The Impact Of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems On Firm Risk: An Essay.

How Do Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Affect Firm Risk?

What Is the Electronic Journal Of Information Systems Evaluation?

UNICEF Child Care's primary objectives

A group of people governs UNICEF Child Care. The chairman of the company is John Smith. They provide care to the children of ages ranging between six weeks and thirteen. UNICEF child care provides food, teachers and the nannies and other services. The parents those who want the facility pay a minimal charge and they can get UNICEF’s service for their babies (Issar and Navon 2016). They have subsidiaries in Sydney, Gold Coast, Rock Hampton, Melbourne and Brisbane. The Child Care Centre aims to manage the inventory and the workforce across five centres.

• To create a platform where the parents and the UNICEF employee staff can communicate with each other 24x7
• To manage the inventory across all the centres in Sydney, Rock Hampton, Melbourne and Brisbane
• To make ordering of the stock products automatic
• To say thankyou greetings message to the parents those who deposit fees online

UNICEF Child Care must hire IT team or might seek help from the IT team. The IT team will develop the software for them. They will have to adopt cloud computing service from cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS. The IT team will host the ERP accounting software on the cloud server, and the cloud server will be accessed through the five subsidiaries (Seethamraju 2015). The employee staff and the admin staff across the five subsidiaries can be able to control the inventory; they can manage parents and their children’s data as well. The ERP software must have the following capabilities. The software must be developed in such a way that the parents can pay fees online (Altamony et al. 2016). The software after the payment must send a thank you message back to the parents. The parents can connect with the staff employees of UNICEF all the time 24x7 with the help of the newly implemented ERP software. The software must handle the inventory, must check the stock availability. UNICEF Child Care with the help of the software can be able to identify the number of supplies they require and can order accordingly. They must appoint an IT Support team as well (Shen, Chen and Wang 2016). The IT Support Team must train the employees and the admin staff so that they can use the ERP accounting software smoothly and efficiently. The employee staff can interact with the parents all the time and solve their queries.

They must hire or appoint an IT team. The team will develop the ERP accounting software for their business. They also appoint an IT support team. The IT support team will install and configure the new software across the five subsidiaries. They will train the employees and the admin staff. The IT team has the desired technical knowledge to develop the software. They must have the desired web development knowledge to host the software on the cloud server. UNICEF must entrust IT team with the ERP accounting software implementation and must stay assure that the new software will facilitate them in getting long-term benefits.

The Approach to Systems Development

System Requirements can be classified into two groups- functional requirements and the non-functional requirements.

The functional requirements for UNICEF Child Care are-

1. Installation of an integratedsystem that will operate in real time and will rely upon constant periodic updates
2. A common database that will support all the applications

iii. A central database that can be accessed across the five subsidiaries- Sydney, Rock Hampton, Melbourne and Brisbane (Aslan, Stevenson and Hendry 2015)

1. The in-house IT department will install the software and will configure it on the cloud server. The IT Department will install antivirus software program. The antivirus program will ensure safety and security of the software as well as UNICEF Child Care organisation.
2. The development cost of the ERP accounting software must be feasible, andUNICEF must afford it. The installation cost, the maintenance cost and the upgradation cost must be well within reach (Shatat 2015). The IT department must follow the project plan. They will have to develop the ERP accounting software within the timeframe and the scheduled budget.

The non-functional requirements of the ERP software are-

1. The ERP accounting software must be user-friendly. The ERP software must be easy to use.
2. IT department must develop the software in such way that it provides fast and accurate results (Ha and Ahn 2014).

iii. The ERP accounting software can get corrupted. The in-house IT department must design the software in a manner such that the software can be restored easily. The data should not get lost in anyway otherwise UNICEF Child Care can suffer great loss.

1. The IT department must ensure safety and security of the software. The data must not get breached in any way.

The project plan specifies the detailed timeline of the project activities. The total time duration, the start date and the finish date of each of the summary tasks have been defined in details in the project plan. In the Work Breakdown Structure, the all the task activities have been shown along with the project dependencies (Ahmad, Ibrahim and Garba 2015). The Work Breakdown Structure explains the project dependencies and the critical path activities.

The goal of the project is to develop an ERP accounting software for facilitating the business activities of UNICEF Child Care. The software will help the parents to pay fees online (Leon 2014). The ERP software will manage the inventory of UNICEF Child Care as well.

UNICEF Child Care requires an IT team. The IT team will develop the ERP accounting software and will ease their business. The IT team will host the software on the cloud server.  

The scope of the project is to develop an online payment system so that the parents can pay online. The ERP software will send ‘thank you’ greetings emails to the parents automatically after the parents pay the fees online. Again, the ERP software will handle the accounts and the financial activities of the UNICEF Child Care (Leu and Lee 2017). The software will keep track of the inventory across the five subsidiaries based in Australia and will constantly update. It is also possible to order a number of supplies via this software automatically based on the supplies required.

The list of stakeholders involved in the project are-

According to the consultant, the three investigation techniques- gather information, defining system requirements and the prioritise system requirements are considered useful. ‘Gather Information’ technique specifies the reasons behind the development of the ERP accounting software.  ‘Defining System Requirements’ technique will explain all the activities of the ERP accounting software. ‘Prioritise System Requirements’ will illustrate the important functionalities of ERP accounting software.

Systems Requirements

The project manager and other associated stakeholders through ‘Gather Information’ technique must analyse the causes for ERP software implementation. The parents are not able to pay fees online. The admin staff cannot communicate with the employee and admin staff across the five subsidiaries of UNICEF Child Care (Tarhini, Ammar and Tarhini 2015). They are not able to manage the inventory as well. Therefore, UNICEF Child Care must install the ERP software on their premises.

UNICEF Child Care must appoint an IT Team to develop the software. The software will keep track of the inventory. Thus the admin staff can know the number of supplies products required and based on that they can order the supplies products. The parents can pay the fees online (Tian and Xu 2015). The ERP software will send a yearly statement to the parents as well. ‘Defining System Requirements’ technique will let UNICEF know the benefits of ERP implementation.

UNICEF needs to manage the stock of the supplies products. The staffs need to communicate with each other across all the branches. These two are ‘Prioritise System Requirements’.

Conclusions 

From the report, I have understood that UNICEF Child Care adopting the new ERP accounting software can get immense benefits. According to me, they can carry out the operations ethically and efficiently and can gain the competitive edge as well. I believe the new ERP implementation will satisfy the parents. The parents can be able to pay fees online. They will get thank you reply back. This approach will earn the parents’ trust. The employee staffs commit errors while keeping track of the supplies products. I believe the ERP implementation will make the stock level tracking less stressful. The employee staff and the admin staff can communicate with each other across the five subsidiaries, so I think it is useful for both the employee and the admin staff.

It can be concluded from above discourse that the UNICEF Child Care by implementing ERP can enhance the business activities. ERP can benefit the parents, the employee staff of the five subsidiaries. The ERP is helpful to check the stock level of the product supplies and order accordingly. The beneficial aspects of ERP have been illustrated in the report.

References

Ahmad, S., Ibrahim, S. and Garba, S., 2015. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems in Banking Industry: Implementations Approaches, Reasons for Failures and How to Avoid Them. Journal of Computer Sciences and Applications, 3(2), pp.29-32.

Altamony, H., Al-Salti, Z., Gharaibeh, A. and Elyas, T., 2016. The relationship between change management strategy and successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations: A theoretical perspective. International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research, 7(4), pp.690-703.

Aslan, B., Stevenson, M. and Hendry, L.C., 2015. The applicability and impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems: Results from a mixed method study on Make-To-Order (MTO) companies. Computers in Industry, 70, pp.127-143.

Ha, Y.M. and Ahn, H.J., 2014. Factors affecting the performance of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the post-implementation stage. Behaviour & Information Technology, 33(10), pp.1065-1081.

Issar, G. and Navon, L.R., 2016. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). In Operational Excellence (pp. 33-36). Springer, Cham.

Leon, A., 2014. Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education.

Leu, J.D. and Lee, L.J.H., 2017. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation using the value engineering methodology and Six Sigma tools. Enterprise Information Systems, 11(8), pp.1243-1261.

Seethamraju, R., 2015. Adoption of software as a service (SaaS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Information systems frontiers, 17(3), pp.475-492.

Shatat, A.S., 2015. Critical success factors in enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation: An exploratory study in Oman. Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, 18(1), pp.36-45.

Shen, Y.C., Chen, P.S. and Wang, C.H., 2016. A study of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system performance measurement using the quantitative balanced scorecard approach. Computers in Industry, 75, pp.127-139.

Tarhini, A., Ammar, H. and Tarhini, T., 2015. Analysis of the critical success factors for enterprise resource planning implementation from stakeholders’ perspective: A systematic review. International Business Research, 8(4), p.25.

Tian, F. and Xu, S.X., 2015. How Do Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Affect Firm Risk? Post-Implementation Impact. Mis Quarterly, 39(1).