Hypermarket is run by ABC group of companies in Muscat which has a plan to make new stores into other areas in Muscat like in Doha, Sohar, and Sur. The project to open new stores into mentioned areas also includes implementing the new systems in every store which will be interlinked with each other as well as they are also connected to the head office of ABC Hypermarket. Furthermore, the hypermarket stores will use the same type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems which are already in use of the Head office of these hypermarket stores because the same inventory and data will be shared and monitored form single system. The Same ERP system will be used in all stores because the head office of the hypermarket wants to able to monitor receive the inventory reports as well as monthly sales reports from every store. The same systems will make the head office of hypermarket able to evaluate all the records and keep check and balance. The benefit of using the same ERP system in all stores will increase the efficiency of generating effective and error-free general ledgers as well as it will make the management ability to manage the inventory in an effective manner. Although, they will have knowledge about stock and inventory in the warehouse. In very simple words, the systems team of the company can save their time to check the systems in the head office instead of traveling to other regions physically for removing bugs and errors.

There are several stakeholders involved in this project to set up new hypermarket stores as well as implement an ERP system into stores. The key stakeholders are the director and CEO of the company, management team, software developers and software maintenance teams as well as the operators of this system. The software development and implementation team is a significant stakeholder in this project. On the other side, top management is also an important stakeholder that directly involves for implementation of the system into the store.

Influence of Selected Project of Hypermarket

The selected project will be highly influential on the society as well as on the organization because the overall sales of the company, customer satisfaction as well as success of the business including the effectiveness of managing inventory will base on this system. The selected project to open new stores in new regions of Muscat having similar enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is a big project and it can provide a large number of advantages to the involved stakeholder such as the company staff, shareholders, merchandizers, system team as well as customers because they can have satisfactory services from this system. For instance, a similar ERP system that will be implemented and used in all of the hypermarket stores can save the time of the information technology team and system team. Although, ERP systems will be implemented in all of the stores to improve the effectiveness of the organizational operations because it provides several activities as well as it can improve the sales and performance of stores in all regions plus it will also control costs of the company on every product and operation efficiently. Furthermore, the analysis shows that there is a relation between earnings management and ERP performance measures. Some researchers analyzed that with the high performance of ERP systems, the management of earning reduced. But the relations among the earning management and performance of ERP systems depend on the system quality after the implementation of ERP (Tsai, Lee, Liu, Lin, & Chou, 2012).

What benefits the project can bring to society/organization?

There are several benefits of this project to society/organization and the culture of the organization. As mentioned above that the ERP systems can provide greater efficiency for the planning of the resources to hypermarket stores.

Highly Efficient of Hypermarket

The system is really timesaving because it removes and reduces the manual entrance of information as well as eliminate the repetition of records and processes. Although, it will provide the notifications and message to management and operator that the entrance of the record is duplicate in case of double entry and it will eliminate the duplicate record. Furthermore, the systems are more intelligent because it can make the business processes of hypermarket stores streamline though making them more effective to obtain the particular information of different departments.

Improved Customer services of Hypermarket

The systems which are going to be implemented in new stores in Muscat can provide several benefits to the customers that can improve customer services as well as very useful to enhance customer satisfaction. Subsequently, the information of the clients is reorganized as well as centralized by using the selected project system, the sales team will be able to build the strong and beneficial relationships with the customers across the regions and throughout the country. By implementing such a project into the store, the marketing team can easily automate the marketing activities as well as makes sure that the customers of stores are appropriately communicated and treated. Furthermore, one of the best advantages of this system is that the system can easily manage the resources or inventories from the warehouse as well as can also notify about the low stock of any kind of product immediately to the supply chain management and to management teams. By having this information, the supply chain management team, as well as the management of the company, can handle the situation and the customer will not go from the store without having those products. So the system can effectively increase customer service as well as customer satisfaction that is very important for the business of the company (Staehr, 2010).

Security of information of Hypermarket

The business data and information is a very sensitive part of the company which needs to be protected. For this purpose, many organizations perform several activities as well as develop many tools. The selected project of implementation of ERP system in all of the braches gives surety to a company that there sensitive information such as the client data, inventory information, accounts or financial information will be secured in the databases of the system. Furthermore, the system is also telling that the security of information is not a concern after implementation of the ERP system into the stores because the system software may bring improvement in the accuracy of information and consistency of security by using the system security resources as well as built-in firewalls. Due to complex programming and data security techniques, the system is more secure. It is the major reason that the big organizations like to implement this system into the organizations as well as Hypermarket Company has decided to implement this technology into the stores (Shang & Seddon, 2000).

Efficient Reports of Hypermarket

The system also provides the facility to generate well-customized receipts and reports whether they are billing receipts, inventory reports, sales report or financial reports. It improves the quality of reporting and the main benefit in generating a report is that it can easily analyze all the functions throughout the department of the company without any disturbance of spreadsheets and various emails. Thus, the ABC Hypermarket company can respond to complex requests of data with increased and improved reporting capabilities.

Flexibility of Hypermarket

The enterprise resource planning system assists to control the costs of hypermarket stores effectively, as well as saves the times of the staff of the stores even the sale and purchase will be at the peak level. The second benefit of this system that the management team and system team can manage the team the whole business operations very easy ineffective and time-saving manners because the selected system is flexible as well as easily configurable and robust. Furthermore, due to the flexibility of the system, the ERP system can easily adapt and accept new changes and the new requirement for enhancing the sales of the stores as well as assigns assets in an effective manner.

Due to its different functions, the ERP system can effectively manage the resources or stock of the company into the stores and warehouse, enhance the sales of the company without disturbing sales in the peak seasons, as well as effectively notify the supply chain management department about the lack of stocks. Most importantly, the system has the ability to effectively save data and keep it confidential plus the security of the system is tighter that can prevent the data breach attacks. Although, the system is very effective to compare other departments without having any disruption and errors as well as can also generate appropriate receipts and ledger reports.

Does the project promote ethical standards?

The selected project of implementing a similar ERP system into all of the stores of hypermarkets in Muscat is a big project and has several benefits for the company business. On the other hand, the system has also some ethical issues. Several organizations have faced some challenges in these systems. The system certainly enables the company to get advantages over its competitors by saving the resources and costs of the company but some challenges must have to face the company. The very first challenge the companies have to face that they have to choose ERP applications from 500 applications but it is not guaranteed that the selected application will fulfill the requirements of the company. The second ethical issue is that the top management of the organization has to directly involve during the phase of implementation and development all the time because the development phase of this system is very complex and toughest. In case of a lack of involvement of top management, any issue can occur in the system or any wrong decision can be taken which causes the delay of the operation. The use of this system is also a challenge because the system is very complex and tough enough to understand easily. So, many companies especially send the teams of the company to developers of this system for learning how the system can be operated and used. For the development of this project, the system should be well managed and highly skilled professional project management is required. The very challengeable tasks are that the system development is very expensive and the company has to pay a large amount of money to implement and adopt this technology (Albin, Kocakulah, Foroughi, & McGuire, 2006).

Conclusion of Hypermarket

It is concluded that Hypermarket is run by ABC group of companies in Muscat which has a plan to make new stores into other areas in Muscat like in Doha, Sohar, and Sur. The hypermarket stores will use the same type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems which are already in use of the Head office of these hypermarket stores. The key stakeholders are the director and CEO of the company, management team, software developers and software maintenance teams as well as the operators of this system. The similar ERP system that will be implemented and used in all of the hypermarket stores can save the time of the information technology team and system team. It is also concluded that some researchers analyzed that with the high performance of ERP systems, the management of earning reduced. The systems are more intelligent because it can make the business processes of hypermarket stores streamline though making them more effective to obtain the particular information of different departments. The system can effectively increase customer service as well as customer satisfaction that is very important for the business of the company. The results of the study shows that due to complex programming and data security techniques, the system is more secure. It improves the quality of reporting and the main benefit in generating a report is that it can easily analyze all the functions throughout the department of the company without any disturbance of spreadsheets and various emails. Due to the flexibility of the system, the ERP system can easily adapt and accept new changes and the new requirement for enhancing the sales of the stores as well as assigns assets in an effective manner.

References of Hypermarket

Albin, M. L., Kocakulah, M. C., Foroughi, A., & McGuire, B. L. (2006). Reducing the conflict between accounting and it brought about by ERP, compliance and ethical issues. In 2006 Technology Management for the Global Future-PICMET 2006 Conference, 60-65.

Shang, S., & Seddon, P. B. (2000). A comprehensive framework for classifying the benefits of ERP systems. AMCIS 2000 proceedings, 39.

Staehr, L. (2010). Understanding the role of managerial agency in achieving business benefits from ERP systems. Information systems journal, 20(3), 213-238.

Tsai, W.-H., Lee, K.-C., Liu, J.-Y., Lin, S.-J., & Chou, Y.-W. (2012). The influence of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems' performance on earnings management. Enterprise Information Systems, 6(4), 491-517.