Day 2 Article Learnings - Can Altay

* The ERP Purchase Decision: Influential Business and IT Factors

* ERP packages are analyzed in terms of their business capabilities and their IT capabilities. Their Business capabilities are:

- They can meet various competitive goals in a better way
- They can give user access to the integrated data
- They can provide the desire to rethink and reengineer the business processes

Their IT capabilities are:

- They can provide the desire to replace aging systems that do not meet the needs of the firm with more modern and broad architectures that match corporate requirements
- Getting rid of having to build software for the company and possibly reduce information system cost

* Assessing ERP Software: ERP software sales caused sharp decrease in the market share of supply chain planning software vendors.

* Netweaver: Enables integration and coordination of SAP and non-SAP applications.

* ERP vendors have formed partnerships in order to provide integration services to customers.

*Buyer’s inside ERP software: The City of Winnipeg example

- Legacy system integration is actually much harder !
- ERP systems can also have duplicated data
- Implementation cost varies depending on size of the company and number of users
- Implementation can take up to more than 2 years

* Implement ERP package as it comes out of the package.

* Decision Making in the Evaluation, Selection and Implementation of ERP Systems

Six models for decision making for the ERP system:

1) Classical: This model seeks to find a best alternative to maximize the achievements. Is not a feasible model, because it requires that all alternatives should be implemented before making a decision, which makes no sense

2) Administrative: This model seeks for alternatives that meet the minimal number of requirements of the company.

3) Incremental: No clear objectives, minor changes.

4) Adaptive: I did not clearly understand what this model mentions.

5) Irrational: Decisions are a product of organizational events.

6) Political: Politics more important than organizational goals.

* The article states that different models can be applicable in different parts of the decision process.

- Initiation: Political model
- Requirements analysis: Adaptive model
- Inviting vendors: Political model
- Vendor short-listing: Administrative and political models
- Implementation: Adaptive model
- After implementation: Administrative model

* Article mentions about several research findings, including:

- Politics inside the company (in terms of personal and group) influence decision-making very dramatically.
- Only a very small number of the alternatives are evaluated, which may be unhealthy for the corporation. - ERP cannot handle reverse logistics well.