Nestle and Enterprise Resource Planning Assignment

Nestle and Enterprise Resource Planning - Assignment Example The present research has identified that in June 2000, Nestle halted the project in mid-rollout. The company regrouped, starting from scratch and jettisoning a predetermined end date. It conducted regular surveys of user reactions to changes, delaying implementation when feedback indicated the need for further training. Now close to the finish line, Nestle CIO Jeri Dunn says she has learned a number of hard lessons, such as "no major software implementation is really about the software†. But has Nestle really learned its lesson? And how can their successes and failures be illustrative to the rest of the industry? The reasons for ERP are fairly simple: They can increase coordination, decrease overhead, increase the speed at which customer service complaints are resolved and prevent those complaints from getting lost amidst the bureaucratic shuffle, increase data access in real time and consolidate data into a central database. But Dieringer cautions that nothing is free: â€Å" Of course, these opportunities come at a high price in terms of financial cost, implementation nightmares, and human issues. Often these implementations fail miserably as they run behind schedule and over budget; other times they are successful. Regardless of the outcome, each ERP implementation holds valuable lessons to be learned for companies considering their own ERP implementation†. ERPWire defines both industry-wide and business-specific advantages. ERP can help increase the manufacturing group's efficiency. Having one single software program with unified access to company databases lets supply chains be leaner, managers predict what will be needed to be produced and do so ahead of time to keep things on the shelf and anticipate demand so as to avoid shortfalls, give workers access to production goals and allow coordination among plants so as to avoid duplication of resources. Distribution and retail is facilitated by letting retailers get much better ideas of real inven tory, make their orders automated or contingent on information on their end without slowing down production, have real-time status updates so they can spend less time monitoring shipments, and coordinating with the producer on a much more holistic level. The transport sector benefits because some things can be sent online such as forms and communications, reducing their overhead, and other things can be set up for lean shipment. And the project service sector benefits because reports can be made more quickly, more accurately and with data that is updated in real time instead of having substantial institutional lag. Similarly, the accounts department can record transactions themselves instead of waiting for the financial group to do so. Paperwork is reduced, which reduces cost of purchasing paper, ecological footprint (which is useful for PR purposes), trash and recycling costs, and storage costs. Information is also processed and stored faster, indeed nearly instantaneously, allowin g customers, suppliers, distributors and shareholders to get information more quickly and not have to be told that their data is still being processed. Customer service is made more efficient and less onerous: There's a unified accounting of the customer's purchases, customer service history and tickets, and other factors.