Apple’s Market Strategy: Innovation Over Research – A Deep Dive into Product Development and Market Positioning

 Explore how Apple avoids traditional market research, focusing instead on incremental innovation and a high-end value proposition. Discover how their unique approach to product development and market segmentation has reshaped the tech industry

Q1.

Apple, instead of conducting market research to get profound insights into the customer needs and wants, prefers to incorporate innovative features and capabilities in their respective products, increasing their appealing nature in the market.  For example, although there were already existing digital music players in the market, Apple went ahead and launch Ipod and bound it to iTunes to become the first easy-to-use software that manages digital music collection. Its features involve pricing a song at 90$ and easing its accessibility hence improving the purchase of albums.

 About iPod, most of the products of Apple not attributed to market research. It is in line with its founder, steve jobs’ vision for the products.  He is on record stating that Apple does not need to conduct market research; thus there is no need for tickling all the boxes on the list of features customers say they need on a product. Instead, the company employs incremental innovation to sell its products targeting a particular market segment.

 

 

Q2.

Apple is unique in the way that it designs products that make it avoid price wars with competitors but focuses on its unique value proposition in its marketing approaches. The company’s value proposition is “beautiful design that works right out of the box with ever-smaller packaging” (Peter, 2018). All of the apple’s products target the high-end market customers segment. Thus, its market-driven is cast on selling its image and high-end products.

 Fundamentally, Apple is employing a market-driven approach in its operations. In other words, instead of the company placing its customers at the start of the process a thorough precision market research, they build suitable products for the target segments. Also, Apple develops a compelling image for aiming their certain segmentation.  For example, Apple in 2001 builds IMac PC aimed at the high-end market. In a nutshell, in 2001 IMac when launched only had a 2% share of the United States personal computer market. Today it accounts for nearly 20% of the amount spent on commuters costing over $1000. In this review, by launching a product suiting the high-end customer segment, the brand can predict the need of its customers without their input.

Q3.

In the spheres of market drive, companies such as Apple accept the prevailing behaviors and roles of the existing companies without distorting and adjusting. Therefore, Apple emphasizes a response to the existing marketing through understanding and proving better values to satisfy its customers, precisely improved technology. On the other hand, the market-driving approach nexus is on changing the market shape and behaviors.  In real-practice both factors are intertwined, and focusing on changing both perspectives is a prerequisite for a successful market-driving initiative (Gansuwan et al., 2011). Consequently, the interaction between market-driving and market-driven approaches can be viewed from different perspectives.  In this view, these approaches can be substituted for each other. In other words, Apple can only operate using the market-driven approach.

Secondly, the approaches can act as complementary. For Apple to some extent, dealing with both approaches concurrently is challenging based on their business objective, thus it have to find balance position. Finally, both approaches can function as consecutive behaviors. In other words, Apple can start by using a market-driven approach and then adopt the market-driving approach onwards. In this review, after Apple’s emphasis on incremental innovation, it can decide to major in changing the market structure and behavior to enhance its competitive advantage. In a nutshell, depending on the business objectives, it can either decide to utilize both approaches or use only one approach. Furthermore, most successful companies have found a formula for engaging both approaches.

References

Gansuwan, P., & Siribunluechai, A. (2011). The Interrelationship ofthe Market-Driving Approachand the Organizational Culture: A qualitative study of the market-driving companies.

Patel, N. (2018) “7 Key Strategies That You Must Learn from Apple’s Marketing” Neil Patel Digital, Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/7-key-strategies-that-you-must-learn-from-apples-marketing/

Simulating Stochastic Processes: A Mathematical Exploration of Markov Chains and Random Walks

 This paper presents a detailed exploration of simulation techniques in mathematics, focusing on the application of Markov Chains and Random Walks. Learn how these stochastic models are used to simulate complex processes in customer experience and stock market analysis.

Q1 Markov chain and Random Walk

Markov chain is a mathematical model involving unstructured circumstances happening with a particular time where the past influence the future using the present. Markov chain technique is utilized for modeling a series of activities or events. Markov Chain customer experience events are structured in such that task has series of events with different lengths (Brooks et al., 1998).  In other words, it comprise of a sequence of touch pint with the customer such as ads and emails. Technicality, the transition matrix from the technique has potentialities to function as quantitative metric of the Customer Relationship management (CRM) efficiency and to directly involve to the success of all the touch points.

 The Random Walk is a mathematical model used in the stock analysis. Random walk technique is used where the variables follow no discernible trend and pans out randomly.  The technique is widely used in the stock market. Its theory premise is on the assumption that random walking influence the evolving of the prices of securities in the stock market. Therefore, for the investors, the best approach is to invest in the market portfolio.

Q2. DES

 Discreet-event-simulation is a model that stimulates the behavior and the performance of the real-life process.  The approach is salient for increasing efficiency, speed and the performance (Bosilj et al., 2017).  For the system, DES not only analyzes the behavior of the system buy also conducts experiments with the adjustment of the system structure.

 Amongst the characteristics of the DES, it that is a technique for conducting experiment.  The attribute is vital for the monitoring and prediction of the behavior of investments in the stock market.  For businesses using the approach it is possible to predict the start and end of peak and off-peak season to facilitate sound investment. Also it facilitates devising approaches to mitigate complex problems. In other words, traders have the ability to predict the performance of the market during unprecedented times.

Q3. Semi-structured decisions

 Decision support framework is divided into three sub categories: unstructured, semi-structured and structured decision. Unstructured decision involves three decision phases (“intelligence, design and choice”) which are not structured, for example, sourcing for a company venue for end of year meeting. Structured decision involves phases that are follows a particular order, for example, a company selecting an appropriate investment partner. Finally, semi structured decisions involves combination of structured and unstructured problems and elements. For example, a company setting promotion budget for a new product.

 Semi-structured decision entails the following controls: Strategic planning, management control and operational control. Strategic planning is central for the business to longer range of objectives and policies such as production scheduling. For example the organization may decide to develop a policy that will require them to choose between sugar and biscuits to produce in the future.  The second factor is the managerial control that encompasses gathering of resources and prudently utilization to attain the goal of the company. For example, a semi-structured decisions on the acquisition of the technology to aid and enhance the process of the budget preparation. Lastly is the operational control factor that is casted on robustly performing the tasks. For example, the organization planning for the annual compensation of the employees based on the performance.

 

 

 

References

Bosilj Vukšić, V., Pejić Bach, M., & Tomičić-Pupek, K. (2017). Utilization of discrete event simulation in business processes management projects: a literature review. Journal of Information and Organizational Sciences, 41(2), 137-159.

Brooks, S. P. (1998). Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method and Its Application. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series D (The Statistician), 47(1), 69–100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2988428

 

 

Exploring Leadership Through Cultural Intelligence: Media Analysis of Mellody Hobson’s ‘Color Blind or Color Brave’ and Scholarly Insights by Van Dyne, Ang, and Livermore

 Dive into a media analysis comparing Mellody Hobson's 2014 TED Talk "Color Blind or Color Brave" and the journal article "Becoming a Culturally Intelligent Leader". Understand how both media highlight cultural intelligence, leadership, and the courage to embrace diversity.

Introduction

The paper has chosen both video media (color blind or color brave Mellody hobson, 2014) and journal articles media (“Becoming a Culturally Intelligent Leader by Linn Van Dyne, Soon Ang, and David Livermore“).  In the narrow view, media content analysis is a sub-category of content analysis primarily for research methodology. Thus, video content analysis is a rich media embedding other media content such as text and audio.  Therefore, the selection of the “color blind or color brave” video, the content automatically underscores the importance of racism awareness. The audience is provided with an opportunity to in-depth understanding of racism and its impact on the community.

On the other hand, the selection of the media journal article content, cultural intelligence is appropriate since enables an individual to have skills to effectively interact with emotional capabilities and to understand and adapt to the myriad of cultural contexts. In the narrow view, it simplifies why cultural intelligence is central in helping the leaders to develop an overall viewpoint and repertoire that is integral in an effective leadership. Furthermore, there is the utilization of in-depth, in most cases contemplative and incisive observations from the literature of the journal article. The media journal in the broad view; conducts scrutiny of a representative subject of the content embedded in it to be examined.

 

Big ideas

Amongst the overarching big ideas is culture intelligence. Cultural intelligence can be defined the ability of an individual to function effectively across different culture.   The concept is built upon four frameworks that synthesize the volumes of resources and viewpoint on intelligence and cut across the cultural leadership. These four capabilities are different and also correlated.  The four factors of the cultural intelligence include motivational cultural intelligence, cognitive cultural intelligence, metacognitive cultural intelligence and behavioral cultural intelligence.

 The second big ideas are on the improvement of the cultural intelligence. These improvements re confined to core commitments and practicing to improve cultural practices. On one side, the commitment framework include, starting anthropological dig in an individual soul. In other words, requires understanding one before understanding others.  Also, there is root of the perspective of other people in the Image Dei. In other words, if an individual view others were also created by the image of god, significant in shaping the fundamental relation. Finally, there is seeking the kingdom of God. In other words, it is difficult for an individual to separate their relationship with others from their commitment in Christianity.  On the other side, the practices of increasing CQ include but not limited to read, watching different backgrounds movies, eating and learning a new language. To begin with, an individual need to read different books  written by different authors from cultural backgrounds that has subjects adrift from their experience, secondly,  films are fundamental in transforming an individual mindset on other people’s culture. Therefore, it is appropriate to watch film that expose an individual to other cultures, thirdly, an individual should try different food from different places and eat with people from different cultural backgrounds to open a new world of experience. Finally, an individual should strive to learn a new language since it is the cornerstone of allowing them to see world differently and improve on how they communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds.

There should be creation of racism awareness.  The author from the video has noted many people have failed to acknowledge and address the issues of racism which is widespread in the contemporary.  The community and the world are living in denial that, racism is existence especially against people with color. Therefore, creation of awareness where people need to have profound insights on racism, its frameworks and its nature should be a step in the right direction in combating it.

 “So-what” to big ideas in relation to leadership

                    The shortcomings of the cultural intelligence for intercultural communication purports that one can only figure so much within the constraints. To a certain extent, an individual also requires knowledge and or other resources not just possess the ability of the cultural intelligence. However, for example,  leader with low cultural intelligence residing within a foreign culture for many years may have a better intercultural communication than a recent arrival leader with high cultural intelligence  Though, its arguments illustrates that, the approach is confine to diversity it has an important conceptual limitations. In the context of the cultural intelligence, the culture is reduced to race and ethnicity ignoring other important aspects. In other worse, it only frames race and ethnicity as residing only in the other, leaving the dominant cultures unproblematized.  Notably, cultural intelligence is central in helping the leaders to develop an overall viewpoint and repertoire that is integral in an effective leadership.  With cultural intelligence, leaders can successful leads in the rapid globalization world.  With one possessing skills to effectively interact with emotional capabilities, leaders have an effective understanding and adapt to the myriad of cultural contexts. In the narrow view, these are essential need at any contemporary leader would want to have for effective leadership. However, within the framework of cultural intelligence there are some of the elements of cultural understanding that are deeply ingrained and in some cultures, only implied. In other words, it becomes hard for the leaders to understand new cultures fully, hence derail their leadership. For instance, if a culture is using many words to express a particular feelings, which can only be defined in another language, it becomes difficult for an individual not of native origin to understand the culture fully. Furthermore, for leaders coming from European countries, they are used to western society that places a great deal on an individual so it becomes difficult to thrive in the Eastern societies that place value on the society as the whole. For leaders these deeply ingrained attitudes can be difficult to move past fully in dealing with people from different cultures hence affects the quality of leadership.

                   The disparity and differences makes it difficult to leaders to understand different cultures.  Fundamentally, core commitments and practicing to improve cultural practices is salient for leaders considering their leadership is casted on the emotional capabilities.  However, it requires a lot of commitment and practices for leaders to attain the minimum threshold in understanding other cultures. Leadership begins with understanding oneself before understanding others. Technically, all the cultures do not have a common factor. Thus, by understanding on one culture, makes it easy to understand the culture of other people but not fully due to complex technicalities involved. Importantly, profound insights on different cultures shape on how leaders relate with other people. However with shallow insights on different people cultures, it injured a leader relationship with other people. On the other hand, leaders improve their skills, abilities and perceptive based on the cultural intelligence through practicing.  Reading, eating, watching movies based on different cultural backgrounds, learning new language and many more  factors improves the cultural intelligence of a leader.  However, most of the leaders who function on the global sphere are leading global organization that requires their input on factors that directly affects the profitability and sustainability of the company. In other words, it becomes difficult for leaders to have ample time to improve to practice to improve their cultural intelligence. Furthermore, the composition of the society is changing and greatly influences people from different cultural background, it’s upon leaders to update their skills to cater for the needs of the people which is difficult for most of them to keep pace with ever changing dynamics.

            Racism is a major problem in the modern world. It has been noted that, there has been problem of creating awareness, with many people assuming the racial discrimination in the society is acceptable by all standards.  Therefore, any leader partaking in an initiative to create racial awareness may face opposition from a certain customer base quarter. Society lacks an individual to lead them in doing what ought to have been done long time ago. Therefore, leaders taking up the mantle and lead the people in campaigns that oppose and condemn any form of racism in the modern society should expect opposing forces that may interfere with their leadership.

Overall implications

The two main agenda is the cultural intelligence and racism awareness.  These factors are important in shaping up the complex dynamics of the modern world.  The world is currently on the realm of globalization. Therefore, instead of being entangled in one culture and race, its composition involves myriad of cultures and race contexts. Individuals and leaders need to have the knowledge know-how on how to handle these new dynamics to accommodate all different people in the society. On the side of cultural intelligence, the understanding that cuts across different cultures forms a successful integration of all the cultures. The ability of an individual to function effectively across different culture underlines the importance of develops an overall viewpoint and repertoire integral in developing an in-depth connection with different cultures.  Cultural intelligence such as the cognitive CQ provides the platform to understand basic cultural cues.  In other words, an individual understand the building block of a culture and eventually learn to respect it. On the other hand, racial awareness is salient in dealing with skyrocketing of racial discrimination to unprecedented level.  The dynamics of the new world, requires, all the people to co-exist with one another. Thus, to curtail the ballooning rate of racial discrimination, racial awareness structures a platform of identification, condemning and responding to racism.

 Combination of the media content

  I understand the combination of the video and journal media content has been integral in analysis of the main objectives. While the video content with the aid of other media content such as text and voice  has provide the visual aspects, the journal content has provide an in depth analysis of the cultural intelligence.  Cultural intelligence and Racism awareness are the intertwined to certain point.   My perspective is that, for an individual who possess cultural intelligence, where they have the cues of different cultural contexts; it will be difficult to practice racism. Arguably, racism is due to ignorance and having the cultural intelligence deals with the aspect in all dimensions.  On the contrary, racism awareness is one of the aspects that cultural intelligence is advocating for.  For an individual, an in-depth knowledge and insights of other people culture is prerequisite in dealing with cultural hangovers.  Similarly, I understand through racism awareness an individual not only deal with incidents of racism put also partake in creating preventive mitigation strategies such as racism awareness. Therefore, I can deduce that both two topics are interconnected and the implementation of one affects the other.

Different perspective

The two topics are debatable.  While some quarters may argue on their effectives, some may argue they lack the cutting edge. For the cultural intelligence, although leaders and individuals are encouraged to learn the culture of others, it is difficult to learn all the cultures based on their high numbers. Furthermore, cultures tend to advocate aspects in opposite way. For instance, what is acceptable by one culture, its highly not condoned by another culture? The clash of perspectives and norms among different culture brings the element of confusion and misunderstanding. Therefore, individuals in quest to acquire cultural intelligence may be compelled to distort their original cultural perspectives.

 On the racism awareness, the agenda is most likely resonating with the victims and not the perpetrators. In other words, the perpetrators may be against the initiative since it downplays their behaviors. Notably, some of these individuals exhibiting racism find happiness in committing it, and creating awareness to stop it, sound like fighting their consciences.   Also, the victims to some extent may have accept the situation in entirety hence creating awareness do not resonate with them. In a nutshell, cultural intelligence and racial awareness are two salient factors for ensuring positive development of the society.

 

References

 

hobson, m. (2014). Color blind or color brave? Retrieved octomber 8, 2022, from Ted: https://www.ted.com/talks/mellody_hobson_color_blind_or_color_brave

Linn Van Dyne, S. A. (n.d.). Becoming a Culturally Intelligent Leader. 1-9.

 

 

 Video content

https://www.ted.com/talks/mellody_hoson_color_blind_or_color_brave

Journal article

Becoming a Culturally Intelligent Leader  by Linn Van Dyne, Soon Ang, and David Livermore

 

 

Starbucks Case Study: Analyzing Employee Job Attitudes, Organizational Behavior, Structure, and Culture

 

Introduction

Starbucks is an American based coffee and coffeehouse company. Founded in 1971, the company is amongst the leading brands in the coffee industry globally. Precisely, Starbucks operate across 64 countries with 23,187 stores and 17000 dedicated employees (Volle, 2021).  Apart from coffee, Starbucks stores serve wide range of products that include snacks and full-leaf teas.

Organizational behavior is one of the components that are salient to Starbucks and it starts with its top-level management.  The success of Starbucks has been primarily because of its consistent and well implemented of the organizational behavior practices. Among the organizational behavior concepts where the company has been performing exemplary are motivation and HR practices.  Thus, the Starbucks case analysis report narrow down motivation and organizational culture OB practices to “paying attention to employees’ job attitudes” and “ looking at the organizational structure and organizational culture”.

The rest of the Starbucks case analysis report is structured as follows: section two is the literature analysis of “paying attention to employees’ job attitudes” and “looking at the organizational structure and organizational culture” OB practices. The report targets to expound on the concepts using the relevant theories and literatures. Section three entails analysis the two selected OB practices in relation to Starbucks coffee company. Furthermore, the analytically argument is built on the strengths and weakness of Starbuck’s approaches on the concepts. Section four and the concluding section is the recommendation and conclusion. The section summarizes the key findings on the case analysis and provides some recommendations.

Literature review

An organization has the potentialities to reduce absenteeism, minimize workers turnover, and enhance employee’s motivation and also balloon productivity and profitability by implementing the rudimentary organizational behavior component successfully. In this context, within the operation of an organization, OB practices pinpoint the difference between success and failure. The realm has been the recipe of a success of a myriad business organization in the contemporary world.  Therefore, organizational behavior is defined as subject that explores the impact individuals, groups and companies have on the behavior in an organization purposely for application of such knowledge for the enhancement of an organization’s effectiveness.  Since OB is a broad concept it can be subdivided into mini-concepts.  Mini-concepts include but not limited to “paying attention to employees’ job attitudes” and “looking at the organizational structure and organizational culture”.

The assessment of the employees’ attitude is imperative in pinpointing the employees who will leave or stay employees who will have a better performance and employees who will be more engaged. Thus, it’s prerequisite in tracking of satisfaction and commitment levels central to the health of an organization.  The attitudes have the potential to influence employees’ behaviors in terms of job satisfaction and organizational commitment.  The work attitude can be explained in terms of the personality test and based on the big five personality model work: openness, neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness (Rothmann et al., 2003).   It is imperative for the organization to understand that positive affective disposition of employees  tend to make them more satisfied with their jobs and commitment to the organization while individuals with negative disposition are less satisfied and committed to the organization.  Neurotic personality is individuals who are less satisfied with their job while those whose emotion is more stable are satisfied with their job. Traits such as openness, extraversion and conscientiousness are regarded as positive work attitudes. These types of employees are regarding the environment of their job to be more positive. Also, they perceive their parent company to have a better relationship with them and make them happy hence it increases their satisfaction and commitment.

Another aspect of the organizational behavior is organizational culture and structure.  On one side, organizational culture is an intrinsic factor of the OB. In other words, it plays a central role in directing the way employees behave in an organization by interior operations and by influencing assumptions, values, norms etc. as per the organization protocol. On the other side, organizational structure is a salient factor of the OB that influences people behaviors from outside by creation of limitations set by factors such as division of labor. Thus, the fundamental behavior of an individual in an organization is because of the effect of culture and structure (Francesco et al., 2005).  Based on the McClellard’s need theory organizational structure is centered on the need for achievement, power and affiliation.  Precisely, the need for achievement entails excellence in maintaining positive attitudes and norms to achieve the organizational goals and overcome challenges.  Also, it ensures that through there are limitations to influence people from outside due to organizational structure. The need for power influences the norms and behaviors of other employees to work towards the same goal and finally, need for affiliation ensures there is positive and close relationship in an organization.

Analysis of OB at Starbucks

Starbuck paying close attention to employees attitude makes them people oriented. Through motivation of the employees the company increases productivity and minimizes employee turnover.  Starbucks has been fostering strong belief in promoting positive workers behaviors and ensure all the employees are working as a team on all levels in the organization (Mosely, 2007). The paying attention to the employees attitude has enable the company to make each of them to be accountable and responsible depending on their strength in functioning their duties in relation to the supporting of the organizations  goals and visions. However, paying close attention to employees’ attitude will require the company to provide enough opportunity and training to its human capital which is expensive since a lot of resources are needed to improve on the human resources

Starbucks organizational culture is confined to product, people and its store ambience. The company strives to provide to level coffee experience that improves the life of young people and curious adults. Therefore, the involvement and the personal interaction are central to Starbucks experiences (Schultz et al., 2012). Since, the company stands for passionate and committed employees, the organizational culture have enabled the company to treat its employees with respect and dignity.  On the other hand, the organizational structure at Starbucks was developed in a manner that it enables proper attention is provided to all its departments as well as ensuring there is proper and effective division of all the responsibilities and duties.

However, at Starbucks, a major transformation attempt makes worsen the situation. If any of the organizational culture and structure beliefs are shaky, the organizational change may weaken the system further. Therefore, the company will be forced to employ serious motivation to solve performance problems which is very expensive

Conclusion

From the organizational behavior, it is certain that it behaviors of employees in an organization varies from one employee to another.  The theories in the case study have helped in pointing out the reason behind complex and several employees’ behavior. Furthermore, it’s prerequisite for the company to shape them around its goals and objectives. Starbucks is people oriented therefore it has been paying close attention to its employees attitudes to function its effective and efficient system to provide to its customers top-notch experience via quality products and achieve a sustainable improvement.

For an effective organizational behavior the paper recommends the following:

ü    Effective communication channel to communicate organization change to employees

ü    To provide motivation at all levels of performance to boost attitude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

References

Francesco, A.M. and Gold, B.A., 2005. International organizational behavior.

Rothmann, S. and Coetzer, E.P., 2003. The big five personality dimensions and job performance. SA Journal of industrial psychology, 29(1), pp.68-74.

Mosley, R.W., 2007. Customer experience, organisational culture and the employer brand. Journal of brand management, 15(2), pp.123-134.

Schultz, H., 2012. Pour your heart into it: How Starbucks built a company one cup at a time. Hachette UK.

 Volle, P., 2021. Rhetorical history and strategic marketing: the example of Starbucks. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21st century FOX sexual harassment accusations

 

21^st century FOX sexual harassment accusations

We are saddened by the recent allegations surrounding sexual harassment with our employees. 21^st century FOX Company is committed to uphold a safe and inclusive workplace for all people. The 21^st century FOX stakeholders have severally committed to change the world by ensuring that the workplace is a better place to exhibit individuals’ talent and abilities as well as improving and sharpening of one’s capacity. I can attest the community mission is what inspires to have an inclusive and safe environment. And it is why we continuously strive to achieve more regardless of the challenges while angling for expansion and redefining possibilities in the coming days. The company is assessing these sexual harassment situations and accusations. We honestly want to understand what occurred and our next step will be to work with the human resource management and legal team to determine and refine the best cause of action. In additional, our team of experts is expected to conclude its investigation as soon as possible since we believe justice delayed is justice denied.

21st century FOX emphatically denounce these sexual harassment allegations and determine to address this problem once and for all. Therefore, we believe that the challenges to achieve this milestone may appear complex, but the philosophy is simple: prudently implementation of our vision and mission that define our deep-though roadmap to greatness. It is in this regard that 21^st century FOX what to open up to the whole world to stress it does not condone sexual harassment. Thus, the organization has adopted these particular initiatives:

Media coverage: we invite the media to come and have coverage of our workplace to ascertain indeed it is safe and secure. The three-day media coverage tour will unravel the investigation team proceedings as well day-to-day company's activities.

Seminar: The organization is planning to stage numerous yearly seminars to create awareness on the sexual harassment. The seminar to achieve a greater cause is expected to be open to the members of the surrounding community.  The end of the seminars should see the attendees being awarded with certificates and honors making them ambassadors of upholding a free and inclusive community free from sexual harassment.

 

FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT OF ERP SYSTEM

 

Introduction

ERP is a system that functions toward the creation of an integrated product that monitors and controls the majority of functions within an organization. Scott (2002) defined an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as “a suite of integrated corporate-wide software applications that drives manufacturing, financial, distribution, HR, and other business functions in a real-time environment”. Before introduction of ERP, companies’ mode of operations was incorporating different applications to automate various operations. The system is increasingly salient in the modern organization because of its ability to enable integration of the flow of material, finance and information and also provision of formidable ground for organizational strategies. Thus, Integration is the most important aspect of the ERP system.

The report's premise is to conduct the feasibility assessment of the three ERP systems: 'SAP on-premises system', Noria on-premises system' and 'Noria cloud (SaaS) system'. The selection is in alignment with the Diet centre case study to select the most suitable ERP system. The feasibility assessment is based on three assessments: technical feasibility, economic feasibility and organizational feasibility. The selected ERP system is SAP on-premise system.

 Problem statement

Diet Centre through its CEO, Wazzan, is convinced they need to consolidate its operations through the integration of the ERP system in their operation. Since, the Diet centre is based in Lebanon, a country that has faced an unstable political situation as well as poor economic conditions; they are uncertainties surrounding the implementation of such a large investment system. Therefore, the feasibility assessment of SAP on-premises system', Noria on-premises system' and 'Noria cloud (SaaS) system' should help in selecting an ERP system to provide substantive benefits. In a nutshell, the system should be reliable and cost-effective.

Technical feasibility

The technical aspect involves the extent to which the system can be designed, developed and installed by the experts successfully (Fincham, 2002). One of the major aspects of technical feasibility is whether the software host is in the cloud or on-premises.

Familiarity with application

Diet centre analysts are unfamiliar with these three applications.  These applications have never been integrated into the company, therefore is a greater risk of missing the opportunities prerequisite to solving the problem facing Diet Centre.  Therefore, these systems are riskier considering there is no extension of the existing systems in the company.

 Familiarity with technology

 Since these ERP systems are new within the Diet centre organization context there is a high chance of occurring problems and risks. The technology has never been used before, therefore, there is a need for more time for the analysts to learn and improve their skills in the utilization of the system. Furthermore, the risk of SAP on-premises system' and Noria on-premises system' is less compared to Noria cloud system. It is associated with the fact that cloud-system technology is new therefore; the chances of experiencing problems are high.

 Project size

Compared to both Noria on-premises system' and 'Noria cloud (SaaS) system', the 'SAP on-premises system', is a large project. It is because the project involves many heavy users. The system requires 50 workstations and 40 laptops as part of the initial hardware architecture. Furthermore, SAP on-premise implementation is expected to take up to 18 months. The duration will entail set-up, testing and training for seamless implementation. Therefore, since SAP on-premises, is a large project, it presents more risk considering they are complicated to manage and thus some of the system requirements may be overlooked.

In comparison between the on-premise and cloud system is that, on-premises system requires longer implementation time compared to cloud systems, thus they will tend to be more risky.

Compatibility

The case study indicates that all the ERP systems are compatible with the already existing systems. The existing ABC system was unable to integrate data from Diet Centre's four main departments. Therefore, the introduction of the new system is all compatible since they all can utilize the existing communication infrastructure. However, on-premises systems are highly customizability and offer greater control over data (Nakkeeran et al., 2021). In other words, the company’s internal IT staffs maintains the software as well handling its upgrades. In some of the cases, the comapny can outsource support of the comany to an outside IT service although the software is installed in their hardware (Arnesen, Spencer, 2019).  In the narrow sense, business can integrate its data from its departments perfectly.

Organizational feasibility

It entails the acceptability of the system by the users and its inclusion into the existing operations of the organization. Organizational feasibility is influenced by alignment with the business objective and the stakeholder analysis.

The incorporation of SAP on-premises in the operation of the Diet centre organization seems to be aligned with its business objective. With the company, the rapid growing operation is ideal for the company to integrate a large system into its operation to help the company avoid incurring high operation costs, excessive waste and unsatisfactory financial reporting. However, though the system seems the perfect fit for Diet Center it is too costly. On the other side, Noria cloud system and Noria on-premises are at a much lower cost. Furthermore, the systems are considered reliable and cost-effective in the Middle East Asia market with many users approving it. However, since Wazzan, CEO of Diet centre intention is to work with her close relative Jabri. Thus, the selection of the SAP on-premise is considered a business objective, since Jabri (SAP's sales manager) has recommended the migration to the SAP system.

Another key aspect of organizational feasibility is stakeholder analysis.  Arguably the introduction of the new system changes the dynamics of the system. Fundamentally, the roles of the stakeholder groups are bound to change depending on the type of the system. In this view, the selection of the on-premise system will have a slight change in the roles of the IT personnel.  For instance, the outsourcing of the IT services to maintain installed software will render some of the IT personnel jobless and therefore most likely to receive resistance. On the other hand, an on-premises system maintained by the company's personnel will have slight changes in the role of the experts.

Cloud system SaaS provide application and services on demand. Under this infrastructure, the IT infrastructure is established by a third party and made available to the customers (Scavo et al. 2012). Therefore, the role of the IT personnel is bound to change significantly.  With only manpower required to implement the system in the organization, the implementation of the system is bound to face enormous resistance.

 Economic feasibility

The aspect premise is on the identification of the costs and benefits associated with the selected ERP systems, assigning value to them and determining their financial viability. With the projected cash flow both inflows and outflows, SAP on-premises system', Noria on-premises system' and 'Noria cloud (SaaS) system' have a return on investment of 10%, 8.9% and 11% respectively. A higher return on investment means that the project benefits outweigh the project cost. With a higher return on investment, the SAP on-premises system appears to be the best system among the three ERP systems. On the break time, SAP on-premises system', Noria on-premises system' and 'Noria cloud (SaaS) system' is projected to be 2.6 years, 2.7 years and 2.5 years. Since the Noria cloud (SaaS) system’ is indicated to produce higher returns in the earliest, then the assumption is that the system is less risky compared to the rest.  Therefore, the SAp on-premise system though seems a large project is less risky compared to Noria on-premise system.

 Selection of cloud system

Based on the above feasibility analysis, it is clear that the Noria cloud system is the best suitable for Diet centre organization. Based on the technical feasibility, of SAP on-premises, though it is riskier since it takes a long, it will integrate all data from Diet Centre's four departments for centralized operations. According  to Rima et al., (2011)  cloud solutions spare users the expense of acquiring new hardware, implementation and maintenance. In other words scaling becomes cheaper. The selection is based on the fact that the Diet centre requires a full range of features in conjunction with highly flexible customization. Therefore, it is suitable for the organization since it has well-proven business processes.  under this review, the cloud system architecture is already implemented and downtime is fundamentally non-existence for cloud-system.

On the organizational feasibility, SAP on-premises are aligned with the objective and the requirement of the business.  It is a large system that will revolutionize the operation of the business to provide efficient handling of costs and waste. On contrast, the cloud system is not implemented by the comapny therefore some of the features may not be aligned with its objectives.

 On the economic feasibility, it is clearly the cloud system has a better economic feasibility over the on-premise system. It has the highest return value of 11% and the least on break value of 2.5 years.

Therefore, in choosing a new EPR system, the cloud system has made software more accessible  to companies and these systems have few drawbacks compared to on-premise, such as on-premise on supporting mobile (Link et al., 2015).

 

 

 Conclusion

Feasibility assessment is an important process in the selection of a suitable ERP system for the organization. Every organization depending on its attributes requires a different system. Therefore, the criteria employed not only indicate why the system is the best fit but avail of its shortcomings and probably suggestions on how to mitigate them. Diet centre to become reliable and cost-effective in its operations, it will have to implicate this system and concurrently still use the previous system since it will require more time.  Therefore, the incoporation of cloud system model provide solutions to current problems and also deal with market models.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Arnesen, S. (2013). Is a cloud ERP solution right for you?. Strategic Finance, 94(8), 45-51.

Fincham, R. (2002). Narratives of success and failure in systems development. British Journal of Management, 13(1), 1-14.

Link, B., & Back, A. (2015). Classifying systemic differences between software as a service-and on-premise-enterprise resource planning. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.

Nakkeeran, A., Niranga, M., & Wickramarachchi, R. (2021). A Model for On-Premises ERP System and Cloud ERP Integration. Accessed: Aug, 28.

Rimal, B. P., Jukan, A., Katsaros, D., & Goeleven, Y. (2011). Architectural requirements for cloud computing systems: an enterprise cloud approach. Journal of Grid Computing, 9(1), 3-26.

Scott, T. (2002). Aligning your data collection and ERP implementation decisions. IT Papers, available at: www. unova. com/whitepaper_align. asp.