How ERP Influences Digital Business Transformation, Operations And Strategy?

Question

Task: Business transformation has grown heavily dependent on adopting modern business practices making it essential to adopt digital technologies and strategies. How Enterprise resource planning has is influenced Digital Business Transformation and who are the main beneficiaries of ERP?

Answer

Introduction
Digital business transformation is defined as the use of technology in order to solve traditional problems. These digital solutions enhance creativity and innovation in the minds of the employees. An enterprise system is an application software package used on a large scale to support the information flow, data analytics and business processes in organizations. When both of these systems work hand in hand, they can help the organization to reach it maximum efficiency level.

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Digital transformation by using enterprise systems is efficient and also reduces the work load of the employees. These systems collect information from all the different processes and improve organizational effectiveness. Digital business transformation needs proper coordination between different parts of the company which help with its functioning. Digital business transformation has been developing steadily in all business sectors for the past 15 years.

In order to implement an enterprise system in an organization, the organization needs to identify the different functions that have to be included in the enterprise system and map out all the processes perfectly according to the processes of the enterprise system. A great amount of effort has to be put in by the organization to develop an enterprise system which meets all their needs. Digital business transformation can be executed perfectly by using an enterprise system. The enterprise system helps to coordinate all the processes and carry out all the tasks efficiently. This helps to build an organization that is coordinated and has optimal functioning.

Literature review
Mainly organizations use IT softwares to digitally transform the business. An enterprise system is an important factor in the IT field. This case study takes a different path and showcases the potential of digital transformation of an organization by using an enterprise system. It shows that an organization has to change its strategy, system, structure, staff, style and values according to the enterprise system after its implementation. It brings a cultural shift in the working of the employees according to the changes in the system. Their goal is to use upcoming and newly-emerging technologies to create a changed consumer experience that will attract new consumers. Organizations invest in enterprise systems in order to improve the organization’s functioning and share digital information from different sources. Further, this study also includes the changes in business strategies sought by the organization. It emphasizes the benefits obtained by the organization due to the implementation of enterprise systems. It highlights the importance of an enterprise system in a digital business transformation. It defines digital business transformation and gives its benefits along with its working and various principles. It also explains the working of an enterprise system and how it is beneficial to the organization’s working system and how it is better than the old systems. It also includes how an enterprise system can be related to a digital business transformation and the advantages it provides to the organization. It also helps the employees to store the data on a cloud so that it is easily accessible. It highlights the complications faced by an enterprise system like resistance offered by the employees, lack of vision, ineffective gathering of data and delay in updates. It shows how these complications can reduce the efficiency of the enterprise system and also reduce the pace of digital business transformation. The case study also provides solutions to these complications and the advantages of overcoming these complications. In all, it shows how an enterprise system works hand in hand with the digital business transformation and enhances the functioning of the organization as a whole along with the advantages of an enterprise system over any old system and also explains how the enterprise system works with the digital transformation. It showcases the benefits of having a digitally transformed business over having a labour-intensive system and shows the extent of what an organization should aim to be in order to please the consumers and also attract more consumers. It also shows the common mistakes of the senior managers which can reduce the efficiency of the organization. It basically tells us about the enterprise systems used in digital business transformation which can help the business to bloom.

Digital business transformation
Every business has problems from the beginning. Using digital technology to solve these traditional problems is called digital business transformation. It enables a sense of creativity and innovativeness in the workers rather than going forward using traditional methods which cause traditional problems. It refers to reaching digital maturity by going paperless and can be used in individual businesses as well as government-based businesses. Digital transformation is already being executed in all the parts of the world.

Digital transformation is working towards creating new technologies that may improve the market and also take into account the effect that these transformations have on the consumers. It helps to comprehensively transform business activities into a digital arena. Digital transformation is taking place at a very swift pace which is concerning as well as promising for the companies.

Digital leaders are companies that have been able to use digital technologies in order to improve their business performance. Every business has a vast amount of information since its establishment. Digital transformation takes all this data and upload it to a digital application. A digital information-oriented culture can be built by combining digital technologies with the organizational people.

Many companies who do not have the required resources are still in the experimentation phase by building websites. They have developed intranets and extranets in order to link partners and suppliers. These companies have already spent heavily on IT infrastructures, but, they do not have the ideas or the resources to go fully digital. Senior managers of these companies believe that digital transformation is for the younger demographic of the companies and that they do not need them. This makes the concept of digital transformation irrelevant as digital business transformation is true to its name and consists of transforming the entire company as a whole and the thinking of such senior managers puts the transformation at hold (Woodard et al. 2013).

Digital business transformation needs proper coordination between different parts of the company which help with its functioning. In some established companies, the senior managers have discovered the benefits of using digital technology in sales, but they still haven’t started using digital technology in the production system. A danger for such companies is that they believe that they have reached the optimum level of digital transformation, whereas, in reality, they have just begun to scratch the surface of digital business transformation (Bharadwaj et al. 2013).

Digital business transformation has been developing steadily in all business sectors for the past 15 years. The mix of non-digital and digital capabilities has changed over the years. Tourism, entertainment, retail and banking are the prime examples of this change. In order to build a well-functioning digitally transformed company, this change should be implemented in all the sectors and should not be fixated on just one or two sectors. The companies must understand the importance of investing in flexible digital technologies and also have a strong game plan about where these technologies have to be implemented in order to build a business that is digital as well as innovative (Russell et al. 2018).

Enterprise Systems
Earlier, in big companies, different business functions like manufacturing, sales and marketing were operated by different information systems. The business processes in each function were individual and the information could not be shared across the entire company. It was difficult for the managers to collect all the data from the functions and produce an overall picture of the company’s development. This also made it difficult to take decisions that were applicable for the entire company as a whole (Condea et al. 2017).

An enterprise system is an information system with cross functions that provides coordination within the entire organization and integrates the key business processes and helps to plan the resources of the entire organization. An enterprise system is called as enterprise resource planning system (ERP). They are generally packaged enterprise application software systems, but they can be modified according to the needs and resources of the organization. An enterprise system is run by different enterprise resource planning softwares which have a common centralized database (Akhter, 2017).

In order to implement an enterprise system in an organization, the organization needs to identify the different processes that have to be included in the enterprise system and map out all the processes perfectly according to the processes of the enterprise system. A great amount of effort has to be put in by the organization to develop an enterprise system which meets all their needs. Sometimes, some organizations feel that the enterprise system does not suit all their processes. In this case, the enterprise system has to be modified according to the organization’s needs. These modifications may slow down or deteriorate the system. Thus, the organizations might have to change their way of working in order to obtain optimal functioning instead of modifying the enterprise system (Kiang & Lee, 2018).

While an enterprise system can be used in an organization of any size, it generally refers to an organization which has more than five hundred computer systems connected to a single network. Regardless of the size of the organization, all enterprise systems have one thing in common, they reduce the effort needed to manage information by the managers and the employees. Enterprise systems integrate the information and resources used throughout the organization and make them easily accessible to all the employees in one place. An organization can use an enterprise system to manage sales, track inventory and store consumer related information and employee records. Using an enterprise system helps to reduce pressure on the employees, and in turn results in the development of the organization (Pierce, 2015).

Enterprise systems help the organizations to communicate information to all the different parts of the organization quickly so that any important decisions can be taken instantly without any complications. It also helps to reduce costs in software, hardware, transaction processing and IT support staff. As the enterprise system integrates all the internal business processes, it helps to provide a better quality of consumer service and also provides an efficient production and distribution system. It helps to create an organizational culture which is uniform as everyone uses similar information systems and processes to do business (Kampas et al, 2016).

Digital business transformation by using enterprise systems
Digital transformation is not only about industrial solutions or IT solutions, but IT factors are the core factors needed to run a comprehensive digital transformation. That is why, an enterprise system, which is an important pillar in the IT field, can be used to execute a complete digital transformation of an organization. This offers proper functioning and coordination in the long run. Enterprise systems and digital business transformation are closely interrelated. Enterprise systems have played an important role in the digital transformation of businesses and digital transformation has also helped to change the landscape of enterprise systems (Goodyear, 2017).

Enterprise systems also have extensions into social media platforms. This seems like a huge change, but it has far reaching advantages. One of the key components in allowing users to go digital is having a social platform. The digital transformation of users on social media is a business opportunity that is obtained by using enterprise systems. I-ERP is an intelligent enterprise system is the future of enterprise resource planning tools. The already existing enterprise systems are not fully competent for digital business transformation. Intelligent enterprise systems can help to achieve this, but they are not enough. The data needed for this can be found from the digital transformation and the enormous amount of data shared on the internet. Intelligent enterprise systems can use digital transformation to churn out better results and perform analytics on user data (Westerman & Bonnet, 2015).

Enterprise systems has a very important advantage as they have cloud-based systems. It allows easy access for all employees as well as a better utilization of resources. Having a cloud-based system can increase the speed of digital transformation by acting as an extension of the main enterprise system infrastructure. It can use digital transformation aspects like social platforms without using the main infrastructure. Since the cloud-based enterprise system is only an extension, it can work freely. Any damage caused to the cloud-based enterprise system does not cause any damage to the main infrastructure (Uhl & Gollenia,2016).

Earlier, organizations were satisfied with the resources they had and did not demand any improvement, at least not at the degree it was needed. However, digital transformation has developed and increased competition, due to which, the vendors are striving to develop better systems and trying to include multiple functions of the system into a single tool. Thus, better tools are being developed by the vendors. This improves the digital transformation and also improves the market which is an advantage to the organizations as well as the vendors. Many different technologies are also being incorporated into enterprise systems. This is making the enterprise systems better and is also accelerating the digital transformation of the organizations. Businesses are gaining access to better enterprise systems and are becoming digitally transformed. Extensions like clouds, social platforms and analytics are making the enterprise systems more efficient, and in turn, they are speeding up the process of digital business transformation. As technology is becoming more advanced, the enterprise systems are also becoming advanced and in turn, it is also increasing the pace of digital business transformation (Hess et al. 2016).

Challenges faced while using enterprise systems for digital business transformation and solutions
Problem 1: One of the biggest challenges faced during digital business transformation is the resistance offered by the employees and the managers to the change in the system. Modifications in the system is an integral part of using an enterprise system for digital business transformation, but the employees and managers are not big fans of this change as they are used to the old systems. This is very bad for the organization as it slows down the development of the organization.

Solution: The only solution for this is that the employees need to accept the change and understand the new system as well as they understood the old systems, because, if the systems are not updated, the organization becomes slow as compared to the systems of the other organizations. The employees need to understand the severity of this process as this is the foundation for an efficient and coordinated organization. Without this, the organization faces the risk of reducing funding, marketing and resourcing (Kane et al. 2015).

Problem 2: Another challenge faced during digital transformation is a lack of vision. Many organizations do not survive digital business transformation as they go not have a clear vision of the system to be implemented. This can cause complications in the further development of the organization.

Solution: Organizations need to develop a solid game plan in order to successfully implement a new enterprise system. Every system is implemented for a different process and this needs to be clear to all the employees. This can help to reduce the cost of the system and also ensures proper functioning after it has been implemented. Thinking ahead helps the organization to create a hypothesis according to the consumer needs (Matt et al. 2015).

Problem 3: The third complication is ineffective gathering of data. An enterprise system has a cloud extension. Therefore, all the data should be uploaded to the regularly. If the data is updated to a centralized system like the cloud, it can easily be accessed by all the employees without any delay.

Solution: Having a centralized system like the cloud enables the organization to rum smoothly. Also, any damage caused to the cloud will not harm the enterprise system in any way as it is just an extension. This data helps to understand the consumer’s needs and helps in the digital transformation of the business (El Sawy et al. 2016).

Problem 4: Many problems can be faced by the organization’s digital transformation due to delay in updating the enterprise system. Many organizations neglect the updates provided to the enterprise system. This is risk inducing as each update brings new features and these features might be very important pieces of the system.

Solution: Software update is necessary and has a lot of benefits. This speeds up the digital transformation of the business and also makes it more efficient. The more updated the systems is, the more secure it is. Thus, updating the system reduces risks and makes the functioning of the enterprise system better (Tamm et al. 2015).

Conclusion
Digital business transformation will help businesses grow with the constant changes in the technology and adopt new ways to incorporate paperless transaction in the business. This is only possible through the use of erp or enterprise systems. Enterprise systems in an integration of different business processes into a single system allowing ease of transaction. It is responsible for reducing the time wasted in manual labor and help achieve efficiency in the nature of work. Both these things are closely related to each other. An enterprise system will help in the smooth running of different business processes of business as information technology is an important foundation for a digital business transformation. The different challenges faced by the businesses while adopting a digital transformation using the ERP systems have been identified and discussed in the report. The problems identified include lack of vision for the digital transformation, resistance from the employees regarding the transformation, ineffective way of data collection and store, and delay in updating the system by the businesses' IT team. A solution for these problems have also been discussed in order to understand the nature of the problem and how they can be avoided in the future. Basic solutions include proper sharing of information about the enterprise systems using different training and education programs, developing a clear vision about the digital system before they are being developed, hiring professionals for development of an excellent data collection and storage mechanism, and having an autonomous updater installed to avoid delay in updates of the enterprise systems as well as the different antivirus software. ERP assignments are being prepared by our IT assignment help experts from top universities which let us to provide you a reliable online assignment help service.

References
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