Jean Roberge - vice president of ABS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Jean Roberge - vice president of ABS - Essay Example The project tends to bring all 3 sub-units (which were previously 3 different businesses) on to one platform so that resources can be shared profitably especially in accounting and human resource management department. Even in marketing department, if the plan of marketing from all three entities is in line with each other due to the presence of an integrated management system, it will prove less costly and more effective. The project will cost $50 million, which Mr. Roberge plan to spread over the period of 24 months. The major targets of ABS from incorporation of this new system are to ensure consistent and reliable data retrieval, harmonization of accounting and financial process, improving process efficiency in HR management and to create an integrated market vision for the new ABS entity. The challenges as identified by Mr. Roberge include the fact that there is a huge amount of information that needs to be sorted out and placed rightly to be accessed when required and this too must be done without a single error. The existing systems and soft wares cannot be considered obsolete for no reason. Instead, the best option is to make as little as possible change to the soft wares in use already. This will help in keeping the system understandable for the users. Also, it is a huge project which will have a direct impact over the way IT department of ABS works. It will have an impact over the future of IT department in ABS. Another great challenge is that Mr. Roberge needs to hire a competent project manager. Case 1: Question 1: There are few other issues which at this point seem that Mr. Roberge has not considered. The biggest issue is reaction of ABS employees to this huge change. It has been mentioned in the case study that IT department staff is already a little uneasy about it as such a system can lead towards downsizing of their department. Such an automated system might result in lower number of jobs in IT department. This thus has an impact over performan ce of staff especially in the IT department. On the same line, the reaction of employees from other departments will also be important. Marketing department for example might not be very comfortable with such an integrated system. They are not used to discussing their micro plans with a huge audience. An important aspect that is thus being overlooked at this stage in my opinion is change management. Case Study 2: Question 1: In my opinion there are a few key points in the presentation which include the following: First of all, the presentation must have included the scope, budget, requirement and justification of having such a huge system in place. This is something which Mr. Roberge’s own presentation to the committee had in detail. The issues which he found a little untouched in his own presentation and was impressed when he saw added to consultant’s presentation are a detailed break up of the additional resources ABS will require for implementation of such a huge sy stem. When ERP is incorporated in any huge corporate of public culture, there is a lot of staff requirement, capital resource requirement and hardware and soft ware requirements to be taken care of by the parent company. Though Mr. Roberge has done thorough cost analysis, the requirement of staff was brought up by the consultant. Other important point that was highlighted in the presentation of the consultant was that change management must be a well planned process. The consultant has been a part of essentially many such ERP incorporations and from his experience he has pointed out that firms see highest turn over rate during the time when such huge changes are taking place. He pointed out that change management should be a well planned process and employees from every tier must be involved so that