Question

Background:

Gracious Industries is a private limited company with 35 employees and sales revenue of more than $10.5 million during the past year. It has been in business for over 40 years and supplies electronic parts to a number of different businesses, including hardware stores and supermarket. The company has experienced a growth in orders over the last few years for some of its new green product ranges. However, Gracious has recently lost some key accounts because of being unable to produce some of its products at a competitive price. Although the company hired an accountant who was keeping their books for them and producing the financial statements each year, the company thought they needed much more information to run their business efficiently. They felt that they needed to make an investment in an accounting software to take their business to the next level.

Required: You are required to prepare a report to evaluate and recommend an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for Gracious Industries. The report should include the following components:

 Business requirements o What are the key business processes for Gracious Industries? o What are the major control risks for the business processes of the company?

 Systems requirements o What are some of the possible ERP features and functionalities that the company should consider to achieve their business objectives and minimise the control risks?

 Software selection o Visit the websites of at least three (3) ERP vendors and provide a brief description of each vendor and its products.

 Vendor selection o Compare and contrast the features and functionalities of two ERP software packages offered by the three vendors described in the report. o Which one would be the most suitable vendor and ERP software package for the company and why?

Answer 1

Hi.

Please find the answer below:

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Key business processes for GI private limited company are

• Supply chain management
• Sales and Inventory management
• Finance
• Customer relationship

Risks

Major control risks for the business processes of the company are

Lack of business intelligence (as you can notice that the company was not able to offer products at a competitive price in the market)

Workflow risks

Budget risks

Execution risk of delivering goods

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ERP features and functionalities that the company should consider

• Supply chain management
• CRM
• Finance management
• HRM
• Intelligence

Software selection

Three ERP software products are as follows:

• Oracle JD Edwards
• SAP Business
• Microsoft Dynamics

Compare and Contrast

Supply chain management features of SAP are good. Whereas Inventory management features of Oracle JD Edwards are phenomenal.

Both the packages are difficult to use. JD Edwards is complex and SAP Business is not user friendly.

SAP Business has excellent CRM support.

ERP Vendor selection: Many factors determine which ERP vendor should be chosen like cost, suited for size of the company, ERP product features etc.

Most suited ERP Vendor

Since the company is small in size around 35 members, SAP Business is suited for SMB’s (small and medium businesses).