Major Business Initiatives

This week we talked about how companies are working with IT to gain competitive advantage in the very competitive market. Several methods are utilized in order to help the company go beyond frontiers and advance. The IT support has been crucial and makes a huge difference on race. Here I will point out some of the programs that have been used in business and have demonstrated to be very effective. There are two main tools that I want to focus on today: CRM and ERP.

The first one is Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is a very important thing for companies to identify their customers’ needs and increase their profitability. Software that provides information on how customers behave gives a great picture of what can be done to give them what they want and get what the company wants.[1] An understanding of things like purchase and payment history as well as specific preferences and business needs can significantly enhance their experience of doing business with a company. So having all the customer knowledge on a database can bring great customer service, which will consequently bring great customer satisfaction. [2]

The second one is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This is a kind of software that attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system, providing all the information necessary to different departments and their needs within a company.[3] The key word here is integration. Such thing enables varies departments to collect information from each other and bring much more effectiveness to the business. An example of this that we can even see here at LDS Business College is how PeopleSoft works. If a student wants to enroll in a class which has a pre-requisite, the program automatically searches to make that other class has been taken. FIN 101, for instance, can only be taken after IT 102 or concurrently. If the student has not enrolled for IT 102 and tries to do so with FIN 101, the system will automatically forbid him to do so until he enrolls for the pre-requisite. SAP is the largest ERP provider in the world. It is in charge of many large businesses and their integration. Recently, SAP officials said that there are over 30,000 job openings for SAP consultants.[4] This is due to the need of so many companies, customers and users.

In conclusion, as we can see, there are many things that are helping businesses become more effective, and in order to stay on track we need to update ourselves in this new world of information technology. We can apply this to the future as we become more familiar with these resources and try to implement them in our professions. A professional that has a sound knowledge of ERPs is ahead of many others. He can get the whole picture of a company by integrating different areas and departments. CIOs are essential in this process, and here is a great opportunity for those of us who want to invest in the Information Systems area: become the next CIOs of company who need qualified and up-to-date professionals to do the job. At the same time, we can take a look at how important it is to use CRMs in order to better understand customer wants and needs. Those who would like to enter the marketing sector will see a great use on this as they can create alternatives to attract customers by knowing their characteristics. The opportunities are there and the job market is looking for those who are ready for them. It is now our duty to obtain knowledge and skills to get there.

[1] Terri C. Albert, Paulo B. Goes, and Alok Gupta, “GIST: A Model for Design and Management of Content and Interactivity of Customer-Centric Websites”,Journal, http://www.misq.org/archivist/vol/no28/issue2/Albert.html, Accessed 18 September 2009.
[1] Jason Nash, “Customer Relationship Management: happy customer = profitable customers”, Computer Weekly, 23 May 2008, http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/05/23/230817/customer-relationship-management-happy-customers-profitable.htm, Accessed 18 September 2009.[1] Thomas Wailgum, “EPR Definitions and Solutions”, CIO e-magazine, http://www.cio.com/article/40323/ERP_Definition_and_Solutions#improve, Accessed 18 September 2009.
[1] Bob Evans, “30,000 Job Openings for SAP Consultants, SAP Official says”, Information Week , 1 September 2009, http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/09/30000_job_openi.html;jsessionid=OEBGT0DADIG3ZQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN?queryText=enterprise+resource+planning, Accessed 18 September 2009.