Problem
Case Study I: ERP at John Hopkins
Maryland's largest private employer, Johns Hopkins Institutions (JHI), has more than 45,000 full-time staff members at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, Johns Hopkins University, and several other hospitals and institutions. To improve data quality and reporting, JHI decided to use a centralized ERP system instead of several different business applications that were not fully integrated. Getting an overall view of JHI's operations and performance was difficult with these different applications.
JHI faced technical challenges in adopting an ERP system. To overcome these challenges, it chose BearingPoint's SAP applications with IBM Power 570 servers as the hardware platform. JHI also decided to use server clusters to make the system more fault tolerant, and it installed a storage area network (SAN) for high performance. The ERP system now provides a centralized method of gathering information for the entire organization.
a) What was the main reason for using an ERP system at JHI?
b) How did the ERP system that JHI adopted help address technical challenges?
c) What did the ERP system achieve at JHI?
Case Study II: CRM at Starbucks
With more than 27,000 retail stores spread out through 70 countries, Starbucks uses a CRM system called My Starbucks Idea, which is powered by Salesforce. The system, which includes an interactive forum, gives the Starbucks community an online presence and allows the company to collect feedback from its customers. It also integrates the company's physical stores with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. On the system's Web site (www.mystarbucksidea.com) customers offer ideas, make comments, and cast votes on issues arranged into three major categories: product ideas, experience ideas, and involvement ideas. The system enables Starbucks to receive a steady stream of feedback and ideas from its customers and at the same time strengthening the bond with its customers which help the bottom line. As of the first quarter of 2016, the system had collected more than 227,000 ideas, and many of them have already been implemented by Starbucks. My Starbucks Idea is the Starbucks crowdsourcing success story.
a) What is My Starbucks Idea?
b) What has the Starbucks CRM achieved? How does it help the bottom line?
c) Which software platform is behind the Starbucks CRM system?
d) Is My Starbucks Idea a typical crowdsourcing project? Discuss.
The response should include a reference list. Using double-space, Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.