Introduction
Thank you for choosing our SaaS product and trusting our technological innovation! In your last letter, you asked to explain how our product will cope with the challenges of preventing shadow IT projects throughout the organization. Because of the large size of your organization and the importance of unique IT content, we have specially modified some of the functions of our ERP, CRM, MRP, HRM, and SCM products.
Identify Changes
Today, many companies choose SaaS products due to their outstanding operational features and competitive prices compared to relational software when a user has to pay for license renewal. The SaaS products concept has a cost advantage over traditional software services, as it is a multitenant platform allowing simultaneous access of a large number of customers to the service, which makes it less expensive and reduces the cost (Loukis et al., 2019). The most common enterprise SaaS products include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (or Material Requirements Planning) (MRP), Human Resource Management (HRM), and Supply Chain Management (SCM) (Rodrigues et al., 2021). Our organization intends to make the following changes to these products in the next three years.
First, we intend to enhance the functionality of the ERP products by expanding the interoperability with the rest of the products. In particular, we intend to update our resource planning system, complementing it with the ability to diversify resources based on cost, efficiency, consumable quantity, frequency of purchases, and suppliers. We also intend to introduce cross-interaction of ERP, MRP, and SCM systems to automate processes.
For example, an ERP system for strategic planning will receive information from the MRP system, which deals with actual purchases, and will analyze this information. It will allow for more effective strategic planning in the future and identify discrepancies between the real and projected volumes and the cost of consumed resources.
Further, the CRM system will be connected to other systems so that the front office will more efficiently assess the time required to complete orders and the availability of human and other resources (Nicolet Plastics’ Quick Response Manufacturing strategy, n.d.).
This innovation will reduce the level of customer dissatisfaction and improve communication between departments. Besides, ERM and SCM systems will now receive analytical information from the MRP system to assess suppliers’ resource performance and select suppliers based on their services’ quality. This innovation will allow a more careful selection of suppliers and a routine assessment of their services’ quality. Finally, HRM and CRM systems will interact to assess employees’ effectiveness and determine the demand for specific job skills. It will enable effective training plans for particular skills to be drawn up. Based on this information, the HR department will be able to make changes to the job descriptions and required skills.
Product Offerings
New product changes will use existing software elements. Major innovation will feature new opportunities for interactions between systems. It is imperative, given that the complete lack of interaction between systems is the main problem of shadow IT projects. Data from certain system cells will be sent to the data warehouse of another system. This data will be classified according to their functions, for example, “improving the supply chain,” and according to the dates and departments. Further, the receiving system will obtain additional functions that will analyze the received data.
It is noteworthy that in most cases, it will be sufficient to automatically classify and automatically determine, for example, the effectiveness of suppliers following some characteristics. If a supplier falls into the “red zone,” an employee of the supply department and an employee of the strategic planning department will have to jointly work out solutions – for example, change the terms of cooperation or choose a new supplier.
In working with data of “key skills of employees,” the data will be classified according to the correspondence of existing skills to the required (employees of strategic planning departments will determine necessary skills). If an employee enters the yellow or red zone, the HR department employees will see which additional training is required. Therefore, these systems will be semi-automated, and their main goal will be to simplify the management of a large enterprise. The buyer will be able to customize the features, and we are also willing to develop some of the features individually to meet the organizations’ unique needs.
Capabilities
The capabilities of new product applications can be incorporated into the information system’s initial design upon request or customer approval. We do not offer compulsory inclusion of new features, as all businesses have unique needs that depend on the business’s size and nature. However, we offer standardized pricing according to the number of new features that can be developed for any enterprise type. Our goal is to improve systems that fully reflect all the details of business processes and make it easier for employees to complete their work tasks, and increase productivity.
References
Loukis, E., Janssen, M., & Mintchev, I. (2019). Determinants of software-as-a-service benefits and impact on firm performance. Decision Support Systems, 117, 38-47.
Nicolet Plastics’ Quick Response Manufacturing strategy. (n.d.). Web.
Rodrigues, J., Ruivo, P., & Oliveira, T. (2021). Mediation role of business value and strategy in firm performance of organizations using software-as-a-service enterprise applications. Information & Management, 58(1), 103289.