Phoenix Fine Electronics (PFE) is a mid-sized company that is growing each year. We are currently operating in two states with twenty-five stores. Currently each store has an IT manager who is responsible making the decisions on what technology and software are needed and implementing the system while accurate reporting to the main office. While, the store manager is responsible for all staffing, inventory and sale functions within the store. PFE current process provides no standardization across each store with, IT managers managing their systems and in charge of accurate reporting. We are going to examine a few systems that would help PFE integrate and manage all store systems and operations for standardization.

The three systems that we are going to examine are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer relationship planning (CRM) and Business intelligence/decision support system (BI/DSS). ERP “integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system (or integrated set of IT systems) so that employees can make decision by viewing enterprise wide information on all business operations” (Baltzan, 2015, p.38) CRM “involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and organization’s profitability” (Baltzan, 2015 p.35). BI/DSS “refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to and analyze data information support decision-making efforts” (Baltzan, 2015, p.G.2) Please reference the chart for the advantages and disadvantages for all three systems.

The system recommendation that I’m going to make for PFE excluding cost for now is strictly based on where the company current position and where we want to go. While each system will add great value to our company, the system that will add the most value is an ERP system. A unique feature for PFE has been having an IT manager at every store, however all store personnel should be focused on excellent customer service, sales and store operations. The reporting should come from the corporate level, letting daily, hour updates on how they are performing. ERP also offers scalability which will as to grow/reduce as we need to. As PFE not only looks to open new stores but we also plan to acquire new stores, an ERP system will allow us to integrate their current network/infrastructure into our as we see fit. ERP is the ideal system for PFE because it covers it all aspects the company operations, while CRM is heavily focused on the customer experience and BI/DSS focused on data to help make informed decisions.

Now to ensure a successful implementation of an ERP system, there are a several things that we are going to have to do. First, we must put together a team of employees to assist us, because knowledge that they will bring for their specific will be beneficial. We also going to need a detailed outline of all operations and current infrastructures for each store. Next, we need to evaluate and detailed the current problems we face and the goals objectives we want to achieve with the ERP system. Then we choose an ERP system, along with a vendor. This way we have an idea and know what we are looking for in partnership with our new ERP system. We also won’t be sold or fooled by any ERP presentation that looks and sounds good but does not help us achieve our target objectives. The next step is to clean up our data. This will allow us to remove any obsolete information and uniform all information in the same in format before the migration. Then, we need to setup hands on training for all employees and developed support documentation for specific operations for the new system. Finally, the last step is to test and go live. This includes “testing functionality, as well making sure specific interfaces, business processes, reporting and transactions are working correctly” (Panorama Consulting Solutions, 2019). A respectable timeline for this implementation is one to three years, to make sure we are not in rush to get this done. This is our first project of this magnitude and we need to get this right, so we will not have triggered down problems going forward from a rush implementation.

Implementing a new system into a company based of operations is a monumental task but its better for us to do it now while we only have twenty-five stores, instead of waiting to do it down the road with more stores, which would increase the risk for more potential problems. In the twenty-first century data is more important now than ever before and the only way for us to have continue success is to integrate all store operations into one ERP system, to better manager our stores and to make inform decision with the most up to date information.