Problem: You are the director of IT for small cloud computing company named Starfire which has over 2000 customers, 200 employees, and 5 primary business partnerships. You employee team includes accounting & finance, recruiting, sales, marketing, operations, development, and IT. The company is considering acquiring another firm with 300 customers and 30 employees. Neither firm uses ERP today.
The company has been growing 200% per year for the past two years and the CEO wants to consider implementing ERP as a means to make process more efficient and the rapid growth less painful.
The CEO has asked you to brief the executive team on the potential value of ERP and to provide a written memo to the executive management team with the following information:
1. An overview of ERP and its potential value to the firm.
2. The major components/functions of business that ERP can be applied to.
3. A review of 3 major ERP providers and how they are differentiated.
4. A discussion of the common challenges companies face in ERP implementations.