Question:  Discussion: Business Data Integrations

Discussion Overview: Discussion participation in this course is taken very seriously. If you have not read the Discussion Assignments Overview and Requirements information, do so before you participate in the discussion area.APA Style citing and referencing is a stringent requirement for any "borrowed" data that is posted in the Discussions as well as submitted in the other assignments in this course. Select Course Specific APA Style Instructions and Guidance to access an excellent guide with tips on how to utilize APA Style to format in-text citations and references.

Discussion Requirements

The following are specific Discussion requirements:

Initial posts must be made by mid-week (Day four).

Respond to a minimum of two of your peers' posts.

To assist your instructor in evaluating your work, when creating your initial post, copy the question from the activity and paste it in bold font just before your answer.

To assist the readers in keeping track of who the involved parties are in a specific discussion, begin your response posts with the name of the peer to whom you are responding.

Place appropriate APA Style in-text citations and a Reference Table for any "borrowed" data obtained from a source.

Your data needs to be grammatically sound and free of spelling errors.

Using terminology from the reference sources in your answers will enhance your grade.

Unless you are a subject matter expert on the topic, based on your degrees, certifications or "on the job training," do not submit data obtained only from personal experience.

Discussion Question: Several issues or failures to succeed with the implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) that resulted in lawsuits between companies and contracted providers are depicted in Chapter 10 of the course textbook. Large-scale rollouts of ERP systems are notoriously difficult to pull off and fraught with cost overruns. Inadequate training, employee groups' buy-in or failure to embrace a change to a utilization of the new technology, poorly designed or incompatible software with legacy systems, and other factors are often stated to be the source of difficult transitions to ERP systems.

Question: If you were the CIO of a large enterprise and the rollout and implementation of an ERP system was going badly, where would you begin to try to determine what was causing the difficulties that are being encountered in the project? Would you bring in an outside consultant or rely on in-house talent to track down the causes for the less-than-optimal outcomes? Why would you choose one asset over the other?

Remember, the goal in the Discussion is to create an atmosphere of interaction by posting meaningful responses that advance and expand the depth of the discussion. Do this by providing additional support to your peers' initial and response posts, or if appropriate, by challenging them if you feel that the data that they presented is weak. Likewise, when a peer challenges the data in your posts, debate the issue, and providing further support for your points of view on the topic.