ArtisanHardwood Floors purchased SAP’s Business One ERP (enterprise resource planningimplementation) software in late 2007. The company is located in Austin, Texasand it is owned by a family and operated with 37 employees and virtually noin-house IT staff. Like most of the small businesses, it found itself inrunning some disconnected software packages for operations and accountingmaking it relies on manual processes.
In fact, they did not have any networkconnection between operations and accounting in the company as recalled thegeneral manager, Mr. Pat Bailey. Therefore, he started looking for a newpackage that could unite back-office functions of Artisan’s three separatebusiness lines: a flooring installation business; a lumber yard that imports woodfrom South America and sells both at retail and wholesale; and a distributionarm to a network of U.S. dealers.Afterimplementing an ERP system, some of SAP’s product sets have earned reputations,which is opposite regarding usability particularly within large, compleximplementations that required business process change. It has become of themost comfortable products to operate indeed from both by operations andaccounting purposes implementation (Tsai et al.
, 2011).Thesuccess of the system can be demonstrated by the following statements: Today,he says, he can see Artisan’s financial and operational picture “muchclearer than I could before. Am I where I want to be? Not yet.
The big thingfor me is: the information is being put into the system.” Besides,”at any point of time, any person can walk up to a station, log in, get aphone number, fax number, account balance, get an agent report anything likethat,” Bailey says. “That’s what I was shooting for, and Isucceeded.”The implementation of the ERPsystem has enabled the Business One software to offer the most relaxed trainingenvironment since a lot of non-technical people can be educated about thesystem, and it is easy to learn.
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Disappointing ExperienceLumberLiquidators has experienced disappointment in the implementation of ERP system.Lumber Liquidators can be seen to be attributing a weak performance to asophisticated implementation of the system by claiming that the project imposeda significant drain on worker productivity. In fact, the problems are likelyrelated to employees having trouble acclimating to the new system, versusmalfunctions in the software.Accordingto the company, the net sales rose from $ 6.
8 million to $ 147.3 million whenthe business continues without interruption. Besides, there was lowerproductivity that led to an estimated $ 12 million and $ 14 million inunrealized net sales, and again net income fell by 45% to $ 4.3 million. It isa sad situation for Lumber Liquidators because the company cannot efficientlyoperate after reduction of its net income. In short, the system has brought anenormous impact on the economic status of the company but on negative sidewhich can be associated with employees having difficulties in the applicationof the new system (Frimpon, 2012). However,the Lumber Liquidators is a valued SAP customer, and they remain strong andhave positive partners.
In fact, SAP is actively engaging with the company incompleting their implementation, and they believe that the company is on theright track. Intrinsically, when the process is complete, Lumber Liquidatorswill gain significant benefits from the implementation of the system.ERP project gives LumberLiquidators disappointing experience because of several reasons such as changinginternal requirements by the company that slows down system integratorimplementation that requires employees of the company to adapt to changesbrought by the system, lack of resources for training and system design, andcomplexity in the software.
