enterprice systems

Subject: Business

The assignment is in the form of individual assignment in pursuit of the following Learning Outcomes:

€¢ Critically evaluate the suitability of enterprise systems and their alternatives in contemporary business environments.
€¢ Synthesise a strategy for an enterprise system within a given business environment.
€¢ Review as a member of a team a given problem posed by an enterprise systems case study, and as a team make meaningful recommendations towards its solution.

The assignment will be a maximum of 1500 words in length (i.e. in no cases will your submitted paper be longer than 1500 words, excluding references and annotated diagrams). It must also comply strictly with certain formatting guidelines that will be described later in this brief.

Ensure that you have read this entire document carefully so that you fully understand the requirements, which will now be explicated in the following sections.

Scenario
You are performing the role of a business analyst who has been tasked with preparing a detailed report for one of the sub areas (BPM, BI, DM or ERP). Your report must detail how the strategic direction of your company will be achieved in your sub area.. The strategic direction will draw on the group discussions and activities from the session.

BPM Business Process Management
BI Business Intelligence
DM Data Management
ES Enterprise Systems include SOA and SAP ECC (as used in ERPsim)

Remember the scenario you have been placed into. You are reporting your ideas in order to sell both yourselves as ES professionals and your solution to the shareholders.

Warning: Do not describe the technology itself, you are reporting to people with a similar level of knowledge as yourself who understand the subject. You are presenting a vision for the future.
Transactional data from your ERP Extended Manufacturing Game for a (3 x 20) 60 day period has been captured in SAP. A selection of this data has been extracted for this purpose into an MS Access Database provided, see Supporting Information section.

Assignment
The assignment will be a maximum of 1500 words in length (i.e. in no cases will your submitted paper be longer than 1500 words, excluding references and annotated diagrams). It must also comply strictly with certain formatting guidelines that will be described later in this brief.

It should be noted that you are not expected to solve every problem in every situation for the whole organisation. It is recommended that you focus on a narrow problem area and produce a deep and compressive piece of work.

ndividual Report Structure for Sub Area <Insert here>

Introduction
In this section you will provide an overview of your work. You should BRIEFLY explain who you are, a synopsis of the strategic direction and your sub area, how you have approached the problem and the key outcomes. The introduction should be concise,informative, and encourage the audience to pay attention to the remainder of the presentation. Ensure your name, team name and sub area appears clearly in the title.

Analysis
Demonstrate how the strategic direction can be achieved for your allocated sub area. Your organisation is risk averse but it must also be competitive therefore it is looking for a mix of reliable technologies and cutting edge solutions in order to deliver a real competitive advantage.

You are expected to take the data from the Extended Manufacturing Game and utilise it for the purpose of your analysis and discussion. This should take one of the following forms as per the individual sub area you have selected:

€¢ BPM: Analyse the data using FCA and MS Excel in order to identify business rules and integrate these into a BPM solution.
€¢ BI: Analyse the data using SAP BI and FCA in order to understand where decision making was poor or good and integrate this into a BI solution.
€¢ DM: Analyse the data using SAP BI and FCA in order to understand what data is available, investigate what data would be useful to include in the future and integrate this into a DM solution.
€¢ ERP: Analyse the data using SAP BI and MS Excel to understand how ERP could be developed in order to improve the user experience and performance of the organisation. Integrate this into an ERP solution.
Apply the tools available from the session in order to analysis the data in order to discover relationships, good or bad decisions, gaps etc. that can be addressed in order to support the strategic direction.

This analysis should include working prototypes and/or conceptual models representing the technologies being discussed. It should include detailed examples and evidence supporting how it works. It is not expected to be a robust software suite but a proof of concept.

As this is a discovery exercise your first attempt may not yield satisfactory results, therefore it is expected that you will have to undertake an iterative approach in your analysis of the data.

Solution: Detailed Strategic Direction for Sub Area <Insert here>

Clearly describe the solution being presented and implementation considerations.

Justification and Detailed Benefits Case
Compare the analysis methods applied and critically evaluate how efficient or capable they are. Justify the strategic direction and identify the key benefits and risks for the organisation

Conclusion
In your conclusion, bring together the threads of all the other sections and the clear message of your work. This is NOT simply a list of steps that you have taken to complete the assignment. An interesting and informative conclusion will set a positive light in which the rest of your work will be re-read. Therefore, as with any aspect of your work, do not rush this at the end.

Presentation Style
Adhere to the paper formatting guidelines. Credit will be given where you have demonstrated assisting others and referenced where others have had input and influenced your analysis methods. Note: this is an individual piece of work and all assignments must be different, this principle is to share ideas and problem solving during the analysis and not to jointly derive outcomes or conclusions.
Refer to the accompanying marking scheme for a breakdown of the marking.

The criteria for each of the above headings are explicated in the marking grid, which is further discussed later on below. A good coverage of these topics will have addressed all the learning outcomes (LO). Ensure that your submission reflects the proportion of marks given for each heading in the above table. You will gain the requisite knowledge for this assignment by your own self-directed research, enquiry, and critical thinking.

BPMN Flowchart: ERP Overview
A number of flowcharts are available electronically, including the one shown above in order to support and explain your answers. These represent the basic processes within an ERP system. The use of any documents supplied is optional however it should be noted that well annotated and graphical communicate methods are very useful when presenting your finding and arguments.

Data Sets
The data has been extracted into an MS Access database for easy manipulation. In order to assist you in this assignment a number of data preparation steps have been prepared.
The aim of providing these data sets is to reduce the amount of data preparation required and focus your efforts on the analysis. You are however free to modify the query or data if required. All parts of this assignment should use data from the ERP Extended Manufacturing Game.
Paper Formatting Guidelines
As your submissions will be to your professional high standards, the assignment must be formatted to certain strict guidelines. Please note that these requirements are not negotiable so any requests will be automatically refused and a nil mark will be awarded for any submission that does not comply accordingly.

Your paper thus must conform to the guidelines given by BCS Publishing (http://www.bcs.org/publishing/, navigate to €˜Want to be a writer?€™ then read the €˜house style€™ instructions and templates provided, noting that you are writing a manuscript rather than a whole book). You are advised to submit your paper as a Word .docx document. Ensure that you include your name! You do not need to add any affiliations. As explained earlier, the papers for this assignment has a strict word limit. After all, as Blaise Pascal once wrote, €œI am writing you a long letter, because I haven€™t got time to write you a short one.€