Question

Boca Electronics, a manufacturer of semiconductor components,was established in Houston, Texas, in 2002 afterspinning off from its parent company. Originally a branch of Vissay Inc.,Boca Electronics had a solid customer base and strong sales with some major firms such as IBM, Compaq, and Motorola. Semiconductors included a wide array of products
that were broken down according to their application and material. Some of their main products include microprocessors, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), rectifiers, and suppressors. Boca
Electronics operated on a mainframe system that it inherited from its parent company and used additional stand-alone systems to perform many of its other business functions. For
the last four years the company had performed well financially, so little concern had been given to the business operations. However, recent slowdowns in the economy and an increase
in competition in the semiconductor industry had forced Boca Electronics to take another look at the way it operated its business.

Ron Butler, the purchasing manager at Boca Electronics, was responsible for ordering raw materials and ensuring that their delivery was on time and met production requirements.
Ron used his own forecasting software to determine purchasing needs based on past sales. Although this worked most ofthe time, Ron often found himself scrambling to meet large customer orders at the last minute and was forced to expedite a lot of orders to meet the production needs. Ron felt this was due largely to the lack of communication between his department and the sales force. Although he received production forecasts and projected sales from the sales department, it occurred on an irregular basis, and the forecasts would often change by the time he had placed orders to the suppliers. In addition, Ron had a difficult time synchronizing with suppliers and determining factors such as lead times and product prices. He had previously recommended a new software system that would integrate with suppliers of key components but the proposal was turned down by senior management due to a “current lack of need for such an investment.” Boca Electronics also faced issues regarding its cash flows. It took several weeks for the accounting department to process invoices and usually had to e-mail back and forth with the sales manager to make multiple corrections. Because both departments used different systems to manage customer accounts, some of the data was redundant and inaccurate (customer accounts would be updated in the sales department, but not in accounting). Although this issue went largely unnoticed during thriving periods, the recent slowdown in the economy revealed potential repercussions of the current business operations, as Boca Electronics began to run short on its cash flows.

In the last month, one of Boca Electronics’ largest customers began requiring all its suppliers to integrate their manufacturing operations to improve the sharing of information and
further improve its supply chain. This company had recently implemented an ERP system from a major provider and was encouraging its suppliers to do the same. Suppliers had the
option of implementing middleware software to integrate operations. Whether suppliers chose to keep their current systems and implement middleware, or implement an ERP system that would integrate with the company, they had one year to make the changes to continue doing business with this customer.

Paul Andrews, the CIO at Boca Electronics, was well aware of the issues facing the company. He knew that something had to be done to improve communication and information sharing within the company, and the current mainframe system was outdated and inefficient. He was also aware of the constraints that Ron was facing in Purchasing and how much it was costing the company. With the new request from one of its largest customers for further integration, the idea of implementing an ERP system for Boca Electronics seemed like a viable solution to Paul. However, recent economic downturns and a limited amount of capital made such a large capital outlay a risky investment for the company.

Determine the trade-offs of implementing an ERP system
in the company versus buying best-of-breed software and
using middleware to integrate.

What are the potential impacts of such an implementation
on the company’s suppliers and customers?

If the company chose to stay with the system it currently
has, what are some potential consequences that can occur
in the future?

Based on the business nature of the company, the industry,
and the current environment, what would you recommend
doing?

Answer 1

Determine the trade-offs of implementing an ERP system in the company versus buying best-of-breed software and using middleware to integrate.

There are various departments in any enterprise such as purchasing, production planner, manufacturing, management of finances and orders and marketing. Both these divisions used to operate in silos before, with each department retaining its own collection of records, resulting in confusion and undue effort during reconciliation. By allowing cross-functional purchases, ERPs packages support the organizations.

For example, all these modules finance, transaction, general ledger, account payables, account receivables completely merged with each other and hence company no longer need to store several copies of records. The various departments will access the purchase order which is raised within the system. ERP packages are therefore regular packages and do not support many features. For these instances, it is important to create customizations that are relatively costly to manage. The downside of this is that they're all completely incorporated.

Best of breed software is specialized software which offers much more features than traditional ERP packages. For example, Demantra is a common program for demand forecasting, and People Soft is an advanced payroll processing system. Since separate vendors own these best breed softwares, there is no common interface between these units. Such need to be implemented with the help of middleware, which is rather a major challenge and is mostly preferred for integration by external IT specialist vendors. Thus, there is also a trade-off between the introduction of an ERP program in the business and the procurement of the best breed product and while ERP products come with an interface, they do have standard features and comes with the agreed way of doing things and customizations becomes very difficult in them compared to Best of breed product.

What are the potential impacts of such an implementation on the company’s suppliers and customers?

The potential effect of the company's introduction of the ERP program would strengthen and incorporate the relationship with the suppliers. The partnership with the vendors will strengthen the collaboration and exchange knowledge and enhance the supply chain using advanced technologies. This new ERP delivery program would fulfill the diverse demands in the current domain for the customers. The customers suggested only the use of the company's ERP program to be viable.

If the company chose to stay with the system it currently has, what are some potential consequences that can occur in the future?

Unless the business decided to continue in the new program, which in its execution was being non-synchronous and unreliable, so the possible implications for the immediate future is the organization's failure and defeat. For the whole enterprise, the new program did not use standard applications or applications kit, and therefore the overall The framework was disintegrated. If the company continued the same system then the gap in miscommunication would widen, resulting in a lack of adjustment for fulfillment and supply of raw materials. In fact, the department of sales and accounting will not be able to collect the tremendous sales data without running the company on a productive path rather than webbing only in tech problems. The company would have gone down paths with troubled supply chain and broken organizational structure.

Based on the business nature of the company, the industry, and the current environment, what would you recommend doing?

The company's corporate design includes the introduction of a standardized streamlined technology package for the entire workplace. Similar program operating on standard framework should be taught throughout the whole company. This advanced suite will include tools for the administration of inventories, financing, accounting, revenue control, cash flows, and supply chain. This ERP system can be implemented by the integration with the company's hybrid cloud. Implementation based on the cloud will help the organization customize the platform to suit its needs and use it for different purposes without buying it in whole. This implementation of the ERP system benefits the company in terms of the present environment and culture, and the company's future success.

PLEASE LEAVE A LIKE. IT REALLY HELPS ME A LOT. THANK YOU!!!