made by the company to others (Alamri, Almutiri, Ballahmar and Zafar, 2016).

Different Business Processes and Wesfarmers

Health- It comes under both government and private sector which includes different facilities and the charges varies according to the different type of treatment. For curing the disease the ill person is allowed to take the required drugs.so these processes emphasis on medically related assessments done for the betterment of a person who requires medical care. Banking-To ensures the safety of the customer's as well as employee's money banking processes is used as everyone wants to secure their assets present in their accounts. Banking involves two different type of processes which are credit and debt,

Travel-this includes organizing different outing, tours or expedition for all of them who wants to travel and enjoy the places they want to (Kecmanovic, Galliers, Henfridsson, Newell and Vidgen, 2014). Although due to a price hike, tourism companies are also going through many challenges.

Defense-this business process is based on the actions which are used during an emergency to protect one from getting harmed. For the safety of the citizens of a country, it is required.
*Public sector-it belongs to the government sector (Chofreh, Goni, Shaharoun, Ismail and Klemeš, 2014). The government has initiated so many policies and strategies in order to complete the needs of the citizens.

Human Resources-Human resources play a major role in a company they handle all the employees and their needs that are being hired by a company.

Among the all above-mentioned plans, the process that has been chosen is Manufacturing. Wesfarmers emphasis on providing the best products to their customers and is a Manufacturing company (Costa, Ferreira, Bento and Aparicio, 2016). Wesfarmers has different strategies and procedures to run their company without disturbing the whole system and that too simultaneously on a proper schedule. To satisfy the customers Wesfarmers is using a proper layout to run their business and to manage most of the important functions of company the Enterprise resource planning system will be helpful to the company. It also handles the Ever-increasing cost of the company in the market. An Enterprise resource planning system helps the company to grow their business in different areas of the country. It will also help the industry to gain the competitive advantage in the manufacturing field of the market.

Wesfarmers consist of the cooperative farmer's committee which served the rural community present in Western Australia. Wesfarmers mostly deals with the agricultural merchandise and deliver their services to village area as well as urban areas which are present in Australia.it is a leading Liquefied Petroleum Gas manufacturing industry in Australia exporting LPG to different countries (Eden, Sedera and Tan, 2014). Along with that, Wesfarmers also deals with several different business activities like, retailing, energy and insurance and industrial field etcetera. Wesfarmers provides their top services to their customers which allowed Wesfarmers to become a public company. Due to the developed and better qualities of product the company has now expanded their business to New-Zealand as well.

Wesfarmers Business Needs

In Wesfarmers, there is a significant change in business requirements as compared to what they used to be in the early phase when the company started. Now the company wants to grow their business by investing in different businesses like industrial, energy, retail and much more (Fleisher and Bensoussan, 2015). There are two categories in which Wesfarmers has divided their business the first one is retailing and the one includes energy, chemicals, and others. Wesfarmers business needs are mentioned below:-

The company has achieved its target by laying out a proper business plan and adapting different strategies. Wesfarmers has experienced a significant growth in their sales as well as revenue just by starting the Coles retailing and has become one of Australia's top leading retailer (Gelinas and Dull, 2008). With the help of the senior managers of Wesfarmers the company has achieved a great success in the form of increased economic value in all these past years by lots of hard-working 2010 after Wesfarmers started different businesses together, it was able to generate 58%  revenue. Because of their efforts and quality assured product the company was able to sell a great number of products and received many positive reviews.

All the staff members in an organization share a document which is composed of a set of statements and those statements mention the needs or requirements of the internal stakeholders as well as external stakeholders this is known as system requirements. It targets on collecting and focusing on what customer requires as well as it also emphasis on which hardware and software are required for the development of Enterprise Resource Planning system (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). It also stores all the functional as well as nonfunctional needs which will be helpful in developing the system and also stores the data of the users automatically and one can retrieve the information of any users in future whenever needed. This whole system is easily accessible and will work better for all the users providing the information smoothly making the system reliable.

Online shopping-online shopping allows the customer to get the product they need by making it easy for them and can make the payment by credit or debit cards or they can even get the product by paying the cash on delivery as well. Online shopping makes everything easy for the customers by making the payment options easy and giving so many options to buy from (Hall and James, 2014). Wesfarmers will also allow their customers to buy the products online,

System Requirements for ERP

Login/Register-In an ERP system all old users can easily get an access to a system just by entering their email address and the required password ensuring the authenticity of the users, but in the case of new users they have to provide some basic details like their phone number, email address, location, password etcetera. And then only they will be able to access the information.
Accessibility-All the users will be able to access the information in the software system.in order to make this experience easy for the users, an informational user manual will be provided to access the information easily and step by step (Hill, Jones, and Schilling, 2014).

Reliability-the system automatically detects if there’s any issue or fault in the system and also gets updated automatically.in this way it lowers the maintenance charges and allowing the users to rely on the system.

The product arrangements are required by relatively every organization if differentiating comprehensively. Programming framework expands work productivity of the business forms that occur in an organization. Other than that, organizations require viable methodologies which can help in making better systems (Hunton, McEwen and Wier, 2015). Determination of right merchant for a business is the vital undertaking. It can assist Wesfarmers with competing in the market with other comparative organizations and to manage about adequately utilizing assets of the organization. Programming and seller choice process should be finished considering the positive and negative effects of the product and how much advantage merchants can give to the organization.

Communication-organizations take after an organized procedure when managing merchants to guarantee that their gathering could settle some essential choices for the organization (Islam et al., 2010). Making agendas to choose sellers for the business isn't a smart thought as opposed to a discussion. Preservations can assemble better merchant relations with the goal that business procedures can be made solid to utilize. In this way, Wesfarmers has chosen not to make an agenda for choosing a seller yet to have a discussion with the suggested ones.

Automated forms such procedures enable organizations to have business congruity. The ceaseless enhancements in the business increment monetary estimation of the organization. It additionally helps directors in growing best reasonable business system (Jirava and Toseafa, 2017). It can be gainful to utilize robotized forms yet not all that much else it can prompt framework disappointment.

Evaluation of human contract from the financial specialists ought to be made on a proper premise. Every one of the terms and conditions must be characterized before as it were. Cancelation charges, licenses et cetera ought to be elucidated before propelling or pitching an item to clients (Liebowitz and Frank, 2016). The product merchants must be contracted by the predetermined abilities they have. Sellers ought to have finish learning about getting to the framework and in addition to determine issues that may happen in the ERP framework.

Online Shopping and Reliability of ERP

A business consists of several activities and functions which when combined forms a whole organization. Each and every aspect of an entity plays an important role for the effectiveness and efficiency of a business (Maduqne 2013). To reach several heights in these activities each and every function has to be properly propagated so as to be cost-effective as well as time effective. It is very important for Wesfarmers to complete its task on time within the budget so as to earn revenue. Everything before execution is being planned and planning is executed with several standards. There are many ways to reach heights in business one of which is efficiency and is very significant. There are several ways through which Wesfarmers can improvise its efficiency and can have more cost-effectiveness schemes for the financial resources. It is vital to have optimum utilization of resources as they are scarce and financial resources are the lifeblood of a firm which is required to trigger every single operation in direct and indirect ways. Hence, three ways to improve efficiency in a business are given below:

• Software’s

There are several types of software which are available in market and which are usable for Wesfarmers. Communication, task management and time management are three most basic functions which are required in an organization. Hence, tools and software for the management of same can be used by a business entity in order to have proper control over this waste so as to cut down the cost (Premkumar and King, 1994). This can help in demolishing communication gaps which can create confusion, trigger the task performance standards and proper utilization of time as it is required.

• Budgeting

First and foremost task of a company and its team is to make the proper budget for financial resources it acquires. There has to be the proper assignment of finances for various sections of Wesfarmers. This will help the people of the company to work properly in the required direction without any type of confusions and wastage.

• Setting standards

The standards for the performance required have to be set in order to make awareness among the employees about their performance. This will help in any type of problems which may arise due to working as the performance standards are defined and set for all the people in Wesfarmers. A clear direction to the employees is given as to what they need to do hence; it will save time, efforts and money.

The degree of heights as to where technology has reached is very much higher and it is very huge, the impact of technology cannot be avoided and it has to be adopted by each and every living and nonliving thing. Integrated software is one such solution of technology for the businesses which are performing operations at various locations. Control over several activities across nation is done through this software’s. Hence, a company has to have these in current scenario to be in the league of competition (Richardson, Chang and Smith, 2014). A person can do a lot of things but a person with a technological up gradation can do a lot of things on time. Technology is one such supportive add up to the business which enhances the efficiency tenfold. ERP (Entrepreneur Resource Planning) is one such technological advancement through which a company can form customized software for its own business according to its needs and wants. There are several sections which are triggered by ERP listed below:

• Management Integration

Better managerial activities will be enhanced with the ERP in Wesfarmers as everything will be centrally controlled and functioned. The employees can perform multiple tasks at the same time with the help of technology (Romero, Usart and Ott, 2015). This also reduces the more efforts and time which is being wasted to understand and then proceed with the functioning. Hence, effectiveness in administration functions will be there. 

• Cost-effectiveness

The cost which is being deployed in buying inventory and other resources will be completely structured by ERP software and this will help the company to have a proper software to have a hold over the usage and requirement for the resources in the organization.

• Strategic plans

ERP helps in analyzing the business and its progress which will further help information of strategies which are useful and organized for the business and its functions (Romney and Steinbart, 2009). This will help in the proper formation of plans and strategies.

• Financial control

A company has control over its finances when everything is moving properly in a manner such that there is no chance of default. An integrated system which is strong and inclined to the culture of Wesfarmers.

• Outdated system

Technology is something which updates very fast there is new software every now and then which has been launched in the market. So, a threat to the technological up gradation for Wesfarmers is this that it must have software which is up to date so as to avoid any kind of hacking and default (Kecmanovic, Galliers, Henfridsson, Newell and Vidgen, 2014). This also may breach the data which is not secured with up to date technology and advancement.

• Loss of data control

Sometimes the loss of data can occur when there is a lot of information which is important and people seek that information (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). This control also gets delegated among the organization between the employees and people which also may cause data threat in Wesfarmers. All the employees may not follow the rules related to data protection and may leak some information which is to be kept secret.

Where there are problems there are solutions and these solutions help to manage the adverse effects of a problem. There is a usage of technology and this technology is very much growing and becoming huge day by day. This may cause a vulnerable issue for the people as well as the businesses which are operating upon it. The integrated systems which are being used in organizations to channelize several functions have to be properly regulated so that if any kind of problem arises it can be solved (Chofreh, Goni, Shaharoun, Ismail and Klemeš, 2014). There are several issues regarding technology usage which has been encountered in above part of this report for Wesfarmers. A solution to such issue is necessary for the company to obtain. This will further help the company to avoid any kind of conflicts and misleading of data.

So, in order to save the data and information from several misusage companies have to make sure it has certain policies which are regulated in such a manner that data theft does not occur (Costa, Ferreira, Bento and Aparicio, 2016). The danger to leak the information also prevents from this when it is not supposed to be circulated. For this policy regarding data and its perseverance have to be made by the company so as to have proper functioning of any kind of operations which requires secrecy in Wesfarmers. Also, the company may use some devices to control the data theft so as to record the activities which are going on for the things which keep on happening in the premises of company to make sure no information is misused. All of these activities will support the company to have best possible strategies in order to survive from various theft issues. This is an issue which can be altered and modified for a company like Wesfarmers to have an edge over the market. there are right against intellectual properties which can also be used for legal actions by the company over the software which it is using under ERP this will further help to legalize the system properly. This will further enhance the company's legal power against the hackers and competitors who are trying to corrupt its business and database.

Conclusion

Assembling organizations like Wesfarmers need to always create methodologies to enhance nature of their business. This is on the grounds that the opposition has expanded in the market and advancements are the new pattern that the clients need. Hence, Wesfarmers needs to center around keeping up better client connections. It is to close from this point by point report that keeping in mind the end goal to oversee business forms an effective programming framework is required. The report has depicts the diverse kinds of business procedures and how these can be overseen by utilizing a product framework. Advantages of an Enterprise asset arranging framework have been depicted and furthermore approaches to alleviate the dangers related to it.

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