Chapter 12 : Enterprise Resource Planning

Shell Canada Productivity with ERP

1. How did ERP help improve business operations at Shell?
• The ERP system has helped the company immensely in terms of reducing and streamlining the highly manual process of third-party contractors submitting repair information and invoices. On average, there are between 2500 and 4000 service orders handled by these contractors per month on a nationwide basis.
2. How could extended ERP components help improve business operations at Shell?
• By this ERP system, it takes only a few minutes for a contractor to enter details about a service order. This information also can be transmitted through a wireless PDA to the appropriate Shell manager for immediate approval.
• Another bonus of the ERP system is that the contractor's monthly summarized invoices can be generated automatically and fed directly into the the ERP system's account payables application for processing. No rekeying of data required and if there is an issue or concern with one invoice item, the other items on the invoice can still be processed for payment.
3. What advice would you give Shell if it decided to choose a different ERP software solution?
• ERP system is easy to use because the past systems used by refinery workers were complex and difficult to search for information. The ERP system in place now has a portal-like interface that allows refinery workers to access the functions and information they need to keep operations running. The web interface allows workers access to this information with one or two clicks of a mouse.
4. How can integrating SCM, CRM, and ERP help improve business operations at Shell?
• SCM, CRM and ERP are the backbone of e-business,these applications is the key to success for many companies and allows the unlocking of information to make it available to any user, anywhere, and anytime.
• With new system,employees across the company have gained fast and easy access to the tools and information they need to conduct their daily operations.

Chapter 10: Supply Chain Management

Learning Outcomes

List and describe the components of a typical supply chain.

Supplier’s Supplier, Supplier, Manufacturer, Distributor, Retailer, Customer,  Customer’s customer.

Define the relationship between decision making and supply chain management.

SCM enhances decision making. Collecting, analyzing, and distributing transactional information to all relevant parties, SCM systems help all the different entities in the supply chain work together more effectively. SCM systems provide dynamic holistic views of organizations.  Users can “drill down” into detailed analyses of supply chain activities in a process analogous to DSS. Without SCM systems, organizations would be unable to make accurate and timely decisions regarding their supply chain.

Describe the four changes resulting from advances in IT that are driving supply chains.

Although people have been talking about the integrated supply chain for a long time, it has only been recently that advances in information technology have made it possible to bring the idea to life and truly integrate the supply chain. Visibility, consumer behaviour  competition, and speed are a few of the changes resulting from advances in information technology that are driving supply chains.

Summarize the best practices for implementing a successful supply chain management system.

The following are the SCM industry best practices: 

Make the sale to suppliers - A large part of any SCM system extends beyond the organization to the suppliers.  Since the organization has very little control over anything external to itself, these pieces are typically the most complicated.Be sure suppliers are on board with the benefits that the SCM system will provide to ease SCM implementation difficulties.

Wean employees off traditional business practices - If the organization cannot convince people that using the SCM software is worthwhile, the employees will probably find a way around using the software.

Ensure the SCM system supports the organizational goals - Be sure to select SCM software that supports organizational goals and strategies.

Deploy in Incremental phases and measure and communicate success - Designing the deployment of the SCM system in incremental phases is the most successful deployment method.The BIG BANG approach – implementing everything at once – fails 90 percent of the time.Be future oriented - An SCM system, like all systems, must scale to meet future demands.

Chapter 11: Customer Relationship Management

Opening Case Study Questions Second Life

Question 1 :

• Why is it important for any company to use customer relationship management strategies to manage customer information? 

Answer 1 : 

• Customer relation management is the technologies that can help organizations answer tough questions such as who are their best customers and which of their products are the most profitable. Next,customer relationship management solutions make organizational business processes more intelligent. This is achieved by understanding customer behaviour and preferences, then realigning product and service offerings and related communications to make sure they are synchronized with customer needs and preferences. 

 Question 2 :

• If the virtual world is the first point of contract between a company and its customers, how might that transform the entire shopping experience?

Answer 2 :

• It can easy for the customer when do a transaction, and do not be physically at the place such as when  shopping.
• It can save our time and energy to find the product or service that we want.
• If we as a seller,we can know the footprint and background of our customer and what kind of product she or he always search or buying.

Chapter 9 : Decision Making

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Four most common categories of AI include :

• Genetic Algorithms -An artificial intelligent system that mimics the evolutionary, survival-of-the-fittest process to generate increasingly better solutions to a problem.It essentially an optimizing system, it finds the combination of inputs that give the best outputs.Useful when search space very large or too complex for analytic treatment.In each iteration (generation) possible solutions or individuals represented as strings of numbers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Intelligent Agents -  is an autonomous entity which observes through sensors and acts upon an environment using actuators  and directs its activity towards achieving goals . Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals. They may be very simple or very complex, a reflex machine such as a thermostat is an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is a community of human beings working together towards a goal.
  

• Expert System - in the financial field is expert system for mortgages.. Loan departments are interested in expert systems for mortgages because of the growing cost of labour, which makes the handling and acceptance of relatively small loans less profitable. They also see a possibility for standardized, efficient handling of mortgages loan by applying expert systems, appreciating that for the acceptance of mortgages there are hard and fast rules which do not always exist with other types of loans.

• NEURAL NETWORKS - Consider a real estate appraiser whose job is to predict the sale price of residential houses. As with the Bank Loans example, the input pattern consists of a group of numbers.For example,number of bedrooms, number of stories, floor area, age of construction, neighbourhood prices, size of lot, and distance to schools. This problem is similar to the Bank Loans example, because it has many non-linearities, and is subject to millions of possible inputs patterns. The difference here is that the output prediction will consist of a calculated value the selling price of the house. It is possible to train the neural network to simulate the opinion of an expert appraiser, or to predict the actual selling price. 

Chapter 8 : Accessing Organizational Information - Data Warehouse

Learning Outcomes

1.     Compare the multidimensional nature of data warehouses (and data marts) with the two-dimensional nature of databases.

o    Databases contain information in a series of two-dimensional tables, which means that you can only ever view two dimensions of information at one time.  In a data warehouse and data mart, information is multidimensional, it contains layers of columns and rows.  Each layer in a data warehouse or data mart represents information according to an additional dimension.  Dimensions could include such things as products, promotions, stores, category, region, stock price, date, time, and even the weather.The ability to look at information from different dimensions can add tremendous business insight.

2.     Identify the importance of ensuring the cleanliness of information throughout an organization.

o    An organization must maintain high-quality information in the data warehouse.

o    Information cleansing and scrubbing is a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete information.

o    Without high-quality information the organization will be unable to make good business decisions.

3.     Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organization.

o    The primary purpose of data warehouses and data marts are to perform analytical processing.

o    The insights into organizational information that can be gained from analytical processing are instrumental in setting strategic directions and goals.

4.     Explain the relationship between business intelligence and a data warehouse.

o    A data warehouse is an enabler of business intelligence. The purpose of a data warehouse is to pull all kinds of disparate information into a single location where it is cleansed and scrubbed for analysis.

Chapter 7 : Storing Organizational Information - Databases

Learning Outcomes

1.  Describe the two primary methods for integrating information across multiple databases.

·         Backward integration - takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all upstream systems and processes.

·        Forward integration - takes information entered into a given system and sends it automatically to all downstream systems and process.

2.  Describe the benefits of a data-driven Web site.

·         A data-driven Web site is an interactive Web site kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers through the use of a database. Data-driven Web sites are especially useful when the site offers a great deal of information, products, or services. Web site visitors are frequently angered if they are buried under an avalanche of information when searching a Web site. A data-driven Web site invites visitors to select and view what they are interested in by inserting a query, which the Web site then analyzes and custom builds a Web page in real-time that satisfies the query.

3.  Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

·         The relational database model stores information in the form of logically related two-dimensional tables.

·         Entities, attributes, primary keys, and foreign keys are all fundamental concepts included in the relational database model.

4.  Evaluate the advantages of the relational database model.

·         Database advantages from a business perspective include

·         Increased flexibility

·         Increased scalability and performance

·         Reduced information redundancy

·         Increased information integrity (quality ) 

·         Increased information security

5.  Compare operational integrity constraints and business-critical integrity constraints.

  ·       Operational integrity constraints are rules that enforce basic and fundamental information-based constraints.

 ·    Business-critical integrity constraints are rules that enforce business rules vital to an organization’s success and often   require more insight and knowledge than operational integrity constraints.

Chapter 5: Organizational Structures That Support Strategic Initiatives

IT Roles and Responsibilities

• Information technology is a relatively new functional area,having been only around formally around 40 years. It can divide into five parts of each position in usually in large companies or certain company that have establish in doing business organization :-
• Chief Information Officer (CIO)
• Chief Technology Officer (CIO)
• Chief Security Officer (CSO)
• Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)
• Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

• Oversees all uses of IT and ensures the strategic alignment of IT with business goals and objectives. For example,in an organization,the CEO give the instructions to the Chief Information Officer to set up or redesign our product information through the website.Then,the CIO will make a meetings with the employee that involve in Information system department, how to make the website become more easiest to customer when finding information.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

• Responsible for ensuring the throughput, speed, accuracy, availability, and reliability of IT.For example, in produce a product,we used a machines to produce it. When demand form customer is high,we must changes our production through upgrade the good technology machines that can produce more in a each day. Hired the skilled worker that able to managed the system of machines and have a skill and knowledge in technology.

Chief Security Officer (CSO)

• Responsible for ensuring the security of IT systems and developing strategies and IT safeguards against attacks from hackers and viruses.For example, the CSO must make sure their system such as a website must protect and have a strength security to prevent from hacker. For example, in UITM Student Portal,have a person that controlled or managed the website.

Chief Privacy Officer (CPO)

• Responsible for ensuring the ethical and legal use of information. CPO also is a senior level executive within a business or organization who is responsible for managing the risks and business impacts of privacy laws and policies.The CPO position is relatively new and was created to respond to both consumer concern over the use of personal information, including medical data and financial information, and laws and regulations, including, but not limited to, legislation concerning the protection of patient medical records. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the use and safeguarding of consumer financial and banking transactions.

  Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO)

• Responsible for collecting, maintaining, and distributing the organization’s knowledge. The CKO is responsible for managing intellectual capital and the custodian of Knowledge Management practices in an organization. CKO responsibilities include such things as :
• Collecting relevant data that is useful for the organization as knowledge
• Developing an overall framework that guides knowledge management
• Actively promoting the knowledge agenda within and beyond the company
• Overseeing the development of the knowledge infrastructure
• Facilitating connections, coordination and communication
  
  
  Organisation Chart