Impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprise Resource Planning System

Companies that desire to succeed must devise a way of ensuring that they constantly meet the needs and the desires of their clients. Colony Nursery and Landscaping has indeed realized the great benefits that it would have by simply rewarding their clients. It is possible that some of the clients may already be contented with their services that the company is offering but giving more would indeed ensure that they get more referrals and purchases from the same clients. Colony Nursery and, however, have a challenge in that they have an information silo and insufficient funds to implement an onsite enterprise resource planning system. This study will evaluate how the company can deal with the information challenge and how they would implement cloud services to meet their goals.

An information silo is where the organization’s system is unable to share information within the organization members or department (Abedalla, 2014). Information silo facilitates the transfer of information vertically and it is not possible for an outsider to access the information within the place. For instance, colony nursery and landscaping can obtain information regarding their clients and facilitate the reward points to them. The two organization can share information across the different towns without losing relevant data or information to the outsiders (Abedalla, 2014).  Information silo ensures that people who are outside the selected network cannot obtain the information without proper authorization.

An information silo is a challenge to organization n because they limit the information and the transfer of data. Work efficiency cannot indeed be achieved if the member of staff lack sufficient data on their clients or even performance (Abedalla, 2014). The employees that are using an ERP system in a hospital, for instance, may not use outside information to obtain enough date and evaluate. Information silo also encourages centralization which could be ineffective for companies. Usually, managers tend to take authority of the information within the company and the may refuse to share with other people. Moreover, an information silo is a tasking process because there are no linkages meaning that the officers involved may take much more work to understand the process and ensure that the information transferred is correct.

The organization is moving to the cloud because it is cheaper, continent and safe. Cloud ensures that organizations can obtain saved data when they need it without undergoing many processes. Moreover, the cloud can enable organizations to store a large amount of information that they would not have managed to save within their computers (Matende & Ogao, 2013). Moreover, the organization can easily share information with organizations outside the already installed system. Cloud is also fast meaning that there is no delay in the transfer of information.

Indeed using the cloud computing services would help solve the challenge that the company is currently facing. For instance, the team members would simply request for the information from the service provider and get it without inconveniencing themselves or altering their work schedule (Bento & Aggarwal, 2013). Cloud computing is also cheaper for the company and the organization would not have to adjust their costs to use it. Cloud computing is also safe and cost effective in the long run.

The ERP system and award system would indeed give Colony Nursey and landscaping a competitive advantage (Matende & Ogao, 2013). Customers want to be appreciated either through recognition or in other benefits. The best way to indeed create more loyalty is to ensure that the company grants awards to the people that consistently but the products. The reward program is also likely to transfer to more clients for the company due to the referral system thus leading to more profits.

Implementation of the ERP system would need Colony Nursery and Landscaping to re-engineer their business processes. The ERP system is meant to integrate all the work processes and ensure that there is harmony in all the information that is being shared across the departments (Matende & Ogao, 2013) For instance, the customer reward system would have to be linked to the purchase habits. The company would have to closely track their clients to understand their shopping habits to effectively entice them. The company would have to have a new strategy where they evaluate the work processes across the different teams and the practices that they would need to drop to be more effective to also ensure that clients are more satisfied.

References

Abedalla, R. W. (2014). The Silo Effect of Information Technology on the Organizational Productivity: A Qualitative Research Study. International Journal of Computer (IJC), 15(1), 42-50.

Bento, A. M., & Aggarwal, A. K. (2013). Cloud computing service and deployment models: Layers and management. Hershey PA Business Science Reference.

Matende, S., & Ogao, P. (2013). Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementation: a case for user participation. Procedia Technology, 9, 518-526.