THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ERP AT TEKTRONIX

The Implementation of ERP at Tektronix

The Implementation of ERP at Tektronix

There are a wide variety of tools and systems that have been developed to enable organisations to become more competitive, one of these tools is enterprise resource planning (ERP).

ERP systems are all about ensuring that operational systems being used by an organisation are fully integrated. The purpose of using ERP is to improve and simplify the internal business processes, which typically requires re-engineering of current business processes (Huang et al., 2004). The idea is to combine various systems into a single database (Payne, 2000). This approach will enable the organisation to have a single view of its business by ensuring that systems that support different functionalities within the organisation are combined (Kumar and van Hillegersberg, 2000).

There are quite a few advantages of adopting ERP as part of as an organisational strategy. For one, ERP systems support an organisation's desire for systems integration which means that organisations will not have to manage separate systems independently. In this case, the organisation optimises its processes which then improves the entire supply chain process, and integrates functionalities leading to increased transparency across the organisation. In most cases to continue to support this optimisation, the organisation also develops sets of expert common capabilities. The result is that the organisation is most likely to save on operational costs due to rationalisation and systems integration. It is expected that such savings on operational costs will be transferred to lower costs for the customer. At the same time, the integration of systems should lead to the provision of a more memorable experience for the customer as service provision becomes more seamless. ERP systems can also empower employees by providing them with real-time data (Davenport, 1998). It is also connected with greater job flexibility by providing a platform that enables the expansion of individual awareness, creativity, and innovation. Overall, existing statistics suggest that 63 per cent of large ERP customers are of the opinion that they do realise some major business benefits from their ERP implementations (Gould, 2004). ERP systems are however key strategic resources for the majority of organisations. Their importance is demonstrated by statistics which show that they usually comprise the largest segment of an organisation's applications budget (Aloini et al., 2007).

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Although this is the case, it is imperative to highlight that many ERP implementations have been considered as significant failures (Markus et al., 2000). Examples include Avis Europe Ltd's abandonment of its ERP implementation project in 2004 (at a cost of $54.5 million) and Ford Motors' ERP purchasing system which was also abandoned in 2004, after the company had spent close to $200 million. Perhaps, the most famous case of ERP system implementation failure relates to the collapse of the US$5 billion (GBP£2.5 billion) pharmaceutical giant FoxMeyer Drugs partially driven by a failed ERP implementation in 1995.

Work examining ERP implementation in the Middle East is not particularly extensive, although some work has been ...