How Ventura Defined A Global Roadmap To Greater Speed And Reliability?

IIBM EXAM ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP 91 9924764558
Enterprise Resource Planning
MM.100
Section A: Objective Type & Short Questions (30 marks)
Part one:
Multiple choice:
1. Which of the following describes an ERP system? (1)
a. ERP systems provide a foundation for collaboration between departments
b. ERP systems enable people in different business areas to communicate
c. ERP systems have been widely adopted in large organizations to store critical knowledge used to make the decisions that drive the organization’s performance.
2. The responsibilities of the office manager in a firm that produces electronics spares is: (1)
a. Everything in the office runs efficiently
b. Furniture and other equipment in the office is adequate
c. Processing all the incoming official mail and responding to some
d. All of the above
d. All of the above
3. Physiological Barriers of listening are:
(1)
a. Hearing impairment
b. Physical conditions
c. Prejudices
d. All of the above
4. What is the main function of Business Communication: (1)
a. Sincerity
b. Positive language
c. Persuasion
d. Ethical standard
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
END OF SECTION A
 This section consists of Caselets.
 Answer all the questions.
 Each Caselet carries 20marks.
 Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 150 to 200 words).
5. Which presentation tend to make you speak more quickly the unusual: (1)
a. Electronic
b. Oral
c. Both „a‟ and”b”
d. None of the above
6. Labov’s Storytelling Model based on: (1)
a. Communication through speech
b. Language learning
c. Group Discussions
d. None of the above
7. Diagonal Communication is basically the: (1)
a. Communication across boundaries
b. Communication between the CEO and the managers
c. Communication through body language
d. Communication within a department
8. Direct Eye contact of more than 10 seconds can create: (1)
a. Discomfort &Anxiety
b. Emotional relationship between listeners and speakers
c. Excitement
d. None of the above
9. How to make Oral Communication Effective? (1)
a. By Clarity
b. By Brevity
c. By Right words
d. All of the above
10. Encoding means: (1)
a. Transmission
b. Perception
c. Ideation
d. None of the above
Part Two:
1. Define ERP? (5)
2. What are ERP packages? (5)
3. What are the reasons for the explosive growth of the ERP market? (5)
4. What is Business Integration and how do the ERP systems achieve it? (5)
Section B: Caselets (40 marks)
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
Caselet1
With eight plants globally running from a single ERP instance on a server in Zeeland, Michigan, the IT team faced the challenges of scaling their systems to support the global growth fueling their company’s expansion. Running IQMS’ manufacturing ERP system delivered via Hosted Managed Services (HMS) provides Ventura Manufacturing the most economical system architecture for greater scalability and efficiency as well as to attain disaster recovery goals.
Ventura is an award-winning semi-automated assembly and production company that serves the automotive, office furniture, education seating, and molding and assembly of optical silicone industries globally. Headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, the company has multiple plants in Zeeland in addition to plants in Budaörs, Hungary, Saltillo, Mexico and Shanghai, China.
As demand for Ventura’s services grew and the company began attracting customers worldwide, it was apparent the dependency on a single ERP system on-premise in Zeeland, Michigan was becoming an impediment to faster growth. “Relying on a single system to manage our global plants was proving to be a huge scale challenge,” said Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead at Ventura Manufacturing.
Ventura’s customer base is globally-based and to serve them as responsively and effectively as possible, Ventura made the decision to open new production plants in Hungary and Shanghai, China.
With eight plants globally running from a single ERP instance on a server in Zeeland, Michigan, the IT team faced the challenges of scaling their systems to support the global growth fueling their company’s expansion. The IT Teams at Ventura prides itself on offering live support to any plant, anywhere in the world that needs help, anytime. “When we just had the plants in Mexico and Hungary, our existing staff could scale to support the calls coming from plants for help with their IT systems and take care of ERP-related tasks,” Joel said. When the Shanghai, China facility went online, Ventura was reaching the limits of scale and speed with their IT teams and the system running on-premise in Zeeland.
As demands increased on the system, so did concerns over Availability and Disaster Recovery Objectives the IT Team had defined. Two metrics that are of specific interest to Ventura’s IT team are the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). IT defined the RTO goal as 8 hours and the RPO as 15 minutes, achievable on a 24/7 basis. To accomplish these goals, Ventura would need to create an entirely new system platform that could scale more efficiently with their growing business. The new platform would also need to increase the speed of system updates, which had been a problematic area in the past for the single system to complete.
Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead, says the challenges of scalability and disaster recovery are what drove the urgency for Ventura to decide that Hosted Managed Services (HMS) from IQMS was the best possible solution. “Plant system updates including MRP were taking at least 2 hours
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
per plant, which translated into our IT teams having 24/7 shifts in our Zeeland-based IT offices,” Joel said. “Clearly we had to redefine our system architecture for greater scalability and speed.”
Ventura chose IQMS’ Enterprise IQ delivered via Hosted Managed Services (HMS) because it was the most economical and fastest option for solving the system performance challenges and attaining the disaster recovery goals the company has. Under the IQMS HMS purchase option, software licenses are owned in perpetuity by Ventura and hardware and platform software is provided by the IQMS data center. IQMS is managing the Ventura systems today in a secure data center environment. Ventura’s IT team can gain access to key system metrics and key performance indicators anytime via any browser-enabled laptop, tablet or smart phone.
Questions
1. How Ventura Defined A Global Roadmap To Greater Speed And Reliability? ( 20)
Caselet 2
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business management software—usually a suite of integrated applications—that a company can use to store and manage data from every stage of business, including:
•Product planning, cost and development
•Manufacturing
•Marketing and sales
•Inventory management
•Shipping and payment
Functions of ERP
• ERP provides an integrated real-time view of core business processes, using common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources—
 cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll.
• The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that entered the data.
• ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions,
ERP Implementation
Success
Company Background
 Cadbury is a British multinational confectionery company owned by Mondelēz International.
 It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Wrigley's.
 Founder: John Cadbury
 Founded in: 1824, B Currently, Cadbury India operates in four categories viz. Chocolate Confectionery, Milk Food Drinks, Candy and Gum category. In the Chocolate
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
Confectionery business, Cadbury has maintained its undisputed leadership over the years.
ERP Implementation
Cadbury turns out, in recent years, Kraft implemented SAP ERP 6.0 (System Analysis and Program Development) in what SAP called one of its largest global ERP implementations. Kraft credited ERP with reducing operational costs. 11,000 employees were sending data to the company's SAP solution and it was linked to 1,750 applications by 2008. That same year, Kraft aslo added SAP's master data management solution, Net Weaver, with an eye toward integrating legacy systems.
• Cadbury was left with a glut of chocolate products at the start of the year, after the installation of a new SAP-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system led to an excess of chocolate bars building up at the end of 2005.
• The new U.K. computer system is part of a five-year IT transformation project, called "Probe", aimed at integrating the Cadbury Schweppes' supply chain, purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing systems on a global, SAP-based
ERP platform
• Cadbury Schweppes is aiming for an ultimate savings from the Probe project, but its implementation has been far from smooth. The project was beset by problems and delays when it was first introduced in Australia in 2002.
Benefits of ERP
• Cadbury was on a fast paced growth and could not continue with the existing systems and the pace was too slow due to added inefficiencies. ERP added efficiency and guided the led all the issues fast paced growth.
• The implementation of ERP brought in a new way of warehouse management system and brought in structure to branch offices and the depots.
• While implementing the ERP systems, the company has built it upon the past strengths of the company thereby not losing out on its competitive
• The initial implementation took time and then the successive implementations took lesser time and cost and there is a huge advantage in saving cost while in the implementation phase itself.
• The reaction from competition does not matter in this because this is not a change that was advertised to the market. This is an internal process restructuring and was a welcome change within the company which badly needed the change.
• The company also has built in a robust regular feedback system to monitor the changes and check if they go according to the initial plan. The entire implementation is cross functional and hence it is important that there is a high increase in the efficiency. The ERP vendor was also selected from among the best in class vendors which helped the process occur in a streamlined fashion and avoided any possible chances of hiccups during the initial
implementation phase.
The system has also been deployed up to the vendors. They have a portal called vendor connect
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
 This section consists of Applied Theory Questions.
 Answer all the questions.
 Each question carries 15marks.
 Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 200 to 250 words).
END OF SECTION C
END OF SECTION B
where they can see their inventory movement and make plans accordingly. Hence the restructuring happens not only internally but also across to the supplier which will add on to the benefits that are accrued.
It was considered at low cost and high result implementation which by itself highlights the success and the benefits.
Questions
1. Why did the Big Bang approach fail for The Hershey Company ? (20)
Section C: Applied Theory (30 marks)
1. What is the difference between ERP and CRM software? (15)
2. What are some of the risks associated with ERP software? (15)
S-2-010619

IIBM MBA CASE STUDY ANSWER AND EXAM ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP 91 9924764558

IIBM MBA CASE STUDY ANSWER AND EXAM ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP 91 9924764558

CASE STUDY 1

Ms. Priyanka is a store manager of one of the fourteen Hàppy Home Furniture outlets that are

located at all the major cities in the country. Her staff consists of twelve salespersons and

support personnel. Each salesperson. is paid commission based on sales. All the salespersons

are expected to do other tasks, such as assisting the merchandise manager, arranging the

displays, and handling customer complaints. These tasks, and a few others, are to be shared

equally among the sales persons.

The store's sales target is established at the headquarters of the furniture chain. This target is

divided by the number of salespersons and each is expected to meet his or her personal target

Mr. Ranjan, is the top salesperson at the outlet. When he misses his sales goal, which seldom

happens, the store's target is usually not met. Ranjan, however, often does not help in doing the

common tasks, much to the frustration of the other eleven salespeople, who feel that if they do

not handle the common tasks, they will be fired.

Recently, Ms. Priyanka noticed that one of her salespeople, Mr. Manish„ made careless errors,

neglected clients, and did not do his share of the common tasks. When confronted by the store

manager, he complained about Mr. Ranjan., who, in his opinion, got away with doing almost

nothing. After this discussion, Ms. Priyanka began to observe the salespersons more closely

and noticed that most of them neglected their work and were not cooperative.

The store manager felt that something had to be done. A talk with Mr. Ranjan had little effect.

Yet, the store needed Ranjan because of his excellent sales record. On the other hand, the

morale of the other salespersons had begun to deteriorate.

Questions:

1. What Should Ms. Priyanka do?

ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP IN 9924764558

CASE STUDY 2

1. Ketan Parekh had worked his way up through the technical arm of ANC Company to

become chief Engineer and the General Manager of the Avionics Division. He was an important

inventor and innovator, in basic frequency-modulated continuous wave (FM-CW) Doppler

radar technology. This Fm-cw technology gave Avionics a world leadership position in Doppler

radar equipment design and production, All Avionics equipment design were state of the art at

the time of their design, a result of the importance research and development engineering for

the department's future.

As the division grew and Avionics's success with Doppler systems brought large increases in

sales, Mr. Ketan's preoccupations became considerably more managerially than technical. He

began to reassess some of his own thinking about organizations. The organization appeared

too weak, both structurally and managerially, to cope with the increasing complexity of his division's activities. Mr. Ketan was finding it impossible to cope with the number of major

decisions that had to be made. Six major programs and several minor ones were in different

stages of design and/or production. All had different customers, sometimes in different

countries. Every program's product although they were all Doppler radar systems, was

significantly different from every other one, particularly in its technology. Nevertheless the

programs had to share manufacturing facilities, major items of capital equipment, and

specialized functions. Mr. Ketan felt he had to find some way to force the whole decision

process down to some level below his own.

Question: 

1. What is the principal problem with ANC's existing organizational Structure?

CASE STUDY 3

Mr. Sachin, the Sales manager of the Blue Ridge Furniture Company, had just completed a two-

week trip auditing customer accounts and prospective accounts in the southern states. His

primary intention was to do follow-up work on prospective accounts contacted by sales staff

members during the past six months. Prospective clients were usually furniture dealers or

large department stores with furniture departments.

To his amazement, Mr. Sachin discovered that almost all the so-called prospective accounts

were fictitious. The people had obviously turned in falsely documented field reports and

expense statements. Company salespeople had actually called upon 3 of 22 reported furniture

stores or department stores. Thus. Mr. Sachin summarized that salespeople had falsely claimed

approximately 85 percent of the goodwill contacts. Further study showed that all salespeople

had followed this general practice and that not one had a clean record.

M r. Sachin decided that immediate action was mandatory although the salespeople were

experienced senior individuals. Angry as he was, he would have preferred, firing them. But

he was responsible for sales and realized that replacing the staff would seriously cripple the

sales program for the coming year.

Questions

1. As Mr. Sachin, what would you do now to resolve the problem of the false 

reports? (10)

CASE STUDY 4

Sanjay Nagpal is a new recruit from a reputed management institute. He is recruited as a

sales trainee in a sales office of a large computer hardware firm located in Chennai.

Raghvan is the zonal sales manager responsible for overseeing the work of sales officer, field

executives and trainee salesmen numbering over 50 of three areas namely Chennai,

Bangalore, and Trivandrum.

The sales growth of the products in his area was highly satisfactory owing to the

developmental initiatives taken by respective State Governments in spreading computer

education.

Raghvan had collected several sales reports, catalogues and pamphlets detailing the types of

office equipment sold by the company for Sanjay’s reference.

After short chat with Sanjay, Raghvan assisted him to his assigned desk and provided

him with the material collected. Thereafter Raghvan excused himself and did not return.

Meanwhile, Sanjay scanned through the material given to him till 5:00pmbefore leaving

office.

Questions

1. What do you think about Raghavan’s training program? (10)

CASE STUDY 5

Preeti was promoted three months ago from reservations supervisor to front-desk manager for

Regency Hotel, an independent, 330-room hostelry. She enjoys her new management

responsibilities and is pleased that the occupancy rate averaged 94 percent last month, way

above the industry average. But at times she feels stressed by the confusion of managing all

front-end operations of the hotel, from reservations and cashiering to the bell desk and

concierge. She feels most at home handling the reservation function, a task she always enjoyed

as a trainee because she likes to help people. About once a week the staff in the reservation

function overbooks rooms, usually because of incomplete scans of conference sales files.

Customers with reservations w,0110 arrive late are upset when they have to be referred 1,

nearby hotels. Whenever overbooking occurs, Ms. eti takes over direct control of the

reservations operation herself, often personally handling reservations for two or three days

until order seems to return.

But sometimes while Ms. Preeti is off focusing on the reservations task, other problems arise.

On five days last month, clerks at the reception desk checked in every "walk-in" who appeared

without reservations. They assumed there would be ample no-shows among those holding

reservations. On one occasion, Regency ended up oversold by 24 rooms. Mr. Alex, the hotel

general manager, is concerned about Ms. Preeti's development into her new management

position. He knows Ms. Preeti is proud of the high occupancy levels (which mean greater

profits) and doesn't want to destroy that pride. However, he sees her as more interested in individual staff tasks (such as making reservations) than in the complexities of managing,

training, and motivating her staff. He has talked with Ms. Preeti about balancing her activities

as a manager. Alex emphasized that she needs to make sure her staff knows the systems and

guidelines and be firm with employees who continue to check in guests when the hotel

obviously will be overbooked. He plans to meet with her in a three-month performance review

to see if he can shift her motivational expectations about the job.

Question: 

1. Do Ms. Preeti's problems seem to be the result of her lack of motivational immaturity or of her lack of motivational attention to her people? 

CASE STUDY 6

Casino is a large electrical construction company having a turnover of Rs.100 crores per

annum. Since a few years the company has not been doing well in terms of profits. In order to

find out the reason, a group of independent auditors were deployed to examine the operations

of the company. The item they felt that needed closer attention was the budget control of new

construction work. The audit showed that most electrical designs for new construction were

carried out at the headquarters of the company by a project manager. In preparing a budget for

a new project, he checked the expenses for similar jobs in the past, then simply multiplied them

by various factors. The auditors found that during the past two years, most budgets were

greatly overestimated. Incidentally, it was about two years ago that the project manager was

given the primary responsibility for budgeting. In this role, he would submit his budget to the

Expenditure Control Committee, consisting of higher-level managers who had only a limited

interest in budgeting. It was to this committee that the project manager submitted requests for

additional money whenever needed. Most of the requests were approved.

The chief auditor felt that the project team tended to "expand" the time needed to complete

the task whenever the members thought the budget made it possible. In other words, they

"adjusted" their productivity to match the money allocated to the project.

The auditors noted that other contractors could do similar jobs for 20% less money.

They concluded that a new control procedure was needed

Questions

1. What do you think of the budgeting process?

CASE STUDY 7

Dabur is among the top five FMCG companies in India and is positioned successfully on the

specialist herbal platform. Dabur has proven its expertise in the fields of health care, personal care,

home care and foods. The company was founded by Dr. S. K. Burman in 1884 as small pharmacy in

Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. And is now led by his great grandson Vivek C. Burman, who is the

Chairman of Dabur India Limited and the senior most representative of the Burman family in the

company. The company headquarter is in Ghaziabad, India, near the Indian capital New Delhi,

where it is registered. The company has over 12 manufacturing units in India and abroad. The

international facilities are located in Nepal, Dubai, Bangladesh, Egypt and Nigeria. S.K. Burman, the

founder of Dabur, was trained as a physician. His mission was to provide effective and affordable

cure for ordinary people in far-flung villages. Soon, he started preparing natural remedies based on

Ayurveda for diseases such as Cholera, Plague and Malaria. Due to his cheap and effective remedies,

he became to be known as ‘Daktar’ (Indian izedversion of ‘doctor’). And that is how his venture

Dabur got its name—derived from Daktar Burman. The company faces stiff competition from many

multinational and domestic companies. In the Branded and Packaged Food and Beverages segment

major companies that are active include Hindustan Lever, Nestle, Cadbury and Dabur. In case of

Ayurvedic medicines and products, the major competitors are Baidyanath, Vicco, Jhandu, Himani

and other pharmaceutical companies.

Vision statement of Dabur says that the company is “dedicated to the health and wellbeing of every

household”. The objective is to “significantly accelerate profitable growth by providing comfort to

others”. For achieving this objective Dabur aims to:

• Focus on growing core brands across categories, reaching out to new geographies, within

and outside India, and improve operational efficiencies by leveraging technology.

• Be the preferred company to meet the health and personal grooming needs of target

consumers with safe, efficacious, natural solutions by synthesizing deep knowledge of

Ayurveda and herbs with modern science.

• Be a professionally managed employer of choice, attracting, developing and retaining

quality personnel.

• Be responsible citizen with a commitment to environmental protection.
• Provide superior returns, relative to our peer group, to our shareholders.

Chairman of the company

Vivek C. Burman joined Dabur in 1954 after completing his graduation in Business Administration

from the USA. In 1986 he was appointed as the Managing Director of Dabur and in 1998 he took

over as Chairman of the Company.

Under Vivek Burman’s leadership, Dabur has grown and evolved as a multi-crore business house

with a diverse product portfolio and a marketing network that traverses the whole of India and

more than 50 countries across the world. As a strong and positive leader, Vivek C. Burman had

motivated employees of Dabur to “do better than their best”—a credo that gives Dabur its status as

India’s most trusted nature-based products company.

Leading brands

More than 300 diverse products in the FMCG, Healthcare and Ayurveda segments are in the product

line of Dabur. List of products of the company include very successful brands like Vatika, Anmol,

Hajmola, Dabur Amla Chyawanprash, Dabur Honey and Lal Dant Manjan with turnover of Rs.100

crores each.

Strategic positioning of Dabur Honey as food product, lead to market leadership with over 40%

market share in branded honey market; Dabur Chyawanprash is the largest selling Ayurvedic

medicine with over 65% market share. Dabur is a leader in herbal digestives with 90% market

share. Hajmola tablets are in command with 75% market share of digestive tablets category. Dabur

Lal Tail tops baby massage oil market with 35% of total share.

CHD (Consumer Health Division), dealing with classical Ayurvedic medicines, has more than 250

products sold through prescription as well as over the counter. Proprietary Ayurvedic medicines

developed by Dabur include Nature Care Isabgol, Madhuvaani and Trifgol.

However, some of the subsidiary units of Dabur have proved to be low margin business; like Dabur

Finance Limited. The international units are also operating on low profit margin. The company also

produces several “me – too” products. At the same time the company is very popular in the rural

segment.

Questions

1. What is the objective of Dabur? Is it profit maximisation or growth maximisation? Discuss.

CASE STUDY 8

The Regina Company„ one of the largest inakets of vacuum cleaners recent') had scv cfc ptollkins

with the quality of its products. The market responsc to this 1ak of quality caused financial

problems for Ow company. in late 1995. Regina began having return rates as high as 30 to 50

percent on some of its Housekeeper and Housekeeper Plus models. These models were sold

primarily through discount stores. Further, Regina's Spectrum vacuum cleaner, an upgraded

version sold in specialty stores, was introduced in 1995 with many quality problems. ef The specific

problems identified for the Housekeeper and Housekeeper Plus models were associated with faulty

belts and weak suction. In the Spectrum model, the agitator was melting; and making a loud noise,

the foot pedals were breaking, and the steel-encased motor (which had been advertised as the power source for the vacuum cleaner) had been replaced with a less desirable. less reliable motor.

As a result of these problems, Target stores discontinued Regina's Housekeeper Plus model after

reporting that "at least half of those sold were returned." At Starmart, which accounts for about a

quarter of the Housekeeper sales, I. out of every 5 machines sold was returned. To help service

customer complaints, Regina set up an 800 telephone number for customers to contact the firm.

directly. The sales returns caused Regina's shareholders to question the 1995 fiscal earnings report.

Furthermore, both inventories and accounts receivable doubled during the 1995 fiscal year. At the

end of that period, Regina's chairman and 40 percent stockholders

Resigned. The chairman’s resignation was closely followed by a company announcement stating

that the financial results reported for the 1995 fiscal year were materially incorrect and had been

withdrawn. This announcement brought a suit from shareholders who had bought Reoina stock on

the basis of the 1995 camings report. It also prompted an audit of the 1995 results and a request to

another accounting organization to work on Regina's business and accounting controls. A few

months later, Regina 'agreed to be acquired by a unit of Magnum, a vacuum cleaner and Water-

purification Company. Under Magnum, Regina shut down production while engineers worked to

solve the problems inherent in the Housekeeper and Housekeeper Plus vacuums, particularly the

suction difficulties. In September 1998, Magnum and Regina decided to separate the two companies

again. Since then, Regina has been regaining market share with its Housekeeper models. The

'vacuums are popular because they carry on-board tools.

Questions:

1. What type of controls would you have established to preclude the major returns experienced by Regina?

Enterprise Resource Planning IIBM EXAM ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP 91 9924764558

Enterprise Resource Planning IIBM EXAM ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP 91 9924764558

Enterprise Resource Planning

Part one:
Multiple choice:
1. Which of the following describes an ERP system? (1)
a. ERP systems provide a foundation for collaboration between departments
b. ERP systems enable people in different business areas to communicate
c. ERP systems have been widely adopted in large organizations to store critical knowledge used to make the decisions that drive the organization’s performance.
2. The responsibilities of the office manager in a firm that produces electronics spares is: (1)
a. Everything in the office runs efficiently
b. Furniture and other equipment in the office is adequate
c. Processing all the incoming official mail and responding to some
d. All of the above
d. All of the above
3. Physiological Barriers of listening are:
(1)
a. Hearing impairment
b. Physical conditions
c. Prejudices
d. All of the above
4. What is the main function of Business Communication: (1)
a. Sincerity
b. Positive language
c. Persuasion
d. Ethical standard
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
END OF SECTION A
 This section consists of Caselets.
 Answer all the questions.
 Each Caselet carries 20marks.
 Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 150 to 200 words).
5. Which presentation tend to make
you speak more quickly the
unusual: (1)
a. Electronic
b. Oral
c. Both „a‟ and”b”
d. None of the above
6. Labov’s Storytelling Model based
on: (1)
a. Communication through
speech
b. Language learning
c. Group Discussions
d. None of the above
7. Diagonal Communication is
basically the: (1)
a. Communication across
boundaries
b. Communication between the
CEO and the managers
c. Communication through
body language
d. Communication within a
department
8. Direct Eye contact of more than 10
seconds can create: (1)
a. Discomfort &Anxiety
b. Emotional relationship
between listeners and
speakers
c. Excitement
d. None of the above
9. How to make Oral Communication
Effective? (1)
a. By Clarity
b. By Brevity
c. By Right words
d. All of the above
10. Encoding means: (1)
a. Transmission
b. Perception
c. Ideation
d. None of the above
Part Two:
1. Define ERP? (5)
2. What are ERP packages? (5)
3. What are the reasons for the explosive growth of the ERP market? (5)
4. What is Business Integration and how do the ERP systems achieve it? (5)
Section B: Caselets (40 marks)
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
Caselet1
With eight plants globally running from a single ERP instance on a server in Zeeland, Michigan,
the IT team faced the challenges of scaling their systems to support the global growth fueling
their company’s expansion. Running IQMS’ manufacturing ERP system delivered via Hosted
Managed Services (HMS) provides Ventura Manufacturing the most economical system
architecture for greater scalability and efficiency as well as to attain disaster recovery goals.
Ventura is an award-winning semi-automated assembly and production company that serves
the automotive, office furniture, education seating, and molding and assembly of optical silicone
industries globally. Headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, the company has multiple plants in
Zeeland in addition to plants in Budaörs, Hungary, Saltillo, Mexico and Shanghai, China.
As demand for Ventura’s services grew and the company began attracting customers
worldwide, it was apparent the dependency on a single ERP system on-premise in Zeeland,
Michigan was becoming an impediment to faster growth. “Relying on a single system to manage
our global plants was proving to be a huge scale challenge,” said Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead at
Ventura Manufacturing.
Ventura’s customer base is globally-based and to serve them as responsively and effectively as
possible, Ventura made the decision to open new production plants in Hungary and Shanghai,
China.
With eight plants globally running from a single ERP instance on a server in Zeeland, Michigan,
the IT team faced the challenges of scaling their systems to support the global growth fueling
their company’s expansion. The IT Teams at Ventura prides itself on offering live support to any
plant, anywhere in the world that needs help, anytime. “When we just had the plants in Mexico
and Hungary, our existing staff could scale to support the calls coming from plants for help with
their IT systems and take care of ERP-related tasks,” Joel said. When the Shanghai, China
facility went online, Ventura was reaching the limits of scale and speed with their IT teams and
the system running on-premise in Zeeland.
As demands increased on the system, so did concerns over Availability and Disaster Recovery
Objectives the IT Team had defined. Two metrics that are of specific interest to Ventura’s IT
team are the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). IT defined
the RTO goal as 8 hours and the RPO as 15 minutes, achievable on a 24/7 basis. To accomplish
these goals, Ventura would need to create an entirely new system platform that could scale
more efficiently with their growing business. The new platform would also need to increase the
speed of system updates, which had been a problematic area in the past for the single system to
complete.
Joel Boyles, IT Team Lead, says the challenges of scalability and disaster recovery are what
drove the urgency for Ventura to decide that Hosted Managed Services (HMS) from IQMS was
the best possible solution. “Plant system updates including MRP were taking at least 2 hours
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
per plant, which translated into our IT teams having 24/7 shifts in our Zeeland-based IT
offices,” Joel said. “Clearly we had to redefine our system architecture for greater scalability and
speed.”
Ventura chose IQMS’ Enterprise IQ delivered via Hosted Managed Services (HMS) because it
was the most economical and fastest option for solving the system performance challenges and
attaining the disaster recovery goals the company has. Under the IQMS HMS purchase option,
software licenses are owned in perpetuity by Ventura and hardware and platform software is
provided by the IQMS data center. IQMS is managing the Ventura systems today in a secure data
center environment. Ventura’s IT team can gain access to key system metrics and key
performance indicators anytime via any browser-enabled laptop, tablet or smart phone.
Questions
1. How Ventura Defined A Global Roadmap To Greater Speed And Reliability? ( 20)
Caselet 2
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is business management software—usually a suite of
integrated applications—that a company can use to store and manage data from every stage of
business, including:
•Product planning, cost and development
•Manufacturing
•Marketing and sales
•Inventory management
•Shipping and payment
Functions of ERP
• ERP provides an integrated real-time view of core business processes, using common
databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business
resources—
 cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments:
orders, purchase orders, and payroll.
• The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments
(manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that entered the data.
• ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions,
ERP Implementation
Success
Company Background
 Cadbury is a British multinational confectionery company owned by Mondelēz
International.
 It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Wrigley's.
 Founder: John Cadbury
 Founded in: 1824, B Currently, Cadbury India operates in four categories viz. Chocolate
Confectionery, Milk Food Drinks, Candy and Gum category. In the Chocolate
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
Confectionery business, Cadbury has maintained its undisputed leadership over the
years.
ERP Implementation
Cadbury turns out, in recent years, Kraft implemented SAP ERP 6.0 (System Analysis and
Program Development) in what SAP called one of its largest global ERP implementations. Kraft
credited ERP with reducing operational costs. 11,000 employees were sending data to the
company's SAP solution and it was linked to 1,750 applications by 2008. That same year, Kraft
aslo added SAP's master data management solution, Net Weaver, with an eye toward
integrating legacy systems.
• Cadbury was left with a glut of chocolate products at the start of the year, after the
installation of a new SAP-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system led to an
excess of chocolate bars building up at the end of 2005.
• The new U.K. computer system is part of a five-year IT transformation project, called
"Probe", aimed at integrating the Cadbury Schweppes' supply chain, purchasing,
manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing systems on a global, SAP-based
ERP platform
• Cadbury Schweppes is aiming for an ultimate savings from the Probe project, but its
implementation has been far from smooth. The project was beset by problems and
delays when it was first introduced in Australia in 2002.
Benefits of ERP
• Cadbury was on a fast paced growth and could not continue with the existing systems
and the pace was too slow due to added inefficiencies. ERP added efficiency and guided
the led all the issues fast paced growth.
• The implementation of ERP brought in a new way of warehouse management system
and brought in structure to branch offices and the depots.
• While implementing the ERP systems, the company has built it upon the past strengths
of the company thereby not losing out on its competitive
• The initial implementation took time and then the successive implementations took
lesser time and cost and there is a huge advantage in saving cost while in the
implementation phase itself.
• The reaction from competition does not matter in this because this is not a change that
was advertised to the market. This is an internal process restructuring and was a
welcome change within the company which badly needed the change.
• The company also has built in a robust regular feedback system to monitor the changes
and check if they go according to the initial plan. The entire implementation is cross
functional and hence it is important that there is a high increase in the efficiency. The
ERP vendor was also selected from among the best in class vendors which helped the
process occur in a streamlined fashion and avoided any possible chances of hiccups
during the initial
implementation phase.
The system has also been deployed up to the vendors. They have a portal called vendor connect
IIBM Institute of Business Management
Examination Paper of Enterprise Resource Planning
 This section consists of Applied Theory Questions.
 Answer all the questions.
 Each question carries 15marks.
 Detailed information should form the part of your answer (Word limit 200 to 250 words).
END OF SECTION C
END OF SECTION B
where they can see their inventory movement and make plans accordingly. Hence the restructuring happens not only internally but also across to the supplier which will add on to the benefits that are accrued.
It was considered at low cost and high result implementation which by itself highlights the success and the benefits.
Questions
1. Why did the Big Bang approach fail for The Hershey Company ? (20)
Section C: Applied Theory (30 marks)
1. What is the difference between ERP and CRM software? (15)
2. What are some of the risks associated with ERP software? (15)
S-2-010619