Organizations Potential Positive Implications on Adoption of the ERP System - Research Paper Example

4.0 PHASE FOUR - DISCUSSION & RESEARCH FINDINGS 4.1 Research Findings: The research questions were divided into four parts. The first part of the research sought to investigate the background information about the usage of the ERP in ADNOC. This part was done to try and collect information on the different departments that have adopted the ERP system in ADNOC. This part also sought to identify the conversancy of the users of the new technology in usage and application within the organization. The second part of the research was carried out to provide information about the benefits that the new technology has on the employees. In this way, the research would help the researcher to understand the extent to which the employees find the technology easy to use and adopt, the extent to which they consider the ERP system useful to the organization and the key areas in the organization that can benefit from the adoption of these form of technology. The third part of the research aimed to collect information about the benefits of the new technology to the organization as a whole. The section sought to identify the parts in the organization that benefit mostly from the ERP system. Finally, the fourth part of the research aimed to collect information about the benefits that the system has to the third party stakeholders of ADNOC once it is adopted in the organization. The part sought to identify the benefits that the third party stakeholders would gain from the adoption of the new technology and the key areas where such benefits would be enjoyed. On the background information, the questionnaire sought to establish two major findings. There were the departments that the respondents worked and the conversancy of the respondents to the new technology. The survey tried to gather information equally from the different departments of the organization and as a result it tried to gain information equally from the different departments. However, it was hard to get information from the employees in the management department and the total numbers of respondents from this department were ten. All the other departments provided the study with a total of twenty respondents each. The main department in question for the research were the accounting, human resources, management and marketing department. The survey identified that in as much as the organization had taken to train the employees in the different department on the usage and adoption of the new technology, there were still other who were still not conversant with the new technology. The total number of respondents who argued that they did not have the experience and the conversancy to work with the new ERP system were 14. This represents about 19.7% of the total respondents. Having identified hat there were respondent who had problems using the new technology, the survey sough to also identify the extent to which the ERP system was easy to use in the organization. 54.9% of the respondents argued that the system was very easy to use. 32.4% of them argued that it was fairly easy to use the EPR system while 8.5% and 2.8% argued that the system was hard and very hard to use respectively. On the question of how useful the technology was to the employees when it was adopted in the organization also provided for varies responses by the respondents. The respondents argued that it was either very useful, useful or not useful at all. 62% of the respondents who had interacted and used the ERP system said that the new technology was a very useful venture for the organization to undertake. 25.4% of the respondents argued that the ERP system was fairly useful to the organization while 8 respondents representing about 11.3% of the respondents viewed the new technology as a venture that was not useful to the organization. For those who considered the project to be useful, they identified that the project was useful to the organization in four main departments where it could be adopted to help increase the efficiency from these four departments. The accounting, human resource and the marketing departments had equal frequencies for those who considered the new technology to be adopted in these departments. Each of these departments shared a percentage of 28.2% each of the total while the management department account for 14.1% of the total respondents. The third part was to collect information about the organization. This part tried to consider the areas where the RP system was beneficial to the organization and the extent to which the respondents considered the new technology to be beneficial to the organization. About 48 respondents representing 67.6% of the total argued that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems was a beneficial venture for the organization. 19.7% of the respondent provided that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was very beneficial. Finally, 11.3% argued that the ERP system was not a beneficial venture to the organization. Since the respondents had been taken from the different organizational departments, each of them argued that the ERP was beneficial to their individual departments. The final part of the research survey aimed to collect information about the opinion of the ERP and the benefits that it has on the third party stakeholders. These considered the customers, government, community and other external stakeholders of the organization. 19.7% of the respondent provided that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was very beneficial. 11.3% argued that the ERP system was not a beneficial venture to the organization. 67.6% of the total argued that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems was a beneficial venture for the organization. There were three areas where it was identified the ERP system to be beneficial to the organization. These were the accounting and management of customer funds, marketing and the human resource management within the organization. 4.2 Contribution of this Project: The oil industry has been changing gradually and the market demand has experienced the highest notable change in the industry. Then course identified that there has been a need to increase the efficiency of the organization’s activities in order to try and improve the performance of the organization. By improving on the efficiency, the organization will easily reduce the production cost. The changing market needs will force the organization to apply new efficiency operational measures that will help earn the organization reasonable profit margins. The main aim of the project is to try and identify a change that could be effected in the organization to help improve the performance in the different departments while reducing the costs of both the operations and the cost of acquiring the new technology. The ERP system has been identified to be the most efficient technology if it is to be adopted in the organization. The technology could be adopted for use in the different departments all at once and as a result, it would be cheap to obtain the technology and the performance would improve within the departments and the organization as a whole. The research further identified that the cost of labour was the highest cost that the organizations had to finance. Some of these labour costs provided way for unsustainable inputs in the industry. Currently, the organization employs more than 25000 employees and with such as massive number of employees, the organization is forced to finance massive operational costs. Similarly, with such a huge size of employees, the organization not only finances for labour costs but also other expenses that are associated with such huge numbers such as communications breakdown, workplace conflicts and other forms of remunerations. It is for this reason that ADNOC has resulted to the use of the use of technology systems such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. However, although the world is changing to become a global village where everyone uses and appreciated the modern technology provided by the digital age, majority of the end users do not have the knowledge to use some of the technological developments and as a result, they do not understand their benefits. Innovation is way through which the organization can improve customer satisfaction. Innovation in the view of ADNOC may be achieved through changes being effected in productivity, quality efficiency, and competitiveness and through the market share. Organizational culture is a key determinant on the performance of the business. Business may adopt innovative practices to aid them in transforming the performance of the company into tangible improvements. In order for the organization to remain competitive in the market, they have tried to promote innovation in every department within the organization. To improve the performance the organization has adopted the ERP system to help improve the quality of services that are rendered to the customers. However, the new innovation is still a challenge to the end users who are mostly the management team and some of the employees of the organization. The ERP system is a new technology that most people are not conversant with its use. As a result of the lack of proficiency in the use of the new technology, the end users lack the enthusiasm and willingness to use the new technology as evidenced in the research findings. The research findings showed that about 19.7% of the respondents were not conversant with the use of the ERP system. Similarly, a sizeable percentage of about 11.3% argued that it was either very hard or fairly hard to use the new technology. The ERP system also seeks to enhance customer service and product improvements as well as provide a wide array of benefits to the organization. For this reason, then the organization should make a decision on the weaknesses of the products and services and conduct a post-purchase evaluation. Where a product or service line is underperforming in the market, the problem could be either with the product or with the consumer. Where it is identified that the consumer has a problem, it is important to understand the gaps in the consumer decision making process and understand their needs and preferences. Make a decision on how to improve on the gaps from the information gathered then evaluate the market to determine whether the research has helped to improve on the decision making process of the consumer [Vic12]. However, in an instance where the problem is identified to be within the organization, there is need to consider important development that are aimed at improving the customer satisfaction and the product line. The organization has proposed the introduction and usage of the ERP system to improve the performance of the organization among the employees and towards the customers. The performance of the organization is coupled with a wide range of benefits. However, the research findings provide otherwise since some of the end users who are the managers and employees of the organization lack the understanding and proficiency of the usage of the technology. 19.7% of the respondents did not have the conversancy to use the technology. Similarly, about 11.3% argued that the project was not beneficial to the organization. 4.3 Limitations: The nature of the research does not allow the researcher to evaluate the whole company. This is due to the diverse sections of the companies and number of available respondents. This serves as a limitation as not all respondents are evaluated. The tools used to collect the data only provide information about a certain size of the population. Time and cost of doing the research will be another limiting factor. The research time will not fully efficient as the population size will be large. Similarly, the cost of doing research will increase with the increase of the population size. These two will limit the extent under which the research can extend its scope. 4.4 Recommendations for Further Development within the organization: The research was based on the use of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems by a majority of the ventures, including ADNOC to try and improve the efficiency within the organization. As expected, any form of innovation within an organization will attract diverse views from the different stakeholders. Some may consider that the adoption of the new technology will be important since it will help reduce the work load while others will view that the new technology will lead to the layoff of some of the employees from the organization. As a result, they will end up not supporting any form of innovation being introduced in the organization. The shareholders may have introduced the ERP system to increase the efficiency of the organization. The new technology however, required the support of the managers and the employees to support the venture in order for it to be successful. These are the players in the organization who determine the success or failure of the organization. It is therefore, important that the study considers their opinions and the reasons that they choose to take the sides that they take. It is also important that the organization tries to consider what can be done to ensure that any form of technology within the organization is appreciated and used by all the individuals effectively. However, the study failed to identify with the employees and managers of the organizations solutions that could be proposed in order to try and improve the adaptability of the new technology and other technologies that could be adopted within the organization in the near future. Similarly, the data collected for the research provided for closed ended questions thus limiting the size of information that could be collected for the research. In this way, it is not possible to have the respondent provide more information about the reason for their opinions. For example, some of the questions required the respondents to provide their opinion on the extent to which they considered the new technology beneficial to the organization. In such an instance, the respondents only gave their opinion. The researcher did not have the ability to identify the reasons why they considered the technology to be beneficial, very beneficial or not beneficial at all. It is therefore, important for future research to be conducted in the organization to try and gather more information about the usage and adoption of the new technology within the organization. 5.0 PHASE FIVE - CONCLUSION AND LESSONS LEARNED The research is aimed at providing more information about the organization’s potential positive implications on adoption of the ERP system. The study analysis offered an empirical evaluation of the key areas that ADNOC Company has benefited in through the adoption of an ERP system. The different departments that were considered during the study were the accounting department, management department, human resource department and the marketing department. The findings of the research projects There are a number of findings that that can be drawn from the research. The first and most important research finding from the study is that it is important to consider the employees when making important decisions in the organization. The employees are the major determinant of the success and failure of the organization. With such a high size of employees in ADNOC, major management decisions should consider the opinion of the employees while making important decisions concerning the organization. A good example is in the adoption of the new ERP system in the organization. This system has received varied opinion from the employees. Since most of them do not understand how to use the technology, it is hard to convince them that the technology will be beneficial to the organization. For this reason some of the innovative activities that are undertaken by the management for the organization may be considered hard ventures by the employees. It is therefore important that the employees receive training program in order to help them to learn how to use the new ERP system so that they can easily improve the efficiency of the organization. The cost benefits that are enjoyed by the adoption of new technologies are numerous for any business venture. However, it is important to consider the profitability and efficiency of any new technology before it can be bought and adopted in the organization. the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems has been seen to be useful in different departments within the organization. Therefore, the purchase of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems will increase the efficiency of the organization from the departmental level. In this way, it becomes easier and faster to render services and provide communication instructions to the different individuals who work within the organization. Similarly, it is also important to consider the expected benefits that will be derived from the adoption of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems within the organization. If the benefits outweigh the cost of purchasing and installing the new technology, then the new technology will be a viable venture to undertake. Finally, the ease of adoption and usage by the end user should also be considered before the purchase is done. If the end users find it difficult to use even after formal training has been conducted on them, then such a technology should not be adopted in the organization. Challenges faced by student during the whole course of completing the project? Give comments and views. The main challenge experienced during the course of the study was the support and cooperation that I got from both the internal and external stakeholder of the organization. The study could have only been conducted during the course of the working hours in the organization. At this time, the personnel are busy working trying to complete their tasks while the others are trying to meet their personal and organizational deadlines. Although the survey only required that the  Does the conclusion correlate with the discussion on the previous Phases? 5.2 In next paragraph students will discuss about their lessons learned through-out the process of completing the internship and research project. This should answer the following questions:-  Does student receive support from company, internally?  Does student receive support and cooperation from stakeholders, externally?  Does student receive support from academic advisor/assistant?  What did student learn from this experience of writing an academic paper?  What worked well or what didn’t work so well?  What can be done better in the research process? Read More