Defining Business Processes of Sungate Foods

Discuss about the Enterprise Resource System in Sungate Foods.

The study describes the details of analysis related to business process identification, business and system requirement development, software selection and vendor selection. The solution is created on the basis of case study of implementing enterprise resource system in Sungate Foods. The organization is established in Victoria and it is a rice and wild rice producer. One hundred workers are employed by the organization for carrying out the activities of warehouse. Within the study the complete information of the requirements have been discussed with as detail as possible.

The organization carries out its business through collecting packaging and distributing. The organization has its own rail spur that is 250,000 square feet of blacktop. The organization also have pollution control tool scrubbing per minute 240,000 cubic feet of air. At the seasonal peaks the scrubbing reaches up to eighty tons per hour. In addition to that, staff tops 200 on 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a week shifts.

Total three hundred and fifty farms sells to Sungate Foods. The organization then packages the collected material. The distribution and selling of the product is carried out by the organization both internationally and domestically. At first, the responsible staff pays the farms to collect the raw material and then the rice is delivered to the organization. The delivery is done through the transportation facility that resides within organization. Then the workers of the organization do the task of packing the rice with the assistance of the equipments. At last, again the transportation facility of the organization come handy for distributing the packed rice. For international distribution the help of the third party transportation services are asked.

The reports regarding the business and the financial activities are compiled by the  staff of the organization. For that purpose the workers require to work hard for weeks. The repost is generated from the patchwork of format and ISs. The orders are manually entered in the computer repeatedly. Few executives of Sungate are provided with the information of the order such as quantity, buyer, location, payment and many more. These executives input the information to a computer. The information stays at a fixed location as it is stored locally in the computer’s hard drive. 

As the organization cannot predict its business flow, Sungate always keeps its inventory full for meeting the consumer demand. The organization does not have the facility to analyze the gathered information over the year.

Developing Business Requirements

Information storing: Sungate currently requires to store the information of all the processes within it. On the other hand, the storing the information in a local computer invites a great chance of losing the information.  In terms of eliminating the issues with the safety of the information, it is highly suggested to Sungate to make use of an central database. The database must be efficient enough to store the information of all the business processes and secure enough to hold the data throughout the years.

Information flow: The information should be available to the management so that effective decisions can be made. Not only management but also every department of Sungate should have access to the authorized information at all time.

Immediate update of the information: As soon as a order is made the information must be available to the management and warehouse department (Tibus and Brennan 2013). While the product is delivered from ware house the information must immediately transferred to the associated departments.

Eliminating the errors and decreasing the time of financial transaction: The organization requires a process that will eliminate the effort of manually storing the order related data. Through automating the storing and flow of information from orders receiving to delivery of the package, Sungate can eliminate all the errors they are currently facing. The time taken for financial transactions must be decreased to lowest level.

Reliable information: As the error on the collected data is eliminated, the data that reside within the system becomes reliable. The decisions can be made for better future of the organization more accurately (Ishizaka and Nguyen 2013).

Predicting product sale: The consumer requirement or product sale of specific seasons of a year is great information to exploit. The information can help Sungate to manage its inventory as per the requirement.

Relation: The organization needs to make its relationship with the farms stronger so that more effective business process can be experienced.

Centralize Database: The system of the Sungate Foods will be consisting of a database that will be situated in the central of the system. As the system will carry out a task, the information associated with the activities will be automatically stored in the database (Fichman, Santos and Zhiqiang 2014). The database will be made of magnetic tapes. The database will be divided internally and the parts will be connected to satisfy the information need.

Backup/Recovery and Disaster Recovery: The system will connect the database with the backup/recovery service. It will allow the system to get the lost information without any harassment for making the business of Sungate running. The disaster recovery will allow the organization to get all the data if all the information is lost or physically damaged (Fleischmann et al. 2014). 0

System Requirements

Collaboration: The system of Sungate will be connected to the systems or computer of farms for better information flow (Dorantes et al. 2013). This will end in making better relation among the Sungate and its firms.

Historical data and sales prediction: The database of the system will consist of the historical data of the sales. The system will examine the historical data for forecasting the sales of every season of a year (Twati 2014). In this way, the organization will be ready to adjust its business as per the market situation.

Payment and transaction: The system will atomically calculate the payment related information. The transactions will be collected by the system and the reports on the transaction will be generated automatically (Seethamraju and Sundar 2013).

Real-time information: The system will be responsible for flowing the information to the computer of various department in real time.

Reliability: Many policies will be implemented to the system to check the reliability of the information. The system will collect the as soon as a process is switched so that no space for error remains (Daneshgar, Low and Worasinchai 2013).

Scalability: The system must be capable of supporting the business requirements efficiently and effectively. Taken as an example, the if the sales is low then the system must find ways to prevent spending extra capital to increase the profit margin (Ram and Corkindale 2014).

Security: The system should be secure enough to provide security to the information of consumer. The attacker may attempt to get into system in several ways (Smirat 2013). The system should avoid all kind of attacks at any cost for protecting its sensitive information.

Sungate Foods does not have any enterprise resource system currently. The situation presses the organization to convert all the manually conducted processes to automatic completion. All the aspects of the business will be incorporated into the system. Sungate needs to connect its system with the client, firms and allow the management to access the data from remote location. This implies that the cloud system will be the best option for the organization. This will also allow the origination to avoid the excessive amount to pay for the infrastructure of the system (Daneshgar, Low and Worasinchai 2013). From the discussion of the business process, business requirements and system requirements says that the system needs to be effective enough to support the business all the time.

For selecting the vendor, considering the allocated amount for the complete integration of the system is significant. According to the business capability and the requirements of Sungate the NetSuite is the best option (Netsuite.com, 2016).

Software Selection

Conclusion:

From the above study it can be concluded that the enterprise resource system will be allow the organization to conduct the business in a better and profitable way. The management will be making the decisions based on the accurate and real time information. It will surely affect the organization’s growth. Sungate will acquire more profit in the lean seasons also. The system will be capable of predict the sales. This capability will help the system to cut loose of the additional expenses so that organization can balance profit margin. The enterprise resource system will be the best thing that ever happened to Sungate Foods. The organization now can have all the information at one place without the headache of losing any data. In future collaboration with other organization can provide the organization to be a better competitor in the domestic and international market. Not only the profit but also the enhanced customer satisfaction will make the organization more trustworthy. The reports on financial transaction can be generated with the accurate information and within less time. 

References:

Daneshgar, F., Low, G.C. and Worasinchai, L., 2013. An investigation of ‘build vs. buy’decision for software acquisition by small to medium enterprises. Information and software technology, 55(10), pp.1741-1750.

Dorantes, C.A., Li, C., Peters, G.F. and Richardson, V.J., 2013. The effect of enterprise systems implementation on the firm information environment.Contemporary Accounting Research, 30(4), pp.1427-1461.

Fichman, R.G., Dos Santos, B.L. and Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng, 2014. Digital Innovation as a Fundamental and Powerful Concept in the Information Systems Curriculum. Mis Quarterly, 38(2), pp.329-343.

Fleischmann, M., Amirpur, M., Benlian, A. and Hess, T., 2014. Cognitive biases in information systems research: a scientometric analysis.

Ishizaka, A. and Nguyen, N.H., 2013. Calibrated fuzzy AHP for current bank account selection. Expert systems with applications, 40(9), pp.3775-3783.

Netsuite.com. (2016). Business Software, Business Management Software – NetSuite. [online] Available at: https://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml [Accessed 15 Sep. 2016].

Ram, J. and Corkindale, D., 2014. How “critical” are the critical success factors (CSFs)? Examining the role of CSFs for ERP. Business Process Management Journal, 20(1), pp.151-174.

Seethamraju, R. and Sundar, D.K., 2013. Influence of ERP systems on business process agility. IIMB Management Review, 25(3), pp.137-149.

Smirat, B.Y.A., 2013. The Use of Accounting Information by Small and Medium Enterprises in South District of Jordan,(An empirical study).Research Journal in Finance Accounting, 4(6).

Tibus, C.A. and Brennan, L.L., 2013. RFID and labor management systems selection in the logistics industry.

Twati, J.M., 2014. The influence of societal culture on the adoption of information systems: The case of Libya. Communications of the IIMA, 8(1), p.1.