1. Article review: Davenport Thomas (1998)
Article review: Davenport Thomas (1998). Putting The Enterprise into the Enterprise System. Harward Business Review.
Henri Teittinen

2. Main points and messages?
What we can learn from this article?
How ERP may support organizations strategy?
Strategy?
Role of IS, AIS, ERP in strategy or implementing the strategy?

3. Autodesk: delivery time from 2 weeks to 24 hours.
IBM: repricing products from 5 days to 5 minutes, shipping a replacement parts from 22 days to 3 days, creditchecking from 20 minutes to 3 seconds.
Fujitsu: delivery process from 18 days to 1,5 day, and closing financial books from 8 days to 4 days.
What is important?
What is strategically important?

4. DowChemical: Want to cut costs by streamlining global financial and administrative processes.
Introducing a global lean-manufacturing model.
Minimize excess capacity.
Reducing component and finished-goods inventory.
Owen Corning: Coordinating order-management, financial reporting, supply-chain processes, across the world.
Federalist model: localizations, business-unit and country autonomy, does the term ”customer” means same thing for all business units.

5. Some degree of ERP customization is possible.
Modular systems, choose the modules you need.
System complexity makes major modifications impossible.
Configuring ERP is matter of making compromises, balancing the way you want to work with the system lets you to work.
”SAP isn’t a software package, it’s a way doing business”
Is this a pretty dangerous? To decide the correct business model by choosing the ERP system?

6. Air Product and Chemicals:
Costs of EPR leads to raising prices, and lost of sales to competitors.
The company existing system meet all the requirements.
What is our strategy and business model in the future? How our information systems support our strategy in the future?

7. Organizational changes
Cultural changes
Centralized vs. decentralized organizations
Lever for exerting more management control.
We want to make our culture less autonomous.
Or: Breaking down hierachical structures, by implementing ERP.
Everyone has access to the data and operating information.
Does this real-time information sharing increase creativeness and innovativeness?

8. Technical challenges vc. Business problems
Full integration vs. Business-unit autonomy
Generic processes vs. customized processes
Great benefit potentials vs. great risks
Direct costs vs. indirects costs
Business model (how to operate) vs. software (ERP) logic and models
Generic solutions and ”Best Practices” vs. customized solutions.