Communicating within the Learning Disabilities | Reflection

Communicating within the Learning Disabilities | Reflection

Enterprise Resource Planning and Software Systems Essay

Hershey Food Corporation, the biggest manufacturer of candy products in the United States, decided to implement a new Enterprise Resource Planning system titled Enterprise 21 starting in 1996. The ERP system consisted of many different software systems. These systems included SAP AG, Manugistics, and Siebel systems. With the implementation of these software systems, Hershey believed its mass market candy business strategy would be emphasized. Hershey’s Expected Benefits of Enterprise 21 Hershey had many goals for Enterprise 21. In general, Hershey had a goal of upgrading and standardizing the hardware and software systems. In attempt to upgrade the hardware, Hershey moved from a mainframe-based network to a client-server network. This upgrade would allow for Hershey to use and share its information with people inside the company as well as distributors outside the company, a critical aspect of establishing good customer relationships. The upgrade and standardization of the software system was a much larger goal. The SAP system, which allows for communication within company functions, was to be installed with other software systems. Manugistics software system would be used to forecast production and scheduling. Manugistics would also be useful as a transportation management system. The benefit of this system would greatly lower inventory holding costs and transportation costs, the two largest expenses in logistics management. Hershey also decided to implement Siebel systems, which is designed to aid in establishing and maintaining customer relationships, as well as a measuring device of the effectiveness of marketing strategies. Hershey’s Implementation Approach The first part of Hershey’s implementation process started with the installation of a bar-coding system. A bar-coding system is necessary to improve logistic management by tracking inbound and outbound materials and products. Due to a modification of the SAP system, Hershey decided to move the target date of the installation of the system to April of 1999. This new date meant the company had only thirty nine months to complete the implementation instead of the forty eight months originally forecasted. Due to the delay of the implementation of the full SAP system, the Siebel and Manugistics systems were also delayed. Because of the delays, the implementation of the new ERP system immediately caused problems because by mid July, when Halloween orders were arriving, the system had just been installed. Due to Halloween orders already arriving, Hershey’s information technology personnel decided to implement the ERP system using the cutover strategy, a very risky approach where all systems go into affect all at once. This approach failed, causing shortages with distributors of Hershey products. These shortages lead to bad customer relationships with distributors which further lead to bad relationships with their customers. Hershey could have used a much better implementation approach by slowly implementing their new system. The cutover strategy caused great confusion for employees who both entered orders and communicated those orders to production facilities and to employees who filled orders in warehouses. Causes of the Problems and Who is Responsible There are many different theories on the causes of the implementation failures of Hershey’s ERP system. Many believed that the software systems were not functioning properly. However, this was not the case, as these systems were operating smoothly in different units of Hershey. I believe the cause was directly related to the failure to use the systems properly. Due to the rushed implementation of the system, training and education of the new system was not properly or thoroughly conducted. Employees were confused not only how to operate the system but also did not see how the different software systems fit together. With better education and training, employees would have been able to process orders much more effectively and efficiently. The knowledge we have that the SAP system, along with Siebel and Manugistics, was working properly in other regions takes away the ability to blame the software companies for this ERP system failure. The blame has to be put in the hands of the information technology managers, as they were the personnel that decided to implement this system at such a fast pace. However, business managers and executives should have raised questions about the training of employees and potential disasters this system can cause. After all, the goal of an integrated ERP system is to link the different aspects of a business and to increase the communication between employees. Although IT personnel made the implementation approach decision, executives and managers should have had a larger role in the process before changing operations drastically as their busiest season was quickly approaching. Impacts on the Hershey Organization The largest impact that the Hershey organization had to deal with was the effect on the customer relationships. In an extremely competitive and global business world, customer relationships are one of the most important aspects of having a successful business. As noted in the article, distributors were unable to receive Hershey products, which further affected their customer relationships. This lead to a loss of distribution warehouse space as well as shelf space in stores, which forced customers to choose substitutes. Conclusion Although Hershey suffered huge losses in 1999 and part of 2000, they rebounded strongly in 2000. The reputation of quality products is what I believe to be the reason for their comeback. Without Hershey’s prior strong reputation and strong customer relationships, Hershey would not have been able to recover from this ERP system failure. All companies should use this failure as a guideline when implementing new software systems. Corporations must cautiously implement their systems in a manner that allows proper employee training and production efficiency while still maintaining customer relationships.

Graduation Speech College Graduates - 1663 Words

In the United States, the outlook for recent college graduates seems bleak. In 2014, graduates left college with both a degree and an average of $28,950 in student loan debt (â€Å"Survey of the States† 1). In addition, over half of all millennials are having trouble saving for the future and seventy five percent were unaware of late payment charges on their credit cards (ibid). All of this builds up into the current situation in the United States, where collectively, college graduates have over one trillion dollars in debt, the second largest debt category (ibid). Now, the spending and saving of money starts at an earlier age than ever before. Students fresh out of high school are being asked to make thousand dollar investments in the†¦show more content†¦As so many young people are in desperate need of personal finance lessons, putting this content within the required high school curriculum would give them all a background they can use when making financial decision s, both right after high school and throughout the rest of their lives. Right now, only a few states have this personal finance curriculum implemented into the required content of their high schools and even fewer have testing to make sure these areas are being taught well (â€Å"Survey of the States† 1). They have had beneficial results, although these few locations cannot do enough to educate an entire generation about personal finance before the student loan debt rises even higher and thousands of young adults are unknowingly finding themselves in financial issues. Personal finance education is working in some high school systems, however, there are still improvements that need to be made before every high school student is offered the same opportunity to learn the financial skills that will help them in their future. These improvements include efforts to increase student motivation, educate teachers on how best to teach personal finance, and change the curriculum so that it is more beneficial to these young people. So far, personal finance classes have been working throughout the United States. One example of this was found in a study conducted by William B. Walstad, Ken Rebeck, and Richard A. MacDonald from the

Corporate Charities The Right and Wrong Ways for Big...

Corporate Charities The Right and Wrong Ways for Big Business to Give Back to the Community Introduction Why do people who have money feel inclined to give it away? Throughout history, reasons for philanthropy have ranged from guilt to concern for personal image, from religious principles to simple generosity. America is awash with corporate CEO’s who have so much money that they could never spend it in a lifetime. What is pocket change to them could save thousands of lives in a third-world country. And yet only some of them choose to give their money away. Even then some of the ones who do are not charitable out of the goodness of their heart but do it purely to make themselves look better in the eyes of the public.†¦show more content†¦Wal-Mart makes claims of giving to the community through its employment of workers and supposed charitable foundations. At the homepage of Wal-Mart’s Good Works Foundation one will notice a quotation claiming that Wal-Mart is the largest employer of Hispanic Americans in the United States. This may very well be true, but i s not indicative of anything good or noteworthy as will be come apparent in my discussion to follow. †¦But are these employees treated well? Some notable contributions Wal-Mart has made to local communities include giving over $85 million in community grants to date, $206 million to local United Way chapters since 1983, more than $293 million in 16 years for Children’s Miracle Network (CMN), $80 million in scholarships since 1979 and $1.8 million in environmental grants in the year of 2003. The scope of these charities, however, has been limited to only those communities that have a Wal-Mart store. The foundations website even has a small disclaimer at the bottom saying that eligibility for funding from the foundation requires that the program be in a Wal-Mart community. 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