International Competitiveness Of Asian Firm - Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss about the International Competitiveness Of Asian Firm. Answer Introduction: Solutions of Enterprise Resource Planning initialized on the market from the first half of the 1980s. They usually comprised of modules related to Logistics, finance and manufacturing that permitted the management of sales, purchases, productions and stocks. These solutions were generally termed to be the Planning of Enterprise Resources as they allowed the elaboration of stage along with the integrated administration regarding major resources of the company (Ahmad and Cuenca 2013). This included the utilization of resources in fixed inventory, finance, human resources and materials along with the associated processes. Prior to the development of ERP, in-house developed or purchased software that is less or more interfaced was considered to be the sole solution that was offered to organizations in order to the management of events while a segregation was maintained between tasks, departments, input, tasks and databases. This research paper would produce several insights regarding the significance of the integration of ERP with the organizational policies. It would also address the issues that take place because of minimal integration between process, people and information. It would also demonstrate the various ways that ERP systems utilize to address the issues of integration, along with the benefits that organizations achieve upon the integration of resources. The latter would be justified with 2 case scenarios that would depict the issues they confronted because of minimal integration and the various ways in which ERP systems have helped them to overcome the challenges. Discussion: Importance of integration to companies A company without any policy for ERP would be executing its functions on several kinds of software that do not facilitate communication. In several cases, customization might also turn out to be problematic. This would negatively influence the optimized performance of the business activities of the company. The organization would be confronting hardships in several functional regions. The design of engineering related to the software would be required for the improvement of products and the behaviour of the clients need to be abided by for the improvement of the product along with the following of the behaviour of the consumer and the choices as the initial contact is extremely vital. Supervision of various interdependent receipts would be extremely complicated, like invoices of purchased materials, salaries or general expenditures. When an integrated ERP system is implemented on behalf of the company, all of these issues are addressed simultaneously. Data flows constantly and the pr ocess of the client are allowed to be followed at any instance, irrespective of the component of the process which the organization is implementing. Expenditures and purchases are registered in a core database that permits to maintain a close monitoring of activities (Ram, Corkindale and Wu 2013). Regarding this aspect, ERP supports the prevention of possible abuse. With the implementation of an integrated powerful ERP system, interactions regarding sales, marketing and control over these events are enabled. This can all be stored in a single database. As a result, retyping of errors and occasional losses would be eliminated. All functions and departments would be integrated by it across the organization in a solo computer system which would be capable to serve every individual needs of the company. Business processes are also automated by the ERP system by their placement in a capable format that is regarded to be standardized and is considered to be common for the entire company. In addition to this, it can also be used between the manufacturers and their consumers. When an integrated ERP system is implemented, better management of information takes place via automation of the business (Laurent, Chollet and Herzberg 2015). Measurements and performance metrics are necessary in the evaluation of the programs of the business and also to support the development of the future goals. However, with the flourishing of the business, problems would continue to take place regarding manual calculation of the margin of sales, ratios of profit and other similar metrics. An extent of automation is brought about by ERP that allows the employees across the company to access shared information without the necessity of maintenance of manual records (Tanzeel and Idrees 2016). The generation of synchronized reports is also enabled regarding the metrics of major businesses. Immediate access to information is necessary for taking timely business decisions (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Workflow is also improved as every process is streamlined and simplification of access takes place via user-friendly interfaces (Riaz et al. 2014). The employees are better equipped with the acquisition of relevant data that would be important to carry out their jobs. These jobs can be the extraction of a standardized or customized reports or the formulation of a report regarding its presentation. Each employees job is made easier with the implementation of ERP software that results in improved productivity. The main objective regarding any ERP is the integration of every function related to a business into a single platform (Parvizi, Oghbaei and Khayami 2013). Several businesses are still utilizing the inevitable position where information is stored in several systems and locations. When this data is centralized and the means of streamlining are accessed along with the addition of information, ERP contributes too much better productivity within the model of the business. The software of ERP integrates several different processes that are considered to be mandatory for carrying out an enterprise of business into a single database. These processes comprise of order and inventory management, human resources, accounting, management of consumer relationship amongst other needs (Ijaz et al. 2014). When the processes are streamlined into a single effective system, a shared database is provided by the ERP that supports several functions across the organization. It also helps in the simplification of accounting of business. A developing business would struggle with the procedures of accounting if they are either still manual or if accounting, sales, finance and the departments of HR are devoid of access to shared information. The financial reports and daily accounting would particularly need a lot of effort and time that can be easily minimized with the utilization of the ERP (Ram, Wu and Tagg 2014). When ERP is implemented for analysing and integrating finan cial information, the productivity of employee would enhance manifold and the delays would be reduced considerably. It also helps in maintaining a state of transparency in the company. Any organization values its assets of data and the corresponding security attached to it. The integrity and security of information is extremely necessary for ensuring the strategic information of business is accessed and processed by the right personnel. With the utilization of an ERP, the accessibility and safety of data can be ensured, along with the provision of utmost security (Altamony et al. 2016). In addition to this, strategic data can be regulated at a single place while updates are received regarding similar information can be carried out by several authorized personnel. As a result, role based systems result in the transparency and security of the ERP. Issues which occur due to lack of integration In the absence of an integrated ERP, the execution of functions related to any kind of software would not result in any kind of interaction. In most cases, there is also the added issue of customization. This would minimize the optimization of performance related to human activities. The company would be facing several hardships in several areas of functioning (Nordin and Adegoke 2015). The engineering design with respect to the software would be mandatory for improvement in the quality of services and products along with the behaviour of the consumers that are needed to be followed regarding the improvement of services and products. Monitoring several interdependent receipts would turn out to be extremely complex such as the invoices of salaries, purchased mails or general expenditures. In the absence of a well-established ERP, several issues related to multi-platform of IT take place. Over time, companies might find themselves executing several different types of systems of softwar e across several departments. These systems might be inherited with the absorption of organisations or might be combined together for the capability of working with vendors or partners. Problems take place when the systems turn out to be incompatible, outdated or too costly for the maintenance or are unable to be updated. When it turns out that improvements are needed by the systems, the planning of an integrated ERP starts taking place. Without the devising of an effective ERP, the high growth related to medium sized organisations are expected to expand in a continuous manner and support would be needed for the nourishment of this internal growth. With the applications of the ERP, the performance of the organisation and the activities of the business can be better controlled and supervised. With the implementation of an ERP system, interactions can be increased and improved internally between the suppliers and the consumers (Hidayanto et al. 2013). When the suppliers effectively communicate with the sales, finance and marketing, or even combine with the system of the ERP, a considerable increase in productivity takes place. How do ERP systems address these integration issues? Integration has become extremely important process for better business management for almost all the companies (Zikmund et al. 2015). Using different software for each process makes the whole system very complicated. Integrating different software in a single ERP platform makes the process easier to handle (Tenhiala and Helkio 2015). Using different software for different process results in difference in communication between each department of a company (Chang 2016). This issue create confusion among the employees and authorities of a company and results in error in product management, financial department and employee management. ERP addresses these issues while operating in the management system. Despite of using ERP, companies tend to face these issues unless a fully integrated ERP within the company is implemented (Kapp, Latham and Ford-Latham 2016). What benefits can companies achieve when this integration occurs? Integrating ERP software can hugely benefit the companies. Some of them are discussed as below: With increase in volume of data in all the businesses, it is highly necessary for the companies to ensure that flow of data is maintained without any error and speed of the whole process become faster for better customer service. Integrating ERP with business intelligence tools can make the data flow quicker (Teittinen, Pellinen and Jrvenp 2013) . The accuracy and scalability of the data will improve, which will help in accurate decision making and overall improvement of the company. Integration helps in reducing operation cost as there will be decrease in employee hiring as no manual work is required to maintain the data (Behrangrad 2015). Employees will be able to access the data from any location and it will ease their workload. Implementing ERP integration will help in better data synchronization and result in better optimisation of inventory management (Peterman et al. 2014). Company authority will be able to manage all the products. Production planning and distribution will be managed better. Due to reduction in manual entry of the data, the errors and duplicity in data will be reduced significantly (Huang and Handfield 2015). The companies will be able to track preferences of the customers which will help them to provide better customer service. Case Studies of companies and the issues they faced due to lack of integration and how ERP systems helped overcome these: In the earlier data management system that the companies used to follow, the whole system was more of employee effort which mostly resulted in data error, duplicity of data and error in data management (Zanoun and Wison 2015). One of the companies that got high benefits from integrating ERP is electronic giant LG Electronics. With expanding over 40 countries, and having more than 80,000 employees (Rugman and Hoon 2008), the company was facing serious issues of employee and product management. The maintenance cost became too high; there were many errors in decision making and the resources were quite limited for better training for the employees. These issues made company operations extremely difficult for LG Electronics (Park, Hong and Li 2016). They were lagging behind many international brands in the same field. This made them implement ERP method for better company management. LG Electronics made a centralized system with integrating Oracle technology which helped them hosting large amount data, better data migration, increased scalability and performance of the employees. This central managing system reduced their maintenance cost and increased productivity and time management. Implementing ERP helped LG Electronics minimize the challenges that they were facing earlier and increased their brand name further in the electronics market. Another company that introduced ERP in the working system was Fuze Energy Drinks. The business of the company had grown considerably but they were facing extreme challenges to cope up with the needs of their growing business. The main challenges that they faced were managing increased production and inventory, management of products according to market demand and flaws in financial management. This made them implement ERP in their business, which made their business management a lot easier and profitable than earlier. The company was aiming for a low cost management and easy to implement methods for inventory management (Stadtler 2015). It helped them maintain stocks according to expiry dates. It significantly reduced the costing of maintenance and ensured high profitability. Implementing ERP also helped Fuze in better and real time decision making. Conclusions: ERP has become the most popular business management software for the companies who want to make their whole system run smoothly, without any errors. Many famous companies have implemented ERP in their business to manage their growing branches, employees and products. Despite of implementing ERP, some companies continued to face similar issues. Many popular companies have faced serious issues of managing business by implementing old methods. To avoid these issues, integration of ERP system should be implemented. It will result in improved management system, reduction of error in data input, decreased workload of the employees and better product management. This report highlights the need of integrated ERP system in the business of a company. The introduction part reflects the basic knowledge about integrated ERP system. There are discussions about necessity of integrated ERP system in all the companies. The issues that occurs without integrated ERP has been analyzed. The processes of how ERP addresses the integration issue have been discussed. The benefits of ERP integration have also been evaluated. Further, case study of two companies using integrated ERP system has been provided along with their previous experience of not using ERP in their business and how integrated ERP has helped them overcome all the problems. With better and easier business facilities available by integrating ERP, it will be a better option for all the companies to implement this method and make their business strong in all departments. Reference List Ahmad, M.M. and Cuenca, R.P., 2013. Critical success factors for ERP implementation in SMEs.Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing,29(3), pp.104-111. Al Za'noun, A. and Wilson, L., Accenture Global Services Limited, 2015.Data quality analysis and management system. U.S. Patent 8,984,360. Altamony, H., Al-Salti, Z., Gharaibeh, A. and Elyas, T., 2016. The relationship between change management strategy and successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations: A theoretical perspective.International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research,7(4), pp.690-703. Behrangrad, M., 2015. A review of demand side management business models in the electricity market.Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews,47, pp.270-283. Chang, J.F., 2016.Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press. Hidayanto, A.N., Hasibuan, M.A., Handayani, P.W. and Sucahyo, Y.G., 2013. Framework for Measuring ERP Implementation Readiness in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME): A Case Study in Software Developer Company.JCP,8(7), pp.1777-1782. Huang YY, Handfield RB. Measuring the benefits of ERP on supply management maturity model: a big data method. International Journal of Operations Production Management. 2015 Jan 5;35(1):2-5. Ijaz, A., Malik, R.K., Lodhi, R.N., Habiba, U. and Irfan, S.M., 2014, January. A qualitative study of the critical success factors of ERP system-A case study approach. InProceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Bali, Indonesia(Vol. 7, No. 9, pp. 2556-2566). Kapp, K.M., Latham, W.F. and Ford-Latham, H., 2016.Integrated learning for ERP success: A learning requirements planning approach. CRC press. Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016.Management information system. Pearson Education India Laurent, P., Chollet, T. and Herzberg, E., 2015. Intelligent automation entering the business world. Nordin, N. and Adegoke, O., 2015. Learning from ERP implementation: A case study of issues and challenges in technology management.Jurnal Teknologi. Park, Y., Hong, P. and Li, S., 2016. Free trade agreements and maritime supply chain costs: Competitiveness of Korean firms.Maritime Economics Logistics,18(1), pp.3-18. Parvizi, R., Oghbaei, F. and Khayami, S.R., 2013, May. Using COBIT and ITIL frameworks to establish the alignment of business and IT organizations as one of the critical success factors in ERP implementation. InInformation and Knowledge Technology (IKT), 2013 5th Conference on(pp. 274-278). IEEE. Petermann, A., Junghanns, M., Mller, R. and Rahm, E., 2014. Graph-based data integration and business intelligence with BIIIG.Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment,7(13), pp.1577-1580. Ram, J., Corkindale, D. and Wu, M.L., 2013. Implementation critical success factors (CSFs) for ERP: Do they contribute to implementation success and post-implementation performance?.International Journal of Production Economics,144(1), pp.157-174. Ram, J., Wu, M.L. and Tagg, R., 2014. Competitive advantage from ERP projects: Examining the role of key implementation drivers.International Journal of Project Management,32(4), pp.663-675. Riaz, U., Sair, A., Shrafat, M. and Malik, M.E., 2014. Effect of organization culture and top management support on ERP implementation.Science International,26(3). Rugman, A.M. and Hoon Oh, C., 2008. The international competitiveness of Asian firms.Journal of Strategy and Management,1(1), pp.57-71. Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. InSupply chain management and advanced planning(pp. 3-28). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Tanzeel, S. and Idrees, M.W., 2016. Role of Change Management in Successful Implementation of ERP: A Case Study.Abstract of Business Strategy and Social Sciences,5. Teittinen, H., Pellinen, J. and Jrvenp, M., 2013. ERP in actionChallenges and benefits for management control in SME context.International Journal of Accounting Information Systems,14(4), pp.278-296. Tenhil, A. and Helki, P., 2015. Performance effects of using an ERP system for manufacturing planning and control under dynamic market requirements.Journal of Operations Management,36, pp.147-164. Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013.Business research methods. Cengage Learning.