ISY2005 Enterprise Systems | Systems Integration at UPS Corp
Our textbook, L. F. Motiwalla and J. Thompson, Enterprise Systems for Management, 2e, 2012, Pearson, briefly describes two real world case studies in each chapter. Students are to select ONE of these case studies for further analysis.
Case studies assess students’ understanding of concepts presented in weekly lectures and tutorials by researching and analysing real life situations. This is an individual assignment.In this assignment, students must write a 2,500 to 3,000 word report on the following issues depicted in the chosen case study:
- Describe the subject organisation and explain the problem or opportunity it faced.
- Describe the nature of the enterprise system that it adopted and the process by which it was selected and implemented.
- Explain and analyse any difficulties the organisation may have faced in adopting the system, or preparatory steps that were taken to facilitate implementation.
- Provide an assessment of how successful was the adoption of the enterprise system and any success metrics that were used.
You are required to go well beyond the brief case study described in the textbook and use additional references to support your arguments.
Answer:
Introduction
Description of the Organisation
The United Parcel Service (UPS) is an American based multinational based package delivery service provider and a company based on supply management. The globally based logistics company is mainly situated in the United States in the city of Sandy Springs, Georgia. The company is also linked with the central operation of package delivery based under the brand name of UPS, which is mainly used for denoting of many of the divisions of the company that also includes the cargo airline, operation based on freight-based trucking and the retail based shipping and packing store (Adie 2017).
Description of the Problem
The United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) in the mid-1980s had been struggling for gaining a share within the market based on a new form of newcomer within the shipping industry. The rival company, which had posed a risk for the UPS systems was Federal Express (Fed Ex). Company had emerged as a form of arduous player. They had embraced a new kind of technology in order to gain a strategic advantage over the highly competitive market. They had mainly focused on improving the form of efficiency and bringing efficiency of customer services.
The UPS had faced the challenge, which is mainly faced by any other form of shipping company. This was known to the company as a common form of shipping error due to the wrong form of input address. This could also be possible with the loading of package boxes that would be loaded on a wrong truck. This entire process was also time consuming and expensive (Morganti et al. 2014). There were multiple forms of errors that would happen on a frequent basis based on the internal systems of the company. The internal systems of the company normally required and were using the manual form of data entry mechanisms. The multiple systems within the organisation would require redundant processes for the purpose of utilizing of the data. Many of the products, which were handled by UPS systems look to be similar that would allow for the making of errors. The customer service of the UPS systems were receiving multiple calls from customers about the issue faced by them due t
o late time of delivery (Crew et al. 2013). They were receiving these calls, which was making the entire process to be expensive and time-consuming for locating the appropriate status of the package. With the rise of these kinds of problems within the business scenarios of the company, it was thought by the company that they would implement some form of internet based technologies, which could be helpful for driving the goals of the business in the future. With the understanding of the gravity of the current situations, which were being faced by UPS, they had hence decided to invest in the field of internet based systems hugely and would thus drive the growth of the business (Ducret 2014).
Discussion
Nature of the adopted Enterprise System
The primary of UPS is based of time definite delivery service of packages on a worldwide basis. In the recent years, the UPS had primarily expanded their service processes for the purpose of including less form of truckload based transportation in the U.S supply chain of services. The UPS had reported their operations in three form of segments such as International Package operations, Supply Chain and Freight Operations and U.S Domestic Package operations.
The IT department that was hired for the design of the newer kinds of systems had played a major form of role for the design of the new kinds of systems (Bateman 2013). They had hugely helped for enabling of new kinds of business systems. Hence, they had tried to implement the systems based on the perspective of the business. These ERP systems were based within the domain of Oracle (Laudon, Kenneth C., and Jane 2016). These ERP systems were meant for the purpose of serving of the financial sector and ease of the HR department.
Process of Selection of the Nature of the Enterprise
The UPS systems had drawn various forms of conclusions based on the failure of the previous existing systems within the organization. The failure of delivery of the products to the customers within the scheduled time was posing a major form of problem for the customers and also the company as they were incurring a bad reputation within the international market. Upon proper form of assessment of the entire systems of the organisation, it was found that the UPS systems were lacking behind in the sector of IT systems. With the implementation of the IT systems of the organization, they would be able to track the level of performance within the industry and thus be able to deliver better form of services. The proper form of implementation of the IT systems of the organization, they would be able to track the level of performance within the industry and thus be able to deliver better form of services.
Hence the UPS systems embarked on designing and thus implementing a valuable kind of action plan. This kind of plan, which was based on the ERP systems was mainly focused on the satisfying the needs of the customer and thus enabling of newer kind of technology. Hence they offered various kinds of functions that were integrated within the core form of transport based functions (Poirier 2016). This was meant for the purpose of making the UPS as a valuable part of the business for the customers. The IT systems within UPS hence chose to centralize the vital data within their data centers. The system of integration was majorly considered as a primary part for the success of the UPS organization.
The entire process of the selection of the ERP systems was based on the primary form of identification of the various kinds of assets and internal competencies. They were also looking for the different kinds of areas in which they would have to put major form of focus on thus improve the internal systems (Peng, Guo and Chirag 2014). This entire process was reviewed by performing a SWOT analysis that was meant for analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the organisation. On intense form of focusing over the internal systems of the organisation, it was discovered that the company had possessed an extensive form of infrastructure based on the vast form of expertise within the transportation sector of the organisation. The UPS system also put a keen observation of the various kinds of external factors, which had included the emerging of the business within the marketplace, the competitors who were also involved within this kind of business and their engaged customers (Ptak and Eli 2016). The traditional form of brick and mortar supported the business model. The emerging of market had the same form of business requirements. They were following the requirements of the business such as integrated manner of information and real time based connectivity to the latest form of business requirements. The customers of UPS systems had made the desire and the power for buying, selling and thus construct the work of research based on their own defined terms and not depending on the ideas that were dictated by the business model (Fabbe-Costes and Jacques 2017). Hence, it was a high form of need for the purpose of bridging the gap between the offered form of services and the physical based products based on electronic information.
Difficulties and Preparatory Steps in the Process of Adoption of the Systems
The proper form of assessment of the entire systems of the organisation, it was found that the UPS systems were lacking behind in the sector of IT systems. With the implementation of the IT systems of the organization, they would be able to track the level of performance within the industry and thus be able to deliver better form of services (Kachur and Warren 2013). Some of the introductory steps within the adoption of the ERP systems within the UPS systems were the development of an action plan, which was primarily focused on the customer based prospective. They developed a SWOT analysis, which had mainly helped them for understanding the core functionalities of the company and thus take some measures for improving their systems (Flouris and Sharon 2016). They also offered a form of services that was mainly integrated within the core functions of transportation. Hence they centralize the vast form of datasets in more than two data centers. The process of integration of various kinds of functionalities forms the major form of success history of the organisation. Since the initiation of the company in 1999, UPS had acquired and brought more than 30 companies (Tukker and Ursula 2017). They also integrated more than 3600 IT staff who would be able to work in two of their data centers located in Mahwah and Atlanta. The newer kinds of systems within UPS possessed more than 14 mainframe computers. 260,000 personal computers, 2755 mid-range computers and over 6200 servers. The company does not simply focus on gaining a share within the market but instead they focus on the implementation of various kinds of strategies within the market. The company integrates older and new designed systems in order to add value within the delivery chain services (Low 2013).
With the adoption of the ERP systems within the UPS organizational systems, it was extremely vital for saving lots of money based on the purchase of goods and services that were previously being purchased from various locations from all over the world (Venkatraman and Kiran 2016). The UPS follows the model of intolerance of excessive waste based on the adoption of new kinds of technologies. The company helps in ensuring that the newly adopted technology would fit within the architecture of the company in a nice manner. Upon proper form of assessment of the entire systems of the organisation, it was found that the UPS systems were lacking behind in the sector of IT systems (Dey, Ben and Walid 2013). With the implementation of the IT systems of the organization, they would be able to track the level of performance within the industry and thus be able to deliver better form of services. The software would be highly advanced and would be able to show the various kinds of intrinsic details related to the tracking ID of the delivery package (Ram, David and Ming-Lu 2014). The software would be such advanced as they would help the customers in showing the exact zip code address of the customers. There are two factors that have truly contributed for the successful form of implementation of technology within the business. These are a corporate cultural background and a form of commitment to training of the employees within the organisation.
Assessment of the Successful Implementation of Enterprise System
With the wide form of integration of the ERP systems within the UPS systems, they have been able to implement smarter kinds of processes and systems within the organisation. Based on the smart form of IT implementation within the business processes, it has been helpful for yielding high form of results for the organisation (Beuren et al. 2013). The company is now able to integrate the vital information of more than 60,000 websites that would have the information of 7.2 million customers. These customers are directly linked to the company and make use of the website for tracking the request of their logistics. They would require faster form of services and would like to receive real time ideas about the tracking of online requests on a daily basis. The sophisticated form of IT platform based within UPS helps in providing a much more advanced form of software package, which is known as Package Flow 12. This is one of the success metric for the company. This package helps in the identification of various kinds of packages that would be loaded on the assigned delivery truck based on their level of priority (Allen et al. 2017). Another kind of software service that have been implemented and is being used by the UPS systems includes Trade Direct 12 (Cherrett et al. 2017). This software package helps the retailers, websites and other enterprises for dealing with the tracking of status of small and large packages that are located all over the world and hence is made possible by using a web based system (Rougès and Benoit 2014). The management within the systems of UPS is also committed towards the intense form of training in the times during which the new technology would be improvised. This would majorly help in designing an environment in which the different community of users would be able to contribute their form of ideas based on the improvement of the business platforms (Matzler, Viktoria Veider and Wolfgang Kathan 2015).
Based on the aspect of perspective of the customers, it could be concluded that the use of ERP systems within the UPS systems have been a major form of help for the growth and development of the sector. The integration of ERP systems would be very much helpful for integrating the various functionalities within the UPS. Based on the importance of the systems from the standpoint of customers, it has been figured out that the use of the high form of ERP systems would help the company in solving the queries of the customers related to shipping and tracking of packages. These form of tracking of the packages could be easily tracked within the website of UPS. The software would be highly advanced and would be able to show the various kinds of intrinsic details related to the tracking ID of the delivery packages. The software would be such advanced as they would help the customers in showing the exact zip code address of the customers. Any form of wrong input by the customer would lead to errors in tracking of the designated IDs and would hence not proceed with the viewing of the details. The systems has adopted smart implementation of tracking of delivery packages that would be based on real time analysis. The data collected from the time to time movement of the package would be loaded into the database of the company and hence would be reflected in the website of the company. This could be viewable by the customer as per their need. The customer would be able to change between several kinds of options that are provided within the website. The various kinds of options that are available from the website help in saving the considerable amount of time of the user as most of the fields within the website have auto-fill options based on the frequent visitors of the application.
The integrated systems platform of UPS help in providing real time based links of communication with the seller, package distributor and the delivery service that would include the vehicle. The shipped packages would have their registered tracking number, ID, date and status of each of the stages within the delivery of the package that would be recorded and would get stored on the online platform (Morganti, Dablanc and Fortin 2014). With the implementation of the ERP systems within the business processes, it has been extremely vital for the customer service of the company for responding with the internal query of the system. The recorded databases that stores the details of the shipped products helps the customer service experts for maintaining a track over the package and hence they would be able to answer the queries of the customers (Punel and Amanda 2017).
Conclusion
Hence form the above discussion, it could be concluded that the use of ERP based IT systems within the organisation have been a major step towards the success of the organisation. Although the UPS had faced major kinds of challenges in meeting up with the pace of the rival competitor, the implementation of ERP systems have been majorly helpful for re-inventing the existing systems and thus bring in efficiency for the betterment of the customers and also enhance the growth of the organisation.
References
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