Process of Selecting IT Systems and Softward for Harley Davidson and Bombardier

“This case focuses on a change program and selection of an enterprise software vendor. The decision of which partner to choose to help the company change the way it purchased raised fundamental tensions within the company”.

Vermont Teddy Bear is positioned in the “strategic mode.” CEO John Gilbert stressed the importance of reliability regarding the company’s ecommerce platform. It is also noted that some company’s may be forced into this “strategic mode”. This seems to be the case for Vermont Teddy Bear regarding their need for new information technology. They are so fragmented and had been inefficiently managed for so long that major improvements to their IT architecture are unavoidable, especially if they hope to remain competitive. All of the questions in “A” list from “IT & the Board of Directors” need to be considered for Vermont Teddy Bear. Based on these questions, they are not doing too well, but finding the right answers will help them get closer to their goals. Stetzel is definitely facing big challenges in going forward. A system overhaul or ERP implementation are difficult tasks even with a sufficient budget. With the limited resources available to him, Stetzel must find a way to make whatever decision he goes with work and to gain the support of the board, managers and employees. Without full cooperation, the any plan is likely to

Like many of its most profitable competitors, Alcan has grown quickly through insightful series of mergers, acquisitions and rapid product development and launch strategies throughout the major markets it sells into. The company has settled on a highly decentralized divisional business model that has to the point of the case study served them well. Their IT systems are showing signs of massive overduplication of expense, with a $500M level of spending on enterprise applications with SAP being the majority. There are further signs of massive waste in their highly diversified organizational structure. There are 400 systems in the company all dedicated to pricing, a massive duplication of costs, time and effort on the part of IT across the five divisions. There are also over 1,000 concurrent enterprise-class IT systems being used throughout the company at any point in time. Conservatively speaking the company is spending 20% of their total enterprise software spend on maintenance costs alone. This is forcing the CIO, Robert Ouelette, to re-evaluate both the organizational structure and IT systems supporting it. The goals of this analysis are to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the existing application or IT management structure. An analysis of the proposal by Robert Ouelette is also provided along with an assessment of it potential effectiveness in solving the challenges is facing today.

The implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) system is very complex, and it needs to have a well design implementation plan, well-structured approach, and will require substantial changes on staff and work processes. In the case of Bombardier, the company have learned valuable lessons from their previous implementation process to help them to achieve the project goals. For example: after the implementation at the Mirabel plant, the company decided to add more training material as well as one day refreshers course since they recognized the importance of user preparation. They realized that the project needs to be a manager’s project and no just IT. Also, they senior management made the project a clear priority, and ensure

This paper analyzes Rock Solid Industrial Parts, Inc. using the McKenzie 7-S Model to clarify some of the key issues facing the company today and also identify the key to success for the company in the next few years. The analysis concerns the elements of strategy, structure, systems, staff, skills, style, and shared values that are important to the organizational performance. Based on the analysis, some changes need to be made to align with company 's needs to achieve its business objectives. The analysis provides recommendations for the implementation of new modern IT solutions to accelerate the growth of the business. Rock Solid Industrial Parts, Inc. will move forward in the industry with IT solutions for their business needs.

Bombardier made the late decision to use SAP’s Workbench. Before utilizing Workbench, HMS software had been mandated. Workbench served the same purpose as the HMS software, but Bombardier believed Workbench provided enough incremental productivity to warrant the change. After implementing the ERP system, a number of processes were still receiving trouble. The financial processes were not implemented and managers were not using the reporting function. There were also problems with automating the fax of purchase orders. The emphasis placed on inventory can be seen as the problem for the imbalanced

The case about Bombardier and the implementation in a large scale of an ERP system explains the different steps taken by this organization in order to successfully implement and execute this system. Team #3 in their presentation made special mention to the IT Governance and explained trough the presentation how this element allows the managers from Bombardier to bridge the gap between control requirements, technical issues and business risks within the organization. Moreover, when the project went live, the continuous monitoring of the process involve in the system and the comparison of actual results with the ones planned are the perfect examples of a proper application of IT Governance by Bombardier. Also, during the post-implementation considerations

Currently their information system (IS) is not fully centralized and this is causing a lot of problem in their expansion and cross-company

Management at Air Texas is heavily invested in this project and sees the benefit of applying the Information Technology- Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) to this implementation as well as all future IT projects. There are several reasons for management wishing to follow the IT-CMF, but the primary reason is to ensure that all IT projects are providing strategic value to the business. Management feels that there are several critical capabilities that will help align the goals of this project with the goals of the company.

Maersk Drilling (MD) is undertaking a large-scale, fundamental change to implement a new ERP strategy and develop the proficiencies to accomplish effects not possible simply by refining and enhancing their current way of organizing and optimizing work procedures. Maersk Drilling is implementing a deep change, in that it involves shifts in the behaviors, normative procedures, and standards of end-users. Structures, work processes, technologies, and finance practices are being intentionally redesigned to foster new procedures and performance. The employees mutually develop perceptions as they participate in both scattered and ongoing self-help training to plan and implement changes in what and how work is done with the new ERP system.

▪ To have support from top management - this is a vital point and the bottleneck of the Change Management Process. If this point is not covered, the percentage of failure is high and the activity can become as unprofitable assignation of resources.

Although enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are considered to be a risky investment for any organization, Keda had quite a number of reasons on why it decided to embark on ERP. The introduction of the Keda's silo-based model, as a way of encouraging a decentralized decision-making process, was actually affecting the performance of the Keda business. This was mainly due to the duplication of the identical processing tasks from different business units.

Ultimately the success or failure of any Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is the contribution it makes to a company's attainment of strategic objectives, strategies and plans while unifying the many diverse systems and processes in use throughout an enterprise (Ifinedo, 2011). The very nature of ERP systems continues to go through a rapid evolution, migrating from rigid, difficult-to-use platforms into more distributed order management, supply chain management, fulfillment and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems all unified with accounting and financial performance information (Ifinedo, 2011). ERP systems are making it possible for companies to gain a much greater level of 360-degree insight into their supply chains, value chains and most importantly, their prospects and customers. While there are a myriad of factors that contribute to the failure of ERP systems, the lack of 360-degree views of customers and the lack of senior management support can cripple even the most potentially valuable ERP implementation (Krisgman, 2010). Alleviating an ERP failure is in the inherent interest of any vendor; they however do not have the most critical knowledge for ensuring ERP implementation success. The senior management teams and IT departments at customers do. The insights into how to best navigate change management requirements have a much greater impact on the success or failure of any ERP implementation

In 2012, the Company implemented SAP, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) program. The Global Company has five separate lines of business that were all running on different accounting software solutions. The project included finance, sales and distribution, asset management, purchasing, and master data. The 2012 project was intended to move the Company onto the SAP platform, create efficiencies for the employees, and reduce costs for daily operations. Due to the project timeline, there were many areas where scope was decreased in order to meet the deadline. The decreased scope has left inefficiencies in vital operational areas where the Company, its employees, and its systems are not operating or being used as

There is a long term vision concerning the information strategy of the IT systems utilized by integrated manufacturing at Stryker Instruments. A thorough understanding of the organization, management, personnel, and the technologies that comprise the system was required to develop the information strategy of the company. The IT system employed by