Information Systems Infrastructure (IS3314)

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Information Systems Infrastructure (IS3314)

• 3rd year BIS 2006 / 2007

Fergal Carton Business Information Systems
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Last week

• Basic flows of information
• Manufacturing (material availability, capacity)
• Sales (revenue customers)
• Finance (cost revenue targets, performance)
• Collaboration / conflict
• Different views of the same data
• Sample Business Decisions (D0 to D6)
• Integration

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This week

• ERP implementations
• Data issues with ERP implementations

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A distribution view of systems

• Because were going on our merry way, making
  decisions, and we dont realise that the
  information we are looking at is 2, 3 hours old.
  And it just causes havoc because people then
  physically go to do something and theyre like,
  what drives? The drives, theyre showing on the
  system, they should be right there! I tell ya, I
  just went out there, theres nothing there! Wait
  a minute!

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A manufacturing view of distribution

• The kind of thing that we would sometimes like
  them to do, would be, to take the product, that
  mightnt be the easiest to work on, but if they
  were to wait one or two days, there might be a
  product coming through that might be more
  suitable.

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Integration example Bank branch

• Look at design and setup of bank branch
• What does integration mean in a bank perspective?
• Customer services
• Customer data
• Transaction processing
• Data model
• How should usage increase of the lowest cost
  channel (internet), while complementing face to
  face services?

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Integration example inventory
Deliver
Plan, buy
Customer
Make
Supplier
Bill of materials
Finished goods
Raw materials
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Integration example factory
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Parameters in ERP implementations

• Integration
• Application
• Services
• Standardisation
• Business practices
• Centralisation
• Decision making
• Control
• Acceleration
• Information flows
• Business process steps
• Cost reduction

And the two levels at play are Top
management Users of ERP system Managers at
local level Operators
HQ
Local
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The core of the problem
This is how business and software will work
together
This is how the system works
This is how we do business
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ERP projects resources required
Technical
Project
Business process
Users / power users User management Steering
Committee
Functional analysts Application expert DBAs /
Sys Admin
Project team Process leads Project Managers
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ERP projects resources required
Project
Technical
Business process
Project team Process leads Project Managers
Users / power users User management Steering
Committee
Functional analysts Application expert DBAs /
Sys Admin
Software vendor Hardware vendor
Systems Integrator
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Resources Financial Controller

• Having seconded the AP manager to the project for
  18 months
• Just after go-live, lost the AP manager
• Basic functionality missing
• Statutory reports for countries
• Unmatched receiver report
• arguments over Break-Fix vs. Enhancement
• Lost understanding of why things were done in a
  certain way
• Knowledge of application
• Knowledge of business processes in the US
• Worse lost ability to get things fixed!
• Prioritisation of SIRs (System Investigation
  Requests)
• Reports written by end-users (eg. AP Manager)
• Local IS or global IS now working to gobal
  requirements
• Cant customise the application

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Resources process

• Process lead
• Functional analyst
• Power users
• Application specialist
• Users

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Process issues

• Ensuring key process issues are resolved
• Do we invoice customers on shipment or on
  delivery?
• Who should open the new accounting period for
  Purchasing?
• Receivables are coming through from a legacy
  system, but its impossible to identify the
  country of origin
• Sales orders being received in Euros are giving
  Unrecognised currency errors and halting the
  interface job
• Currency exchange rates updated during month and
  skewing month-end results, who should
  troubleshoot?
• Revenue from Professional Services is having to
  be manually shipped at month-end no legacy
  system

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Resources project

• Project Team Lead
• Process Leads
• Project Managers
• Functional Co-ordinators
• Steering Committee

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Project issues

• Availability of team members / users
• Decision making processes
• Developing workarounds
• Timeline too tight to allow resolution of issues
• Massive learning curve for team
• Expectation management
• Retaining ownership of process related decisions

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Resources Technical (data)

• Data clean-up team
• Data conversion team
• Data conversion programmer
• Legacy data team
• Data quality testing and maintenance

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PPARS project

• Governance
• Complexity
• Job title
• Responsibilities
• No payscale
• Bonuses
• Overtime
• Link roster to payroll?
• Resources
• Business process change, not system issue

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Data issues

• Getting and maintaining clean data
• When creating a new customer, who has control?
• 42 occurrences of Siemens in your customer
  database, what do you do?
• Customers exist in ERP core database, but also in
  several legacy systems. How do you make sure they
  are in synch?

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Resources Technical (IT ops)

• Database administrator
• Systems administrator
• Operators core apps
• Server operators
• Storage technicians
• HelpDesk

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Database issues

• Guaranteeing high availability
• How often should Test be refreshed?
• How many environments should I have
• Test
• Production
• Development
• Training
• Business Simulation
• If I implement a change to Production, do I need
  to implement the same change across all
  environments?
• 20 programmers developing / testing new code
  every day how do I track releases to production?

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Systems admin issues

• Ensuring system access for users
• New users
• Changes to existing profiles
• System downtime for maintenance
• Forcing users out of system
• Tracking source of corrupt data to user profile

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HelpDesk issues

• Calls arriving at HelpDesk are either
• Forgotten password
• New user
• Changes to user profile
• Printing problems
• Connectivity problems
• Response time problems
• System crashes
• System error messages
• PC problems
• I need more training

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HelpDesk issues

• or
• Functionality questions (how do I transact an
  invoice?)
• Process questions (when should I post to GL?)
• Reporting (I need a revenue report)

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Project handover to HelpDesk

• Prior to go-live, implement procedures for
• Logging calls such that it will be routed to the
  right person and tracked, reported on and
  escalated
• Training for HelpDesk to be able to ask the right
  questions concering an application issue
• Troubleshooting application issues to be able to
  deal with simple fixes
• Ongoing consultation with application team
  regarding new functionality being rolled out,
  common errors, planned outages,