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STUDENT DECLARATION
I hereby, declare that this Report entitled, A PROJECT REPORT ON E-COMMERCE , submitted in partial fulfillment for the award of Post Graduate Diploma in Management is a record of independent research work carried out by me.
I also declare that this project is a result of my own effort and has not been submitted earlier for the award of any degree/diploma/associate ship/prize by New Horizon Leadership Institute or any other University.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This study is done to get a comprehensive picture of the implementation of Enterprise resource planning in business process. The objective of this study is also to focus on the area where the ERP can be useful to implement. It also covers the functionality, use of ERP in strategic planning and the role of ERP in cost reduction. This study also discloses the reality of actual need of being implementing the ERP in business process. During this study one would get a fair idea about the brief of the implementation of ERP, what was the business scenario before the use of ERP and what is the present scenario of after use of ERP. It also gives a concrete idea of the major area of failure of not successful implementation of ERP. The whole process of the ERP and the technical details are not included here But it is enough to give an through idea of what is ERP , the need of ERP, cost of implementation of ERP, pros and cons of ERP, the process of ERP and last but not the least it also covers the different modules of ERP.
INTRODUCTION
In 1990 Gartner Group first employed the acronym ERP as an extension of material requirements planning (MRP), later manufacturing resource planning [5][6] and computerintegrated manufacturing. Without supplanting these terms, ERP came to represent a larger whole, reflecting the evolution of application integration beyond manufacturing.[7] Not all ERP packages were developed from a manufacturing core. Vendors variously began with accounting, maintenance and human resources. By the mid1990s ERP systems addressed all core functions of an enterprise. Beyond corporations, governments and nonprofit organizations also began to employ ERP systems. ERP systems experienced rapid growth in the 1990s because the year 2000 problem and introduction of the Euro disrupted legacy systems. Many companies took this opportunity to replace such systems with ERP. This rapid growth in sales was followed by a slump in 1999 after these issues had been addressed. ERP systems initially focused on automating back office functions that did not directly affect customers and the general public. Front office functions such as customer relationship management (CRM) dealt directly with customers, or ebusiness systems such as ecommerce, egovernment, etelecom, and efinance, or supplier relationship management (SRM) became integrated later, when the Internet simplified communicating with external parties.[citation needed] In 2008, the Tennessee Board of Regents completed implementation on all major modules Finance, HR/Payroll, and Student for all 19 institutions in the state. The implementation includes the integration of the technology centers1 into the Finance module by host community colleges. As of fall 2008, all institutions were operational with only follow-up training remaining and some historical data conversion left to do. The cost overrun for Tennessee-specific modifications was less than one percent of the total contract costs of just over $50 million. This is a testament to the excellent project management at each campus and the oversight provided by the executive leadership beginning with the chancellor, the presidents, and all levels below. Roane State Community College began its implementation of the Banner ERP system in July 2005 with the Luminis portal and finished the Student module in March 2008. The project took three and a half years. While our experience clearly involved implementation of SunGards system, the project management techniques and processes shared in this article are universal and may be adapted to any ERP implementation. The advice is grouped by stage.
Before Implementation
Before beginning the actual implementation, its a good idea to set the stage properly with the people who will be involved or affected by the new system:
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Create Anticipation
One thing you as a project manager can do is create anticipation. Once the RFP was awarded, I began creating anticipation for the project by placing posters on all campus bulletin boards that stated: ERP is coming Are you ready? This created curiosity among the faculty and staff. I then made presentations to key groups on campus including the Faculty Senate, Administrative Council, and Executive Council to explain what ERP meant, the anticipated timetable, and how all groups would be affected.
Planning
When planning before beginning the ERP implementation process, set up the proper structures to support your efforts:
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Conduct business process improvement Set data standards Plan for team building
Most systems are modular to permit automating some functions but not others. Some common modules, such as finance and accounting, are adopted by nearly all users; others such as human resource management are not. For example, a service company probably has no need for a manufacturing module. Other companies already have a system that they believe to be adequate. Generally speaking, the greater the number of modules selected, the greater the integration benefits, but also the greater the costs, risks and changes involved.[citation needed] Connectivity to plant floor information ERP systems connect to realtime data and transaction data in a variety of ways. These systems are typically configured by systems integrators, who bring unique knowledge on process, equipment, and vendor solutions
Direct integrationERP systems connectivity (communications to plant floor equipment) as part of their product offering. This requires the vendors to offer specific support for the plant floor equipment that their customers operate. ERP vendors must be expert in their own products, and connectivity to other vendor products, including competitors.
Database integrationERP systems connect to plant floor data sources through staging tables in a database. Plant floor systems deposit the necessary information into the database. The ERP system reads the information in the table. The benefit of staging is that ERP vendors do not need to master the complexities of equipment integration. Connectivity becomes the responsibility of the systems integrator.
Skills Needed
A project manager is responsible for managing resources, time, and the scope of a project to ensure the project stays on schedule and within budget.
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Resources include people, equipment, and other material. Time management includes task duration, dependencies, and meeting milestones. Scope includes the size and requirements of the project.
All of these tasks must be managed simultaneously. I cannot discuss project management in any detail here that would require an entire article by itself. However, you should have a basic understanding of tasks, slack days, critical paths, and dependencies. You also need to understand how dependencies and meeting milestones affect the overall project. If you do not, I recommend taking a basic project management course before the project begins.
Appoint a Scheduler
The scheduler is an important role in managing the large number of tasks that will need to be tracked during implementation. In some projects the project manager can perform this function,
but for large projects it is best to have someone else fill the role, especially if you have three or four modules under way at one time. The scheduler works with the project manager to prepare project management schedules for review by collecting status reports on tasks for a reporting period. The scheduler maintains contact with the team leads to collect their status on tasks and then reports that status to the project manager. For our project, the scheduler also sent reports to the Tennessee Board of Regents.
Organizing Teams
One issue to address early in the project is ensuring that everyone knows this is not an IT project. Functional managers must take ownership. To accomplish this, they must be intimately involved in the process. They must be part of the team. Teams must be created for project implementation, as well as for functional, technical, and executive management. Roane States team plan included an executive Steering Committee, a project manager, a Banner implementation team, six functional teams, and one technical team. The functional teams consisted of the Communications Team, the Portal Team, the Student Team, the HR/Payroll Team, the Finance Team, and the Advancement Team. Finally, a Technical Team consisting of programmers, analysts, and networking staff completed the roster. The teams were organized as shown in Figure 1 ERP's scope usually implies significant changes to staff work processes and practices. Generally, three types of services are available to help implement such changesconsulting, customization, and support. Implementation time depends on business size, number of modules, customization, the scope of process changes, and the readiness of the customer to take ownership for the project. Modular ERP systems can be implemented in stages. The typical project for a large enterprise consumes about 14 months and requires around 150 consultants. Small projects can require months; multinational and other large implementations can take years.[citation needed] Customization can substantially increase implementation times.
Figure 1. Team Organization for the Sloane State ERP Implementation The Steering Committee, at a minimum, should consist of the president, the chief financial officer, the CIO, and the chief academic officer. Others may be included depending on the size of the institution. Your organization will vary depending on the system you are implementing. The Implementation Team was made up of the team leaders from each of the functional teams plus additional members from subteams such as Recruiting, Admissions, Financial Aid, and Technical. This organization allowed information to be shared quickly across all teams and facilitated coordination between teams. Functional team leads were key functional users from the areas indicated, generally the department heads for the functional areas addressed by the ERP modules. These individuals were critical to the success of the implementation. I cannot emphasize how important it is to select knowledgeable personnel to fill these positions. Teams included staff members from the functional areas as well as staff members from crossfunctional areas. Many of the functions cross departmental boundaries and need to closely coordinate during implementation. One of the most important things you will do as a project manager is to get the team leaders and members to take ownership of their process. That means you must take a back seat in the process. One technique I used was to praise the teams in public at every opportunity. I also encouraged them to present the status on their teams activities publicly when given the opportunity and featured them in the project newsletter (discussed later). This identified them with the activities of their teams. At some point, it becomes their part of the project. As the project manager, your role is to encourage and to provide the resources needed by the teams. Additionally, you must remove barriers to the teams success.
Another aspect worth mentioning is the Tennessee Board of Regents ERP Steering Committee, a state-wide committee that included institution presidents and chaired by the chancellor. They met monthly to review the progress of implementing the ERP system and to make decisions on changes and future directions for the project. I believe this leadership was instrumental in keeping cost overruns to a minimum and to the project being named by CIO Magazine as one of the top 100 projects for 2008.
In addition to creating the collaboration site, I organized my e-mail using the tools in Outlook. I created folders for each topic, then rules to check e-mail and file messages based on Banner topics. This allowed me to keep up with the flurry of messages that arrived each day. Additionally, the MS Exchange administrator created distribution lists for everyone involved in the project and for each functional team. These were used in conjunction with Tennessee Board of Regents distribution lists to ensure that all members of the teams were kept abreast of updates, training, meetings, and changes as the project progressed.
In the broader collaboration, the Tennessee Board of Regents used a cohort approach for training and implementation. This arrangement provided for considerable cost savings. Institutions were grouped into two cohorts, and training sites were established by geographic regions at centrally located institutions in each major division of the state, west, middle, and east and used throughout the implementation. Using cohorts and regional training centers benefited all institutions by reducing travel, training costs, and one-on-one consulting hours.
Implementing ERP typically requires changing existing business processes. Poor understanding of needed process changes prior to starting implementation is a main reason for project failure. It is therefore crucial that organizations thoroughly analyze business processes before implementation. This analysis can identify opportunities for process modernization. It also enables an assessment of the alignment of current processes with those provided by the ERP system. Research indicates that the risk of business process mismatch is decreased by:
Plan for frequent meetings Plan for reporting Provide a war room Create a communications plan Consider branding Use creative information campaigns
management. As a project manager, you must know the status of every task performed by the teams. For our project, we had several layers of reporting. Each team was required to report weekly the status of all tasks from the previous week. That report was then consolidated and sent to the Board of Regents. As part of the contract, a third-party project management consultant consolidated all reports from across the state and produced a (weekly) dashboard on the overall status of the project. This was shared with the presidents and the project managers. Statuses were reported as green for on track, yellow if behind schedule, or red for being in danger of not meeting go live target dates. No project manager wanted his teams in the red.
Consider Branding
The first project we completed was the portal. The portal product, Luminis, functions as the front end to all Banner modules. The first thing our Implementation Team did was to brand our portal. Our athletic teams are known as the Raiders, so we chose RaiderNet as the portal name (see the logo in Figure 3). A tag line of Campus Without Walls was added to emphasize the academic connections this portal represented. Branding helped with identification as an institutional project and not an IT project. Branding can be a powerful tool in assisting with change management.
Figure 4. RaiderNet Ticket for the Your Ticket Inside Campaign The Student module was scheduled to go live in April 2008. During the fall semester 2007, the Public Relations and Marketing Department produced the small tickets and posters that looked like tickets that invited students to watch for more information on their Ticket inside RaiderNet. Continuing with the ticket inside theme, in January 2008 we began communicating with students on how to register for classes. E-mail, postcards, and a ticket icon on the main web page directed students to instructions on how to register for classes using Banner. To register for summer classes, students had to use our legacy system, but registration for all fall 2008 classes had to be on the Banner system. The campaign was very successful; we experienced the largest number of students ever registering on the first day of registration.
Additional Measures
Outside the formal project implementation process are other issues to address:
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Prepare for problems Plan for emergency funding Plan for staffing backfill Always celebrate success
One of the teams needed additional consulting that fell outside the contract terms. We found functional and technical users could benefit from have dual monitors. The programmers needed new SQL development tools.
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Additionally, all schools had to purchase an ad hoc reporting tool. The contingency funds also paid for unplanned travel and training that came up during implementation.
None of this would have been possible had we not planned in advance.
Post-Implementation
What happens after the project has successfully implemented your new ERP system? Theres still more to do:
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Continue team meetings Perform an after-action review Revisit your business processes Appoint a reporting review team Reemphasize data standards Plan for retiring the legacy system
needs based on input from the functional and end-users. This list should be prioritized and then a plan developed to locate reports already created by other institutions or, if they are not available, devise a plan to create the necessary reports.
What is SAP MM? SAP MM (Materials Management) SAP MM is a module is used for Procurement Handling and Inventory Management. The module has two important master data - material and vendor. Broadly, the various levels that can be defined for a SAP MM implementation are: Client, Company Code, Plant, Storage Location, Purchase Organization
CONCLUSION
The past three and a half years have been exciting and challenging because of Sloane States implementation of a new ERP system. Most IT personnel will not go through more than one of these implementation processes in their careers unless they are consultants due to the costs. More than likely i will go through a major version upgrade;. Endnotes 1. Tennessee Technology Centers are the states providers of workforce development training. 2. Diane Galloway, Mapping Work Processes, American Society for Quality, Milwaukee, 1994. Reduced overheads and inventory. Timely responsiveness. Market share and image enhancement. Keep up with technology changes. Only way for integrated systems for client with multiple locations.