Buy an essay on PowerIT

1.Examine Figure 2 – PowerIT’s acquisition strategy is the “3rd-party modified off-the-shelf solution”. Explain why the case writers assert that the “areas of relative strength” of this option rank as “High”, “High”, and “Low”.
Figure 2 contains the list of acquisition strategies and their relative strength areas. The strategy chosen by PowerIT is 3rd party modified off-the-shelf solution. Since it is a solution created by specialized software company, thus the level of software development expertise is going to be high. Also, since this is an ERP system, and since the vendors all were specializing in ERP solutions, their application domain expertise was also high (Khrosrow-Pour 2006). However, since the companies were not closely dealing with PowerIT, their knowledge of local company and its business cycle is expected to be low. As the example of PowerIT shows, “local company knowledge area” was indeed at a low level, while other two areas were relatively high.
2.What were the major problems encountered during the selection and implementation phases of the project?
First of all, CEO and financial director made the decision about obtaining a ERP system based on wrong background. “They perceived that their competitors within the industry were moving to ERP system and therefore, after some investigation, decided that an ERP system needed to be acquired” (Edwards and Lynne, 2005). Thus, they did not feel the real need for ERP system, but wanted to be not worse than competitors. This approach explains the lack of participation of PowerIT administration in the process of implementing ERP system. Secondly, their choice of acquisition strategy is questionable: although the chosen variant is efficient, the 3-rd party development (specific for their company) choice would be more effective, in my opinion.
Thirdly, the chosen business development manager was unable to communicate with the staff, and the fault of administration is that they have overlooked this fact. His resulting failures in studying business processes, formulating the requirements for the system and implementation problems were quite expectable. However, another fault of the administration is that they relied solely on one person and neither controlled the process nor hired someone to perform this control.
Fundamental error happened when the choice between vendors took place. Although in fact none of the vendors satisfied the requirements (which were incomplete and incorrect!), the suggestion of the third vendor was accepted. No alternative decisions were considered, and all the solutions were the responsibility of the business development manager. In my opinion, the failure of ERP implementation in PowerIT is primarily conditioned by management errors as well as by lack of communication and control.
3.What were the major problems encountered after implementation?
After implementation, the problems continued to grow. The relations between business development manager, PowerIT staff and vendor representatives have worsened, and positions became highly entrenched. The lack of communications resulted in missing or disabled functionality. What is more important, the managers did not know about supplementary programs used within PowerIT, which also indicated that communications troubles have got everywhere, and the spirit of employees has declined. The lack of system training can also be identified as a major post-implementation problem.
4. Examine Figure 1 – what “Class” of project is this?
Figure 1 contains the classes of projects according to ERP implementation success. It is evident that the case of PowerIT can be classified as class C, characterized with partial use of ERP system, incomplete and inaccurate data, and not gaining the benefits of ERP system. Indeed,. PowerIT’s situation cannot be regarded as class D since the system was installed on many computers, and was partly functional. However, it cannot be identified as class B as well, because the inaccuracy of data in the considered case greatly exceeded 5-10%.
5.The investigators suggested the need for both technical and organizational changes. Which will be more difficult to achieve? Why?
In my opinion, achieving organizational change is a more difficult task in the case of PowerIT because human factors have played a leading role in determining the failure of ERP system. First of all, the lack of communications between business development manager and the rest of employees led to incorrect formulation of system requirements and in fact shaped the attitude of users to the system. Secondly, the lack of interest and support from the administrative side resulted in the absence of control over this process. Thirdly, the issues between technical support and new vendor consultants as well as the relations between PowerIT staff and the representatives of the vendor leave much to be desired. Technical changes can be implemented over time; however, establishing the organizational issues will require time and highly efficient management skills, both from outside professionals and from PowerIT’s administration.
6.Consider the attributes for ERP success on page 259 of the text. Discuss how PowerIT did with respect to these criteria.
The four perspectives for ERP success presented at Figure 10.16 on page 259 are: customer, financial, internal business processes, learning and growth. In the case of PowerIT, the system might only match one attribute: customer perspective (nothing is known about customer interaction with the system; although, the sales department seemed to be eager to use it). The area where the chosen system almost failed is “internal business processes”. Since the requirements for the system were incorrectly formulated from the very beginning, other perspectives have also suffered. Learning and growth were hindered because users did not feel comfortable with the system, and it did not respond to their needs. Financial perspective was also a failure because the business processes were not processed correctly, and in fact the ERP system produced additional financial and work load instead of optimizing the whole four perspectives (Schwalbe 2009). Thus, it might be stated that in case of PowerIT the system failed to match all four perspectives, with customer perspective suffering the least, and internal business processes suffering the most.
7.Consider the discussion on Managing Projects on pages 293-295 of the text. How did Power IT do with respect to the 3 key project management areas?
Managing people
People management in PowerIT is controversial. “Resolving conflicts within the team and balancing the needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the team are two of the challenges facing project managers” (p. 293). The chosen project manager failed to resolve conflicts, although he’s developed quite a consistent initial plan of actions and was trying to find a balance between needs of the team. However, due to lack of contact with the team, the project failed. Moreover, the management of PowerIT also made a lot of critical errors which, being multiplied by the project manager’s faults, led to poor final result.
Managing communications
As it was mentioned above, the project manager had a great trouble with communications, since he did not manage to communicate neither with PowerIT employees, nor with its administration. It is likely that he was unable to communicate with vendor’s representatives as well. Perhaps, their hostile attitude could partly be initiated by the negative contacts with projects manager. Also, the project manager had a serious feedback trouble: he neither managed to collect the feedback properly, nor interpret this feedback.
Managing change
“Each software development initiative is managed by both the business and IT” (p. 294). In the case of PowerIT, troubles with business management correlated with IT management errors. The change was initiated on a spontaneous basis, and is was not accepted as opportunity. More likely, the change was accepted as a challenge by most PowerIT staff and perhaps by the business development manager as well. PowerIT could be efficient in managing change, because different departments seemed to use the system efficiently, and there were users who could provide internal training, if necessary. However, the lack of management and communications in the company resulted in final failure at the situation where great market advantage could be achieved.
8.Select and justify one of the 3 options available to PowerIT at this point – reimplement and modify; upgrade; or scrap and replace.
In my opinion, the most acceptable option is to re-implement the current ERP system and modify the business processes to better match the system. There are a number of reasons to choose this option. First of all, scrapping the existing system and looking for a “better fit” replacement will be the most efficient decision for PowerIT, but it will take a long time and require very significant investments. PowerIT, in its current situation, would not handle properly such a large project. Moreover, the users are already set against the idea of implementing new systems. From this point of view, selecting a new system is worse than modifying the existing one, since users are at least partly accustomed to existing ERP system and its functionality. Taking into account that ERP’s are quite complex products, it is recommended not to start a new system from scrap.
Furthermore, upgrading current system is also inefficient, in my opinion. It lacks many functional features and is not used correctly by many departments. Since the initial demands for this system were formulated incorrectly, it is worth to rebuild the solution.
Also, reimplementing the system is recommended because the usage of existing system has shown many advantages and disadvantages of current solution, and this experience might be used in order to formulate correct and efficient system requirements. Also, creating a new solution will most probably enhance communications with the new owner of the ERP solution. Their technical support is evidently uncomfortable with the obtained product. If this company designs a new solution, its professionals might be able to train the users and provide better support. In general, the decision to reconsider requirements and reimplement the existing system is optimal both from technical, financial and organizational point of view.

References
Edwards, Helen M. and Lynne P. Humphries. Change Management of People and Technology in an ERP implementation. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 7 (4), 143-159, Jan. – March 2005.
Khrosrow-Pour, Mehdi. Emerging Trends and Challenges in Information Technology Management. Idea Group Inc, 2006.
Schwalbe, Kathy. Information Technology Project Management. Cengage Learning, 2009.