Faculty
Professor Petra Schubert, Femi Adisa, PhD Fellow, Philip Holst, PhD Fellow

Course Coordinator
Petra Schubert

The course will be taught in English. General classes on accounting, marketing, production planning must have been attended on the bachelor level.

The purpose of this course is to give the students a comprehensive overview of the management of enterprise resource planning (ERP) exemplified by a specific ERP system. In modern enterprises, there is almost no department which can work without an ERP system. ERP systems support business processes and guarantee distributed access to relevant business information. Most university graduates in information systems or business administration will be concerned with the use or management of an ERP system in the course of their career.

The course will enable participants to identify the potential of an ERP system for a given company and prepare them for future decisions about the use, evaluation, and implementation of business software. The contents are based on basic knowledge in business administration, especially the internal value generation and management of a company. We will look at business areas such as sales, marketing, procurement, manufacturing, and accounting and discuss how business software can support and optimize the inherent business processes. The course content is focused on business aspects. Technical aspects such as databases, interfaces and integration are discussed only from a business view.

The course consists of the following modules:

Module 1: Foundations of ERP systems

Module 2: Evaluation und implementation of ERP systems

Module 3: Sales

Module 4: Procurement

Module 5: Integration of business software systems

Module 6: Collaborative Business

Teaching method:

A part of the material will be presented in the form of case studies. Students will be put in the role of future IT managers and will discuss problems and possible solutions in class. This requires the preparatory reading of the case study for some classes. At the end of the discussion the real-world solution of the company will be presented by the professor. This way, the students will learn to study facts, identify problems, analyse the problem and to derive their own conclusions – an ability that will later be expected in their jobs.

The course consists of a theoretical and an applied part. In the theoretical part (lectures) we talk about the fundamentals of business software and business processes. The complementary exercise gives the participants the opportunity to experience an ERP system at first hand. In both parts, students take the role of a user (not a programmer).

The students will be asked to run a maxi project (assignment) in groups of 3-4 students. In this assignment the participants will work on a case study. The tasks will be solved in the ERP software. Additionally, students will report about their experiences with the application of the case study.

The course consists of a theoretical and an applied part. In the theoretical part (lectures) we talk about the fundamentals of business processes and the IS support of Enterprise Resource Planning. The complementary case studies give the participants the opportunity to think about the implications of ERP systems for companies. In both parts, students take the role of users (not programmers). The students will learn to study facts, identify problems, analyse the problem and to derive their own conclusions – an ability that will later be expected in their jobs.

After taking the course, students will be able to:

- Name and explain business areas where Enterprise Resource Planning plays a decisive role

- Understand and explain the connection between business processes and Enterprise Resource Planning

- Critically evaluate the need of an ERP system for a company understanding advantages and limitations of these systems

- Define the requirements for Enterprise Resource Planning for a given company/industry

- Plan and manage an ERP system implementation project

- Identify business needs to integrate systems within and outside the company

- Suggest solutions for the integration of business software within the supply chain

Oral exam on the basis of a mini project.

Management, Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2008 (352 pages).

Davenport, Thomas (1998): Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System, in: Harvard Business Review, July-August 1998, pp. 121-131. (10 pages)

Davenport, Thomas (2005): The Coming Commoditization of Processes, in: Harvard Business Review, June, 2005. (10 pages)

Schubert, Petra; Wölfle, Ralf (2007): The eXperience Methodology for Writing IS Case Studies, in: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), 2007. (12 pages)

Sumner, Mary (2006): Critical Success Factors in ERP Implementation: Five Years Later, in: Proceedings of the Americas Conference of Information Systems (AMCIS), 2006, pp. 2491-2500.

Sumner, Mary (2004): Enterprise Resource Planning, New York: Prentice Hall, 2004. (208 pages)

5 eXperience case studies (14 pages each = 70 pages)