Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Research

The significance of this study is to evaluate the deployment of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with the goal of determining the activities conducted on each of the project stages, the duration of the project, main challenges that arise, and the project cost (Ahituv, 2012). The primary research approach analyzes documents before presenting the findings. Durations for each of the project’s challenges are determined.

The Methodology of Research

During the study, the following questions arose.

1. The time it takes for each phase to complete.

2. Activities taken during implementation

3. The level of effort required for these activities.

The sampling unit was the entire SAP EPR project in a small company with roughly 200 employees. The justification of the EPR system was due to the ineffectiveness of the legacy system. As the company grows, the complexity of doing business increases. The whole project took sixteen months, and all areas of adopting the operations of an enterprise were bearing in mind (Bajwa, 2014). The approach was a client-consult method where a professional consultancy firm got hired to perform the implementation. The supervisors reported weekly work in the Activity Reports (AR).

ERP implementation-The case study results

1. Project Preparation

This stage included three sub steps which are;

Project plan i.e. description of project phases, project mile stones

Defining the organizational structure of the project i.e. role and responsibilities of participants in the project

Project procedures, i.e., communication, documentation, risk management and status reporting

This phase lasted for one month account for only 1.66% of the total work done.ASAP methodology encompasses a development system, quality assurance, and the production system. Additionally, a sandbox is installed for prototyping in the course of the project. This phase ended with is participants meeting to discuss scope, schedule and the goals of the project.

2. Business Blueprint

This stage involved adopting an organization using the analysis from the information in the documentation on the design. The documentation provided the consultants with information on system customizations, like reports, print outs, enhancements and interfaces with other systems (Ahituv, 2012). This phase took four months amounting 20% of the work done.

3. Realization

The project became successful because the expectations in the blueprint became realized and customization took place. This phase lasted three months making 28 % of the total work done. The workload split into; configuration, customization, preparation of the technical blueprints, coding, data migration and project management.

4. Testing and Final Preparation

This stage took two months where activities like integration, modular and unit tests were conducted. After customization and configuration, data migration followed, and the project got fine-tuned to “go-live.” However, during the first three months, the users were guided by the consultants to operate the system (Bajwa, 2014). Users faced challenges to adopting the system fully, and this was the major issues. However, the project didn’t give the budget allocated to perform this implementation.

PART II

Most of the IT practices aim at protecting systems from the risk of loss of confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility. This method is commonly known as the security triad.

Protecting from loss of confidentiality

Encryption mainly does this. For instance, the users need to authenticate for gain access. Lack of permission automatically denies access. However, data sent over r the wire can be obtained without the need for authentication. Data on hard disks and flash drives get easily corrupted. But an encryption can prevent loss of this data (Jeong, 2015). This method converts plain text data into ciphered data. It takes hackers a hectic time to crack secure encryptions. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is commonly used today because of its efficiency. Trusted Platform Modules may encrypt personal computers and hard drives. nay institutions used access control in their systems to prevent malicious manipulation or loss of useful data.

Protection from loss of integrity

Hashing is one of the ways of ensuring integrity. A hashing logarithm calculates a hash for a string of data. For instance ”ILoveSecurity” with the MD5 hashing algorithm becomes E7F8B292F4F5C2F98E5DF1435EB73D1B (Choi, 2015). The detection systems use hashes to compute the hashes of critical files. The system later examines the records to determine whether the hashes are compatible. In case the hash is different the file is corrupted and is considered to be suspect. Digital signatures also apply the same concept of detection. This method compares the original hash with the new hash and rejects access if found different.

Protecting from the loss of accessibility

The risk loss of availability is mainly averted by use backups and fault tolerant systems. Fault tolerance means that a system can incur a defect and continue to operate. This approach is primarily achieved by using redundant servers (Jeong, 2015). Backups keep the original data safe in case data becomes corrupted. Redundancies for servers work by configuring with the failover cluster. It contains two servers in the cluster and therefore if one server fails the other one continues to function. This interchange process takes place promptly with little effect to the users. In conclusion, I.T security requires the application of the Security tried for overall efficiency.

References

Ahituv N., Neumann S., Zviran M. (2012), A system development methodology for ERP systems, “Journal of Computer Information Systems”, Vol. 42, No. 3.

Bajwa D., Garcia J., Mooney T. (2014), An integrative framework for the assimilation of enterprise resource planning systems: phases, antecedents, and outcomes, “Journal of Computer Information Systems”, Spring.

Choi, H., Yi, Y., Seo, J., Noh, B., & Lee, H. (2015). A Privacy Protection Model in ID Management Using Access Control. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2005 Lecture Notes in Computer Science,82-91. doi:10.1007/11424826_9

Jeong, G., & Kim, G. (2015). A Framework for Security Assurance in Component Based Development. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2005 Lecture Notes in Computer Science,42-51. doi:10.1007/11424826_5