Digital Transformation With ERP Implementation: A Case Study On OMC Essay.

The project is going to follow the ERP implementation project in OMC.The project will analyze and compare the paper-based processes with the newly implemented electronic processes utilizing the ERP. It will also talk about the digital transformation that has happened and how help the company and how it supported the IT strategy which is aligned with the Company strategy.

By the end of the project we should get a complete understanding of how the implementation affected the internal processes of the company.

Overview of Optical Manufacturing Company

The ERP or enterprise resource planning can be stated as the integrated management of the major business procedures within the real time and is mediated by technology as well as software (Leon). This particular software is the significant category of the most important business management software with a suite of several integrated applications. The several business resources like cash, production capacity and raw materials are easily tracked by the systems of enterprise resource planning (Chiu). Moreover, the status of the business commitments like orders, payroll as well as purchase orders are also tracked by this particular software.

The following report outlines a brief discussion on the project of implementation of enterprise resource planning within the organization of Optical Manufacturing Company or OMC. This type of ERP implementation is responsible for bringing major success within the business and hence this particular software is being implemented by several popular and significant organizations in the entire world. OMC is a popular organization in Saudi Arabia and they have decided for digital transformation and change management in their business and they have started to implement the project of ERP.

Discussion

1. Brief Overview of Optical Manufacturing Company

OMC or Optical Manufacturing Company is one of the popular organizations in Saudi Arabia. This organization was founded in 2005 and is considered as one of the most significant organizations in the world. They are responsible for manufacture optical lens combined with the ongoing search for the latest technology. OMC strives to manufacture the most beautiful as well as comfortable lenses out of the best designs.

These show the major features as well as customer advantages from all types of lens and treatment. The major products of this organization are single vision glasses, bifocals, progressives and contract lenses. For the purpose of bringing significant success in their business and integration of business processes, OMC has started the project of enterprise resource planning implementation. They have decided to implement the project for the core purpose of bringing digital transformation and also to align the business strategies with IT strategies.

2. Brief Overview of Business Strategies

Optical Manufacturing Company or OMC has implemented the project of enterprise resource planning implementation for the betterment of the business (Shaul and Doron). They have undertaken this specific decision to bring out subsequent innovation and profits within the business. They often undergo some of the major issues that are extremely challenging for the company and their products and services. Optical Manufacturing Company comprises of some of the most significant business strategies for the betterment of their business. The specified strategies like identification of product strengths, adjustments of pricing and even acquiring of other businesses are certain strategies that are used effectively by the organization (Sustainment). The important and the most significant business strategies of this particular organization of Optical Manufacturing Company are as follows:

1. i) Growth Strategy: The first and the foremost business strategy of the organization of OMC is the growth strategy. This type of business strategy entails the proper introduction of new products or even addition of new characteristics to the existing products of the company. They have often modified the products for increasing the increasing the product line to keep a stable competition with the competitors (Hoch and James). This is the major mission of this organization to maintain a proper competition with the other optical manufacturing companies. They have mainly focused on the technologies to make their products more efficient and effective. Moreover, they have also checked the comfort of the customers and hence the products are more comfortable.
2. ii) Product Differentiation Strategy: The second strategy of this organization is the product differentiation strategy. The organization has utilized this strategy when they have competitive advantages like superior quality and service. OMC has eventually set themselves apart from the competitors with the superior engineering design (Seethamraju). The vision of this organization is to make the products completely different and more attractive for the customers. Since, they manufacture optical products, it is important for them to make the customers satisfied by providing them more striking products.

Business Strategies of OMC

iii) Price Skimming Strategy: The next important business strategy of this particular organization is price skimming strategy. It majorly involves the charging of high prices for the product in the beginning. However, gradually they reduces the prices by providing discounts to the loyal customers and hence keeping the strategy of quickly recovering the production as well as advertising costs (Garg and Atul). Although, this type of strategy is quite effective for bringing more customers, there is a high chance that it would bring more competition for them. Due to this strategy, OMC is able to maintain their organizational values and objectives.

1. iv) Acquisition Strategy: The fourth effective business strategy of OMC is acquisition strategy. Being a medium sized organization, they have used their extra capital for using the acquisition strategy for the purpose of gaining better competitive advantages. This type of acquisition strategy entails the purchase of other organizational product lines (Nofal and Zawiyah). They have done this for expanding their business operations effectively. This particular strategy is their tactics to gain more profit in the business.
2. v) Improvement of Customer Experience: The fifth important business strategy of the Optical Manufacturing Company is the improvement of customer experience. The customers get their true values by paying off money. They mainly focused on the customer experience and ensured that there is stronger effectiveness of products and services without any type of complexities and issues (Chofreh et al.). OMC has got better feedbacks from their existing customers and hence they could undertake their business decisions with better efficiency and without any type of complexity.

3. Proper Assessment of IT Strategies

Apart from the business strategies, OMC even encompasses of some of the IT or information technology strategies. These organizational IT strategies are as follows:

1. i) Customer Relationship Management Systems: The first and the foremost IT strategy of OMC is CRM or customer relationship management. The systems of customer relationship management substantially store the customers’ information and data within a centralized database. Since, this organization is a medium sized company, it is important for them to maintain their customer database efficiently (Matende and Patrick)). These systems help them in making the sales more by simply speeding up of the leads and then helping to retain the customers by proper identification. They have installed Microsoft Dynamics CRM system to obtain better management of information.
2. ii) Business Intelligence: The second important IT strategy of Optical Manufacturing Company is the business intelligence. It is a technology driven process that enables the organizations in analysing the data like sales revenue by simply breaking it down by the departments and products and hence providing current or predictive views of the business operations (Tian and Sean). The respective actionable information is to be presented for helping the executives, corporate end users and mangers of OMC for making informed business related decisions.

iii) Virtualization: The next significant IT strategy of this particular organization of OMC is virtualization. This technology enables the businesses in operating multiple servers from one piece of hardware. Since, OMC is looking for reducing their running costs of technology and not ready of getting rid of the servers completely, virtualization is the most effective solution for them (Zeng and Miroslaw). The slash costs are allowed with this IT strategy and thus they could get more resilience in the systems.

4. Relevance of the ERP Implementation Project to IT Strategies and Business Strategies

Recently, the organization of Optical Manufacturing Company has decided for complete digital transformation and change management for the business and hence has started the enterprise resource planning implementation project (Tasevska, Talib and Nadja). The digital transformation is the type of profound transformation of several organizational and business processes, activities, models and competencies for completely leveraging the opportunities as well as changes of the mix of digitalized technologies and the accelerating impact on the organizational stakeholders in the most prioritized and strategic method.

This is the proper integration of digital technology in each and every area of business and hence changing the methodology of operating as well as delivering values to the customers (Chang et al.). Previously, OMC has obtained some of the IT strategies like systems of customer relationship management, virtualization and business intelligence; however, after starting the project, they understood that enterprise resource planning would be quite effective for their business.

Digital Transformation with ERP

The digital transformation is imperative for the business of Optical Manufacturing Company. Enterprise resource planning is the integrated system that the organizations utilize for managing the business functions like materials, human resources and materials (Shen, Pih-Shuw and Chun-Hsien). It is an important tool for all larger organizations and hence the medium sized organizations implement this system.

IT Strategies of OMC

The digital transformation is the type of change that needs the organizations in continuously challenging the organizational status quo and hence they get comfortable with failure. The relatively new practices for the business are eventually checked with the digital transformation (Yeh and Yan Xu). This type of transformation solely includes the change in leadership, encouragement of innovation as well as newer business model, hence incorporating the asset digitization for increasing the utilization of technology and improving the overall experience of organizational employees and stakeholders.

Change Management with ERP

Change management refers to the processes, tools as well as techniques that are used for the purpose of managing the people size of changes and achieving the required business results. The change management is the first and the major step towards digital transformation (Ha and Hyung Jun Ahn). There are some of the important and significant steps for change management with ERP in OMC organization. The main stages of the change management with enterprise resource planning are as follows:

1. i) Preparation: The first and the foremost stage in this type of change management with ERP is preparation. A proper digital transformation charter is being developed for the purpose of articulating the business goals or strategies and achieving the goals. Moreover, a change backlog is being maintained for starting the tracking as well as mitigation of risks.
2. ii) Definition: The second stage is defining the business outcomes and requirements (Antero). An organizational readiness assessment is being conducted and proper inputs are undertaken for aligning with the strategies of OMC like vision, objectives, requirements and mission effectively.

iii) Designing: The next stage is the designing, where the digital transformation of ERP is being finalized. Moreover, the business process impact is also resolved easily.

1. iv) Building and Verifying: In the next stage, the developers of OMC build as well as verifies the proper execution of product backlog (Kurbel). OMC could merge the PM tools and even combine the requirements for bringing change management.
2. v) Launching: Finally, after proper evaluation of the software of enterprise resource planning, it is being launched. The project of ERP implementation is ongoing and there are few adoption tactics as well.

Relevance of ERP Implementation with the Business Strategies

There are several important and significant business strategies of this particular organization of Optical Manufacturing Company. The major business strategies of this particular organization are:

1. i) Growth Strategy: This specific strategy is quite important for OMC to grow or expand their business more outside Saudi Arabia. They have implemented this strategy by entailing more characteristics to their existing products (Hwang). Hence, it was quite effective for them to bring out better products and services. For this purpose, it is important to integrate the business processes. ERP is the best solution for integrating the business processes in one major process and hence reducing the complexity of business process management.
2. ii)  Product Differentiation Strategy: The product differentiation strategy refers to the strategy that helps the organization in making the existing products different and attractive than the rest of the companies. To maintain better quality of the products, they could use ERP for the betterment of the products.

iii) Price Skimming Strategy: Although, ERP is quite expensive in respect to the other processes, it is extremely efficient and effective for the price skimming strategy of OMC (Chang et al.). The maintenance cost of the software is not more than the other software and hence it would be helpful for them to quickly recover the production as well as advertising costs.

1. iv) Acquisition Strategy: For this particular strategy of acquisition, OMC would be getting extra capital for the lower costs of ERP maintenance and hence they could get more competitive advantages. Moreover, for their business growth, they will not be in more issues.
2. v) Improvement of Customer Experience: ERP reduces the complexity of process management and hence the customer will not be suffering from any issue due to the rising complexities of technology (Antero). They could easily select their products online from the database and they even do not have to pay more for the products.

Relevance of ERP Implementation with the IT Strategies

OMC has already implemented their significant IT strategies of CRM system, business intelligence and virtualization for the core purpose of reducing the issues faced by general companies for the management of the systems and network infrastructure. They have obtained resilience from the virtualisation (Chofreh et al.). Now, they have started the project of ERP implementation. The ERP software eventually integrates each and every facet of the operation that includes the product planning, manufacturing, sales, marketing and also product development within single database, user interface and application and hence they would be obtaining some of the major advantages from this particular software.

There are several modules for managing the tasks and back office activities like supply chain management, distribution process management, reduction of redundant tasks, low purchasing costs, automation of employee life cycle, improvement of financial data, configuration of prices, accounting and financial applications, management of human resources as well as payroll and many others. Enterprise resource planning helps any organization in collecting, storing, managing and even interpreting the confidential data from every business activity (Seethamraju). The enterprise resource planning gives a proper integrated and continuously upgraded overview of the major business procedures with the help of common databases that are maintained by the DBMS or database management system. Hence, the IT strategy of ERP implementation would be quite effective for OMC.

Relevance of the ERP Implementation Project to IT Strategies and Business Strategies

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that enterprise resource planning or ERP is the business process management software, which eventually enables any specific organization in using the respective system of several integrated applications for the core purpose of managing the business and then automating several back office functionalities that are related to technology, human resources and services.

The major features and advantages of the ERP software help the businesses in proper integration of several business activities and increment of efficiencies and effectiveness. Due to the streamlining of business processes, the business does not face any issue for their business process execution. Optical Manufacturing Company or OMC of Saudi Arabia has started the project of ERP implementation within their business for digital transformation and change management. The IT strategies and business strategies of OMC are also well explained here. The final part of this report has explained the relevance of the ERP implementation project to the IT strategies and business strategies.

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