Case Study Information Systems in Telecommunication Industry 2: The case of SAP ERP Vodafone Group PLC...

  

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Case Study Information Systems in Telecommunication Industry 2: The case of SAP ERP Vodafone Group PLC is a leader in technology communications through mobile, fixed, broadband. It is the largest mobile service provider by revenue in the world, with 400 million customers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the United States. The company goal is to "connect for a better future to drive positive change for society TV (www.vodafone.com, 2021). In 2013, it had revenues of $64.6 billion and more than 86,000 employees working in over 30 countries. Since its founding nearly 30 years ago, the business has experienced phenomenal growth, largely by establishing local operating companies that provides products and services to their local markets. As a result, the company was very decentralized, lacking common practices, centralized operations, and data sharing among its various operating companies. Most of Vodafone's mobile subsidiaries operated as independent companies with their own business processes. Vodafone was a network of individual businesses, but it wanted to function more like a single global firm to better deal with competitive pressures. Management called for a major business transformation to make this happen. In 2006, Vodafone's board of directors approved the "Evolution Vodafone" Business Transformation Program (EVO) designed to refashion Vodafone into a truly global company, with a centralized shared services organization and common worldwide business processes in finances, human resources, and supply chain management for all of the operating companies (shared services refers to the consolidation of business operations that are used by multiple parts of the same organization in order to reduce costs and redundancy). To achieve this goal, a common SAP ERP system would provide the technology platform for these changes by supporting information-sharing and common business processes that would simplify and speed up work throughout the company. Additional software tools from Informatica, Opentext, Readsoft, Sabrix, Redwood, HP, and Remedy that could integrate with SAP were added to the mix. Vodafone's system turned out to be one of the biggest SAP ERP implementations in the world. How did Vodafone pull it off? First of all, Vodafone's management realized the company lacked the expertise and resources to manage such a complex project entirely on its own. It enlisted the consulting firms Accenture and IBM to provide skills and services that this ambitious project required, and which were not available inside the company. The company spent a year identifying and designing its new business processes and establishing the scope of this project. The management team wanted to limit risks to non- customer-facing processes that were nevertheless important sources of value for the firm. Customer-facing front-end processes were excluded from the first phase of the rollout to keep the transformation more manageable. Procurement was targeted as the first set of processes to be transformed using the new ERP system. Vodafone had been allowing each of its local companies to manage its own procurement, which prevented it from leveraging the massive purchasing power the company could obtain by managing relationships with material and service suppliers from Case Study Note: A relevant case study will be deployed in the system each semester Generic Case Study Questions 1. Describe the main problem/ issue related to Information Systems in this case. 2. Among IS strategic objectives discussed in chapter one, which objectives is the company trying to achieve and enhance? Support your answer. 3. Describe the main management, organization, and technology dimensions/issues in this case? What solutions were made to address these dimensions? 4. Based on generic strategies in chapter three, what strategy does the company use to compete? Suggest a new strategy to this business in order to compete and become the number one in the industry. 5. Identify one main issue related to IT infrastructure, which contributed to the company's problem. 6. What benefits did such an enterprise system bring to the company? Case Study Common Assessment Spring 2021.pdf Case Study Information Systems in Telecommunication Industry 2: The case of SAP ERP Vodafone Group PLC is a leader in technology communications through mobile, fixed, broadband. It is the largest mobile service provider by revenue in the world, with 400 million customers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the United States. The company goal is to "connect for a better future to drive positive change for society TV (www.vodafone.com, 2021). In 2013, it had revenues of $64.6 billion and more than 86,000 employees working in over 30 countries. Since its founding nearly 30 years ago, the business has experienced phenomenal growth, largely by establishing local operating companies that provides products and services to their local markets. As a result, the company was very decentralized, lacking common practices, centralized operations, and data sharing among its various operating companies. Most of Vodafone's mobile subsidiaries operated as independent companies with their own business processes. Vodafone was a network of individual businesses, but it wanted to function more like a single global firm to better deal with competitive pressures. Management called for a major business transformation to make this happen. In 2006, Vodafone's board of directors approved the "Evolution Vodafone" Business Transformation Program (EVO) designed to refashion Vodafone into a truly global company, with a centralized shared services organization and common worldwide business processes in finances, human resources, and supply chain management for all of the operating companies (shared services refers to the consolidation of business operations that are used by multiple parts of the same organization in order to reduce costs and redundancy). To achieve this goal, a common SAP ERP system would provide the technology platform for these changes by supporting information-sharing and common business processes that would simplify and speed up work throughout the company. Additional software tools from Informatica, Opentext, Readsoft, Sabrix, Redwood, HP, and Remedy that could integrate with SAP were added to the mix. Vodafone's system turned out to be one of the biggest SAP ERP implementations in the world. How did Vodafone pull it off? First of all, Vodafone's management realized the company lacked the expertise and resources to manage such a complex project entirely on its own. It enlisted the consulting firms Accenture and IBM to provide skills and services that this ambitious project required, and which were not available inside the company. The company spent a year identifying and designing its new business processes and establishing the scope of this project. The management team wanted to limit risks to non- customer-facing processes that were nevertheless important sources of value for the firm. Customer-facing front-end processes were excluded from the first phase of the rollout to keep the transformation more manageable. Procurement was targeted as the first set of processes to be transformed using the new ERP system. Vodafone had been allowing each of its local companies to manage its own procurement, which prevented it from leveraging the massive purchasing power the company could obtain by managing relationships with material and service suppliers from Case Study Note: A relevant case study will be deployed in the system each semester Generic Case Study Questions 1. Describe the main problem/ issue related to Information Systems in this case. 2. Among IS strategic objectives discussed in chapter one, which objectives is the company trying to achieve and enhance? Support your answer. 3. Describe the main management, organization, and technology dimensions/issues in this case? What solutions were made to address these dimensions? 4. Based on generic strategies in chapter three, what strategy does the company use to compete? Suggest a new strategy to this business in order to compete and become the number one in the industry. 5. Identify one main issue related to IT infrastructure, which contributed to the company's problem. 6. What benefits did such an enterprise system bring to the company? Case Study Common Assessment Spring 2021.pdf

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

1 The main problem in this case is that Vodafone lacks common practices centralized operations and data sharing among its various operating companies This lack of standardization and centralization ma... View the full answer