Introduction:

The easiest way for defining ERP is understand every core processes that are required for running a business. This includes procurement, services, supply chain, manufacturing, HR and finance. ERP integrates the processes at most basic level into one single system. Further, they utilize the latest technologies like artificial intelligence or AI and machine learning. This is to provide efficiency, visibility, intelligence around all business aspects. It is also referred to as ERP suite. This is built of various enterprise resource planning implementations stating to others and sharing databases. Typically, every application or ERP module emphasizes on a single area of business. One can assimilate various modules for meeting needs. Logistics, sales human resources and finance are popular points to start. Also there are module specific to industries from banking, retail to industries. In this study, IMB Bank, Australia is chosen. The present proposal must be targeted at IMB Bank, as the potential sponsor organization as the workplace. This would require to get convinced of effectiveness and appropriateness of suggested latest system. Here, at first the organisation is discussed. Then, the external and internal factors are analysed. After that, the issues and opportunities are demonstrated. At last, the justification of the chosen system is provided along with the project plan and milestones.

Discussion on the organization:

IMB is the biggest standing building society located at New South Wales. It is third biggest building society at Australia. This is in terms of resources within management. They have branches at ACT, Victoria and New South Wales. They are regulated through the “Australian Prudential Regulation Authority”. They are members of COBA which are independent organization to represent credit unions and building societies (Taniguchi and Onosato 2017). Moreover, IMB provides range of insurance products, financial planning, business banking, term deposits, transactions and savings accounts, savings, personal loans and home loans. They offer total range of various competitive banks that involves personal lending and home, savings and transaction accounts, business banking, term deposits, transaction and savings accounts. They arrange travel products, insurances and planning. Furthermore, they provide secure and simple digital banking mobile and online. The members have been enjoying access towards free automated phone along with Internet banking. It involves professional teams at locally based centre of contract. With the growth of branch network across Melbourne, the ACT, Hunter/Newscastle, NSW South Coast, Sydney and Illawarra. They have lending any sort of specialist at all branches and team of specialists involved in mobile lending would come to them (Ying 2016).

Internal and External Factors:

Firstly, there are operational and organizational factors. They are part of administrative and operational processes. It involves inaccurate or disorganized record keeping. The interruptions for supply chain and faulty or outdated IT systems that are factors to be evaluated. After that, strategic risks. That impacts the ability of IMB for reaching goals under business plan. These could be because of effects of changes in technological evolutions and customer demand (Ali and Miller 2017). Next, the innovation is there. Lack of this pose serious risks for growing business. There is no innovation that can result to stay bored. This can make IMB to be irrelevant, stagnant and dull (Feng 2019). Then there are financial factors. The financial risks rely on financial structure of the business. This relies on business transactions and financial systems. Here, the change in interest rates and overly dependable on a customer can impact business. Next, there are employee risk. The employee are important for success of business. However, risks are there related to them. Besides, for IMB, strike action can result in lots of issues. Again, the external factors includes the political ones. For instance, at IMB, the new legislation is an external factor. Then, there are economic factors like the unemployment and inflation. The social factors are also having impacts externally like the changes in fashion and taste or rise in spending power of any specific group (Zhang 2016). Then, there are technological factors like making transactions online. Again, competitive factors are also there. For example impact of any rival organization that might lower their market values. All of the external factors are able to affect IMB negatively or positively. However, at many situations that can do even both (Park 2018).

Understanding problem or opportunities:

Firstly, problems are taking place as there are multiple software working in place for various distinct processes. IMB possess outdated process that are never changing as just that has been there always. With multiple systems that are running separately are resulting in truthfully and confusion wastage of time under long run (Acar et al. 2017). After that, there are risks of redundant data. Here, ERP has opportunity that can be used by IMB with the advantage of dealing having redundant data that must surface as not comparing or using with other people at IMB bank. After that there are issues with lack of company knowledge and communication. ERP has been taking pride on itself to be a single source of truth. Every truth and information that has been going with that is present for the overall business for viewing as the software is used (Taniguchi and Onosato 2018). After that there is the risk of not meeting expectation of customer. Despite any ERP system at proper place, there are various things that are falling short like employees are never knowing the information about the customers and prior transactions even the information is on shipping and inventory is in stock. Further, there are trouble for information technology. IMB has their business with numerous systems in place for every aspects of their processes (Turek and Dziembek 2018). All of them could be managed from the end of IT department. Here, there is the chance of mistakes and also time consuming tasks in the form of constant upgrading, integration and customizing that are one of greatest drawbacks of having multiple systems (Li and Li 2019). Having just a single sole system at proper place that can eradicate the IT department to manage numerous platforms and put their emphasis on one. IMB must keep in mind, having one system business are enjoying less time consuming processes putting higher emphasis on customer and enjoy the communal based company.

Chosen system justification:

Firstly, there is the analysis and acknowledgement of present business environment. Despite extensive idea of present workflows, IMB must never expect any body to be trusting to lead to ERP investment. After that, there are the system-end goals (Tereshchenko, Shtangey and Tereshchenko 2016). Further, their system end-goals must be considering present challenges of current workflow and business environment to consider and use insights in developing ideal application outcome. IMB needs to implement RFID tracking to their warehouse for streamlining operations (Oghazi et al. 2018). They should assure to demonstrate price elements particularly such that stakeholders could undertake decisions as best options and as there are elements that must prefer in leaving out of their system. After that, there are potential ROI. The development of measurement of potential ROI has been underlining advantages to deploy ERP system. It that point, in this discussion of ERP justification, stakeholders are possibly holding their breath at cost related with Enterprise Resource Planning (Junior, Oliveira and Yanaze 2019).

Project planning and time schedule:

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Defining scope of the implementation along with their end objectives	6 days	Mon 8/17/20	Mon 8/24/20
Choosing specific ERP system needed.	8 days	Wed 9/2/20	Fri 9/11/20
Developing project plan	4 days	Wed 9/16/20	Mon 9/21/20
Defining implementation phase	6 days	Wed 10/7/20	Wed 10/14/20
Developing achievable and urgent schedule	8 days	Wed 11/4/20	Fri 11/13/20
Creating communication plan	6 days	Tue 11/24/20	Tue 12/1/20
Arranging mid-way approvals	4 days	Tue 12/8/20	Fri 12/11/20
Planning the testing	8 days	Thu 12/17/20	Mon 12/28/20
Migrating business data	5 days	Tue 12/29/20	Mon 1/4/21
Preparing for change	7 days	Tue 1/5/21	Wed 1/13/21
Planning to Go-Live	6 days	Thu 1/14/21	Thu 1/21/21
Supporting and maintenance	5 days	Fri 1/22/21	Thu 1/28/21

Figure 1: “Gantt chart for the current project on IMB Bank”

(Source: Created by Author)

Conclusion:

ERP justification can be considered as an important part of the process of software selection. This is because it assures that stakeholders are on similar page. Justification of ERP is essential for IMB as that assured that stakeholders are on similar page. The cause is that they requires to get strategically inclined because of complexity related with ERP implementation. Revenue and time resources needed for implementation of ERP are bigger element of what makes that justification important. More input and effort are required for software project. Thus more essential that is stakeholders are over similar page and understand scope of implementation. ERP includes indirect and direct costs. Also they entail wide investment of employee time to plan, research and conduct implementation. Adoption of ERP solution can provide notable rise in productivity and revenue. Nonetheless, ERP justification is needed for getting that point in the process. Further, ERP must be justified through calculation of potential ROI as per the rise in productivity and revenue. These elements are woven together together. With the clear level of goal towards the insights can enhance ability of ERP to get other people on-board with ERP implementation.

Benefit analysis and feasibility study:

Firstly, there is needs assessment. Prior searching that IMB as to execute software implementation, they must determine that is even needed. The present business process and to consider objectives of company. It must be determined that whether there are errors and inefficiencies to hold the enterprise back. Further, they must have topic tools for pursuing business goals. Moreover, it has to be found out whether the ERP is resolving their present pain points and get them set forth. Next, ERP abilities are to be searched whether software is best approach or optimizing their business performances. After resource assessment are to be there. The ERP deployment entails investment for money and time (Widiastuti 2020). Further, IMB must understand whether they have the personnel who could dedicate fulltime in fulfilling technical and functional requirements of software project and can hire third-party consultant for managing project. They must also determine stakeholders and executives intending to fund that implementation. This should be working even to be worth it most importantly. Potential ROI is to be calculated for determining whether the software must drive the long-term values. Then, the technical assessment are to be considered. Here, the further step is finding out technical requirements and equipment to finish the ERP implementation. They must understand whether they would host software in cloud or on-premise and their project team is performing necessary development or testing. They must determine whether the new software can work well for their present systems and supporting that workload.

Though they lack internal technical parts, they should work with outside consultants for determining technical needs. The, the assessment of company culture is to be found out. Greatest barrier for ERP success is the adoption of users. They must find out whether they must convince the value of users of their ERP software and whether they deliver essential communication and training for supporting user adoption. Next, they must determine how the process of software impact requirements of skills and daily tasks of employees. Then, they make informed decisions. Here, greatest benefit of feasibility study is that it permits IMB to undertake various informed decisions (Zhezhnych and Tarasov 2018). Instead of making any assumption, their business could value of ERP solution. Instead of making assumptions, IMB should prove value of ERP solution with organized methods and understand what that takes for successful of execution of implementation. Prior presenting their case of application, they should go through extensive research towards IMB’s business process. Further, there is documentation of workflow challenges. More than only speaking like challenges in present working flows, that is vital to document them. As they are able to provide data providing effects that the bottlenecks have on IMB’s productivity and revenues the stakeholders would turn to be understanding impacts that never have ER on the organization. Prior presenting their case to implement they must also perform extensive research to process of company (Ullah et al. 2018). Before providing the situation to deployment, they must perform extensive research towards their practices. They should speak to various leaders in every departments that must be affected to ERP, find out their pain points and must be learning nuances of their working flows.

References:

Taniguchi, A. and Onosato, M., 2017. Use of Project Management Information System to Initiate the Quality Gate Process for ERP Implementation. International Journal of Information Technology and Computer Science, 9(12), pp.1-10.

Taniguchi, A. and Onosato, M., 2018. Effect of continuous improvement on the reporting quality of project management information system for project management success. International Journal of Information Technology and Computer Science (IJITCS), 10(1), pp.1-15.

Turek, T. and Dziembek, D., 2018. The ERP process system as a direction of the evolution of integrated management information systems. Informatyka Ekonomiczna, (3 (49)), pp.118-131.

Oghazi, P., Rad, F.F., Karlsson, S. and Haftor, D., 2018. RFID and ERP systems in supply chain management. European Journal of Management and Business Economics.

Junior, C.H., Oliveira, T. and Yanaze, M., 2019. The adoption stages (Evaluation, Adoption, and Routinisation) of ERP systems with business analytics functionality in the context of farms. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 156, pp.334-348.

Tereshchenko, I., Shtangey, S. and Tereshchenko, A., 2016, October. The application SAP® ERP principles for the development and implementation of corporate integrated information system for SME. In 2016 Third International Scientific-Practical Conference Problems of Infocommunications Science and Technology (PIC S&T) (pp. 168-170). IEEE.

Acar, M.F., Tarim, M., Zaim, H., Zaim, S. and Delen, D., 2017. Knowledge management and ERP: Complementary or contradictory?. International Journal of Information Management, 37(6), pp.703-712.

Ali, M. and Miller, L., 2017. ERP system implementation in large enterprises–a systematic literature review. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.

Park, K.O., 2018. The relationship between BPR strategy and change management for the sustainable implementation of ERP: An information orientation perspective. Sustainability, 10(9), p.3080.

Widiastuti, M., 2020. ADVANTAGES FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ERP BASED INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN SERVICE COMPANIES. Jurnal Ilmu Manajemen Terapan, 1(3), pp.218-224.

Ullah, A., Baharun, R.B., Nor, K., Siddique, M. and Sami, A., 2018. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems and User Performance (UP). International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, pp.377-390.

Ying, L., 2016, March. Design and implementation of the management information system for Chain business corporation. In 2016 Eighth International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation (ICMTMA) (pp. 195-198). IEEE.

Zhang, Y., 2016, June. Management information system. In 2017 2nd International Conference on Machinery, Electronics and Control Simulation (MECS 2017). Atlantis Press.

Zhezhnych, P. and Tarasov, D., 2018, September. Methods of data processing restriction in ERP systems. In 2018 IEEE 13th International Scientific and Technical Conference on Computer Sciences and Information Technologies (CSIT) (Vol. 1, pp. 274-277). IEEE.

Feng, L., 2019, November. Design and Implementation of ERP Management System for Manufacturing Enterprise. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1345, No. 6, p. 062018). IOP Publishing.

Li, C. and Li, J., 2019, December. Research on ERP General Part Development Strategy in Intelligent Manufacturing Era. In 2019 International Conference on Big Data, Electronics and Communication Engineering (BDECE 2019) (pp. 126-129). Atlantis Press.