chapter 12: nenterprise resources planning: case study

1) How did ERP 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 25000 and 4000 service orders handled by these contractors per month on a nationwide basic.



2) How could extended ERP components help improve business operations at shell?

The contractors had to send Shell Canada monthly summarized invoices that listed maintenance calls the contractors made at a various Shell gas online stations.Each one of these invoices would submit somewhere between 50 and 100 invoices every monthly to Shell Canada.This involved each invoice being reviewed by the appropriate territory manager and then forwarded to the head office for the payment processing.


3)What advise would  you give Shell if it decided to choose a different ERP software solution?

A very important facility of the ERP systems is that they increase the availability of the information, helping companies to have information in real time to make decisions and accurate prognostics regarding the organization. It is important to mention that ERP systems are a very powerful tool when it comes to processing and organizing financial data. It improves the development of the commercial activity in the short and long term. - See more at: http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/erp/erp-impact-in-organizations.html#sthash.GqrgiGBU.dpuf

A very important facility of the ERP systems is that they increase the availability of the information, helping companies to have information in real time to make decisions and accurate prognostics regarding the organization. It is important to mention that ERP systems are a very powerful tool when it comes to processing and organizing financial data. It improves the development of the commercial activity in the short and long term. - See more at: http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/erp/erp-impact-in-organizations.html#sthash.GqrgiGBU.dpuf

A very important facility of the ERP systems is that they increase the availability of the information, helping companies to have information in real time to make decisions and accurate prognostics regarding the organization. It is important to mention that ERP systems are a very powerful tool when it comes to processing and organizing financial data. It improves the development of the commercial activity in the short and long term. - See more at: http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/erp/erp-impact-in-organizations.html#sthash.GqrgiGBU.dpuf

I think it is a good way to choose a different ERP software solution.It improve the development of commercial activities in the short or long term,

4) How can integrating SCM,CRM,AND ERP help to improve operations at shell?

All of this can integrated in the operations at shell is  to managing information flows within the supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.With CRM shell managing all aspects of customers relationships with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organizations profitability.ERP can integrating all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT systems.so that managers and leaders can make enterprise wide decisions  by viewing enterprise wide information on all business operations.

chapter 10: extending the organization supply chain management

1.List and describe the component of a typical supply chain.

• supplier
• manufacturer
• distributor
• retailer
• customer

2.Describe four changes resulting from advances in IT that are driving supply chain.

-VISIBILITY

• is the ability to view all areas up and down the supply chain.Changing supply chain requires a comprehensive strategy buoyed by information technology.

-CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

• has changed the way businesses compete.Customer will leave if a company does not continually meet their expectations.They are more demanding because they have information readily available they know exactly what they want and they know when and how they want it.

-COMPETITION

• use advanced mathematical  algorithms to improve the flow and efficiency of the supply chain while reducing inventory. SCP depends entirely on information for its accuracy.

-SPEED

• these system raise the accurancy between internal users.Another aspect of speed is the company ability to satisfy continually changing customer requirements efficiency accurately and quickly.

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

-MAKE THE SALE TO SUPPLIER

• not only will the people in the organization need to changes the way they work.,but also the people from each supplier that is added to the network must change.

-WEAN EMPLOYEES OFF TRADITIONAL BUSINESS PRACTICES

• Operation people typical deal with phone call,faxes and order scrawled on paper and will most likely want to keep it that way.

-ENSURE THE SCM SYSTEM SUPPORTS THE ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

• it is important to select scm software that gives organizations an advantages in the areas most crucial to their business success.

-DEPLOY IN INCREMENTAL PHASES AND MEASURE AND COMMUNICATE SUCCESS

• For instance istead of installing a complete supply chain management system across the company and all supplier at once start by getting it working with a few key supplier.

-BE FUTURE ORIENTED

• the supply chain design must anticipate the future state of the business  because scm system likely will last for many more years than originally planned manager need to explore hoe flexible the system will be when changes are required in the future.

4.Define the relationship between decision-making and supply chain managament

-involve the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

CHAPTER 9 -> Enabling The Organization ( Decision Making)

EXPERT SYSTEMS

-are computerized advisory programs that imitate the reasoning processes of experts in solving difficult problem. Typically they include a knowledge base containing various accumulated experience and a set rules for applying the knowledge base to each particular situation.Are the most common form of all in the business arena because they fill the gap when human experts are difficult to find or retain or are too expensive.

NEURAL NETWORKS

-Analyse large quantities of information to establish pattern and characteristic in situation where the logic or rules are unknown

• learning and adjusting to new circumstances on their own.
• lending themselves to massive parallel processsing.
• functioning without complete or well-structure information.
• coping with huge volumes of information 
• analyzing nonliner relationship in information 

GENETIC ALGORITHMS

-is an inteligence system that mimics evolutionary survival of the fittest process to generate increasingly better solution to a problem.Is essentially an optimizing system .Genetic algorithms are best suited to decision making environments in which thousand or perhaps millions of solution are posibble.Can find and evaluate solution with many more posibilities faster and more thoroughly than a human.Organization face decision making environment for all type of problem that require optimization techniquesnsuch as following:

• business executives use genetic algorithns to help them decide which combination of projects a firm should invest in taking complicated tax considerations into account.
• investment companies use genetic algorithms to help in trading decision

·          

INTELLIGENT AGENT

·          

·         -is the special purpose knowledge based information system that accomplishes specific tasks on behalf of its users.Intelligent agents usually have a graphical  representation such as sherlock holmes for an information search agent.One of the simplest examples of an intelligence agent is a shopping bot.A shopping bot is software that will search several retailer website and provide a comparison each retailer`s offerings including price and availability Increasingly intelligence agent handle the majority of a company internet buying and selling and complete such processes as finding products bargaining over prices and executing transactions.Intelligence agents also have  the capability to handle all supply chain buying and selling.

·         Another application for intelligence agents is in environment scanning and competitive intelligence.

VIRTUAL REALITY

·         -is computer stimulated environment that can be simulation of the real world or an imaginary world.Fast-growing area of artifical human company interfaces.Enables telepresence where users can  be anywhere in the world and used virtual reality system to work alone or together at a remote site.To enhance the sight and touch of a human who is remotely manipulating equipment to accomplish a task.