at least 2 written pages in doc format along with excel spreadsheet Examine the secondary data you have on your firm from Assignment 2 and add more to the data . Look at the sample and review the Exc

RESEARCH: QANTAS AIRWAYS LIMITED ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (ERP) SYSTEMS

Research: Qantas Airways Limited Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software has increasingly been adopted and incorporated by many companies the world over. These systems enable a company to manage all its activities from a central point, at times remotely, with reduced time and augmented effectiveness. Modern technology that enables dealing with massive data has been advancing and issues such as business intelligence, data analytics and machine learning to enhance artificial intelligence have emerged; this technology can easily be incorporated into ERP’s systems. Business is able to adopt top this technologies, notwithstanding their deluxe cost, as the system allows cutting down on management and labor costs greatly.

The main concepts of this study are to review ERP’s incorporation into companies and its consequence to all departments of the business. Inasmuch as ERP’s have improved the day to day management and running of company activities; there have been negative issues resulting from this technology. Consequently, the study and research on ERP as a whole system and the consequence of this technology is deemed crucial. The case study company is The Qantas Airline Limited, an Australian airline, which is the biggest in the country by size of fleet, international flights and international destinations (The Guardian; 3rd May, 2020).

The main concepts that govern the use of ERP’s from analysis, design, implementation and maintenance/evaluation vary from company to company. Despite ERP’s being the central management of a company through a central computing system, each ERP is tailored to fit the particular operations of a given corporation. This is principally because differing companies deal with various data that contrasts form company to company. Additionally, any software, ERP’s inclusive; operate chiefly on raw data to provide information. Even then, some of the concepts are universally agreeable, and these include: -

1. Integration.

Upon system analysis and design, the developed software has to be integrated into a company’s system. Additionally, ERP’s are usually a collection of different applications designed to work together to achieve a common goal. It is essential to assure these applications work synchronously and harmoniously at any one time, as the failure of one may lead to failure of part of or all of the other applications. ERP should be in a position to collect data from the different departments, store it and analyze it so as to provide intuitive information.

In the case of Qantas Airlines, there would be need to ensure installation of the ERP modules in all the airline branches, and to ensure these modules work harmoniously with the central module. As well, it is crucial to ensure the different applications work synchronously and harmoniously. For instance, the accounting applications should work together with the human resource management to ensure payrolls are prepared in time. The plane maintenance docket should be working synchronously with the flight scheduling docket so as the right planes are available for flight scheduling.

1. Automation

The primary reason for development of ERP’s is to develop technology driven platforms that can computerize and hence automate all or a major chunk of the corporation’s activities. Computerization and automation is preferred as it reduces work load on humans, time of action, and iterative activities. Automation, additionally, cuts down on human labor as well as reducing human error in operation. This consequently reduces largely the cost of operation which subsequently increases profit margins. Automation of systems ensures efficient and timely data transfer and its storage capacity allows for easy activity tracking.

The Qantas Airlines can automate can use ERP’s to automates some of its activities such as flight scheduling; pilot scheduling; passenger management; luggage management; invoicing; pay rolling; creating of duty rosters; accounting and so much more. This will reduce company labor by a huge margin and hence reduce operating cost. Automation of these activities will also be centralized for all branches and will allow for efficiency and activity tracking.

1. Customer relationship management (CRM)

A CRM application is normally integrated into the ERP to enable for management of the customers, in this case, passengers. Qantas Airlines being the largest in the in Australia, deals with very many customers, passengers as well as other companies in managing their activities, such as hotels; cleaning agencies and security agencies. Using spreadsheets may allow for storage and analysis of all these persons; but as the number increases; information that could be gathered from the spreadsheets reduces.

CRM’s integrated into ERP’s allows for insight analysis and information gathering from these customer/passenger/agencies databases. ERP’s can be used to manage them and to create customer solutions to the company.

1. Reporting

Any business requires effective feedback from its customers, partners and employees for efficient running. It also requires a perfect flow of information between and within dockets, departments, personnel and branches. ERP’s allow for this by defining proper, traceable channels. Reporting and analysis of information is allowed both through textual platforms such as forms and tables as well as using mathematical options as graphs and other data visualizations options. This will allow Qantas to track their activities, growth, errors, inconsistencies, flight paths and other operations and use this information to their benefit. This branch of ERP’s is called business intelligence.

1. Human Resource Module (HRM)

This module of ERP allows for efficient control and management of the company’s human resources from hiring, performance tracking, appraising, leave arrangements, rosters, and job descriptions and so on. All of the company employees are managed from a central point through the ERP. Qantas can track activities, achievements and effectiveness of every single employee. This eases the process of job promotions as well.

The Human Resource Model also holds the pay roll system which manages all payments, allowances and benefits paid to the employees. This module can also be used to model training activities and mentorship programs of the employees.

These concepts will need to be incorporated to the ERP of the Qantas Airlines so as to ensure total effectiveness of the system. Qantas Airlines has many branches in Australia and hence a deployment model that best suits its structure should be selected. Additionally, the system should be in a position to be accessed by the necessary employees throughout all the branches, and the made reports sent back to the headquarters for proper business analysis that would help make better choices relevant to the airline company.

Any airline company will need to make communications with other airline companies for effective running. The ERP should therefore provide for effective communications channels. The following is a deployment model that will help achieve these factors, and interconnect all the necessary modules of the system.

DEPLOYMENT MODEL

Traditionally, deployment of ERP was essentially done using the On-premise model; which entailed that the whole software be hosted within premises of the company, mostly within its data center. However, with the advancement of technology and for security reasons, there has been need to shift hosting from within the physical confines of the company. With introduction of fiber optics and wireless data transfer, there is a possibility to access servers remotely and securely. This led to the introduction of cloud hosting of ERP’s model, where the software is hosted on the vendor’s servers, or on some other remote location, and accessed through web servers.

These two models can be combined and used together, particularly by multi-branched companies such as Qantas Airlines. The main software is hosted on the company headquarters or some other private location; and other branches can access this software through web servers installed on their computers. Additionally, workers can also access the system remotely, away from the company premises of any branches, if only they have the User Interfaces installed on their devices and they have the passwords and user ID’s. This model marriage results to the Hybrid Model.

This model is favorable as it allows for loose coupling of the different modules of the ERP’s: be it Reporting, CRM’s, Automation or Accounting and so forth. This model allows for easier integration and orchestration of the ERP, allows for Master Data Management and Support activities can easily be coordinated. Implementation of all concepts and modules within the Hybrid Deployment Model takes lesser time, and the maintenance cycles are shortened. As opposed to cloud model, Qantas Airlines will be independent from the vendors, and the workload managed by the ERP will be balanced.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS.

References

Deshpande, A. (2019). How Emerging Technologies Are Changing the Future of Work - ReadWrite. Retrieved from https://readwrite.com/2019/06/13/how-emerging-technologies-are-changing-the- future-of-work/

Shaughnessy, K. (2017). Benefits of ERP | A Look at ERP Advantages & Disadvantages. Retrieved from https://www.selecthub.com/enterprise-resource-planning/erp-advantages-and-disadvantages/

Hsu, Y. P., Itani, M., Gupta, A., Smith, R., Aagaard, R., Wu, A., ... & Tretikov, L. A. (2019). U.S. Patent No. 10,467,633. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Seethamraju, R. (2015). Adoption of Software as a Service & Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in small and medium-sized enterprises. Information systems frontiers, 17(3), 475-492.

Shen, Y. C., Chen, P. S., & Wang, C. H. (2016). A Study of Enterprise Resource Planning System Performance Measurement Using the Quantitative Balanced Scorecard Approach. Computers in Industry, 75, 127-139.

White, L. (2018). Qantas Still Calls Australia Home: The Spirit of Australia and the Flying Kangaroo. Tourist Studies, 18(3), 261-274.

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