CASE STUDY: AGILENT

Case study: Agilent

Case study: Agilent

Introduction

This case described how two companies actually handles and implements their ERP systems and what they went through for the implementation. The first company called Agilent Technologies had to spend $105 million in revenue and $70 million in profits to get their company to be stable. Problems originally occurred with the ERP components in Oracle's e-Business Suite 11e software. The problem made their system freeze for about one week until they were able to bring the system up. This incurred major losses for the company.

Discussion

This company learned a big lesson from this problem. They learned that it takes more than just adding software packages to migrate a system. People, processes, policies and company's culture are all factors that need to be considered when implementing a major system change. Russ Berrie and Co. took a $10.3 million loss when their installation of packaged applications failed. They are trying again to implement the system correctly this time. They will be doing it in phases which will be completed in the next 18 months.

Companies need to know exactly what kind of systems they have and how they are run and operated. This is of vital importance because management needs to be able to handle any obstacles that might come their way. Companies to be able to have management and technical support groups within their company that have knowledge in implementation of new software and systems that they want to have. Without this knowledge or experience the implementation of their new systems or software could be a drastic problem when implementation occurs. Companies should also have pilot teams that run the new programs or systems prior to implementing them to the entire company. This would be a benefit so that these pilot teams can communicate issues ...