2012年9月11日星期二

Week 1 Introduction to Enterprise Architecture

Week 1 Introduction to Enterprise Architecture


I read “The trouble with enterprise software” and reviewed Prof. Murli’s presentation material this week. There is one thing in the reading material, which impressed me a lot“…It is estimated that for every 25% increase in complexity in the tasks to be automated, the complexity of the software solution itself rises by 100%..”. I am wondering how these companies with growing complexity of business based on software adapt to these difficulties. According to the “Fortune” on Sept. 6th this year, the majority of top 100 fastest growing companies last year are Internet companies and high-tech companies. Compared with other traditional sectors, Internet sector, I think, has the shortest product updated duration and much more complicate software application. Take Tencent, the largest Internet Company in China, as an example. This company has about 200 million users in China and the average of their product updated duration is no more than six months. The cost of operating such a company would be a big problem considering the challenges they faced.
I used to take an internship in a telecom company which has about 1000 employees. As an IT department intern, I was in charge of updating the ERP manual and getting colleagues’ feedback while using the ERP system. During my internship, I found that there are three kinds of main problems existing in ERP:
1.       Time delay.
For those who are responsible to update the information in ERP, time delay in each process could be a huge problem. For example, employees in purchasing department often complains to me that time delay waste them a lot of time and lower their efficiency.
2.       Unexpected result.
The accuracy of information is crucial to the company’s benefit. Any unexpected result occurred in the system could not be tolerated. However, these errors were sometimes found in the system.
3.       Confusing system’s direction
It is quite common to see that the user of ERP is not someone with highly educated background. Therefore, the process of ERP should be easy enough for them to understand.
It is true that purchasing an ERP system and deploying them in the whole company is a risky thing to do. But I still think the benefit of ERP is over weigh than its disadvantages. I decided to discuss about them in my next blog. 

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