Ikons Attempt at Erp Essays

Ikons Attempt at Erp Essays Ikons Attempt at Erp Essay Ikons Attempt at Erp Essay Ikons Attempt at ERP Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and ERP Ikon Office Solutions is the world’s largest independent office technology company, with revenues approaching $5 billion and operations in the U. S. , Canada, Mexico, the United King-dom, France, Germany, and Denmark. Ikon is pursing a growth strategy to move from what was more than 80 individually operating copier dealers to an integrated solutions company. Its goal is to provide total office technology solutions, ranging from copiers, digital printers, and docu-ment management services to systems integration, training, and other network technology ser-vices. The company has rapidly expanded its service capability with an aggressive acquisition effort that has included technology services and document management companies. Given these objectives, the company seemed to need ERP software. A few years ago, it be-gan a pilot project in the Northern California district to assess the possibility of using SAP’s en-terprise software applications companywide. Chief Information Officer David Gadra, who joined Ikon about a month after the pilot system was turned on, however, decided not to roll it out. Ikon will take a $25 million write-off on the cost of the pilot. â€Å"There were a number of factors that made us decide this project was more challenging than beneficial for us,† says Gadra. â€Å"When we added everything up- human factors, functionality gaps, and costs incurred- we decided our environment is ill defined for SAP. † Instead, Ikon is bringing all 13 of its regional operations onto a home-grown application system. â€Å"I don’t blame the consultants or SAP,† he says. â€Å"We made errors on our side in estimating the amount of business change we’d have to make as part of this implementation. The vast majority of the $25 million loss represents consultant fees; less than 10% went to pay for the software itself. At any given point in the project, Ikon was paying 40 to 50 outside consultants $300 an hour. Ikon budgeted $12 million to get the system running. That cost came in at over $14 million, including $8 million paid to IBM for con sulting. A major reason the company decided to drop SAP was its conclusion that the software didn’t sufficiently address the needs of a service company like Ikon, as opposed to those of manufac-turers. For example, SAP didn’t have an adequate feature for tracking service calls. Ikon also had great difficulty assembling an internal team of SAP experts. Ikon’s costs were high because the firm relied heavily on consultants. â€Å"I am extremely disappointed by Ikon’s announcement,† says SAP America president Jeremy Coote, describing Ikon’s earlier pilot as on time and â€Å"extremely successful. † Coote calls Ikon’s decision to scrap the project â€Å"an example of what happens when you don’t sell at the corporate level† as well as the divisional level. A newer version of SAP is to include a service management module. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS What are the information needs at Ikon and what alternatives does Ikon have to meet these needs? What are the advantages and disadvantages of ERP software in meeting these needs? What risks did the company take in selecting SAP software for evaluation? Why did Ikon cancel the SAP project? Sources: Ikon Annual Reports; Information Week (April 1997): 25; and J. R. Gordon and S. R. Gordon, Information Systems: A Management Approach, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley, 2003).

Definition and Examples of Digraphs in English

Definition and Examples of Digraphs in English A digraph in the English language is a group of two successive letters ​that represents a single sound or phoneme. Common vowel digraphs include ai (rain), ay (day), ea (teach), ea (bread), ea (break), ee (free), ei (eight), ey (key), ie (piece), oa (road), oo (book), oo (room), ow (slow), and ue (true). Common consonant digraphs include ch (church), ch (school), ng (king), ph (phone), sh (shoe), th (then), th (think), and wh (wheel). Importance Diagraphs are considered nearly equal to the letters of the standard alphabet in importance to learning to read and write in English. In Linguistic Tips for Latino Learners and Teachers of English, E.Y. Odisho, writes: [F]rom the pedagogical and instructional perspective, the digraphs should be given utmost attention in the teaching of almost all language skills of English because of the proportionally large number of digraphs in relation to the 26 letters; they are approximately one-fourth of the core letters. Other experts have indicated the difficulty that learning digraphs presents to English language learners. For example, according to Roberta Heembrock in Why Kids Cant Spell, the digraph ch can be pronounced at least four different ways: k (character), sh (chute), kw (choir), and ch (chain). Complicated System Some sounds can be represented only by digraphs. In Childrens Reading and Spelling, T. Nunes and P. Bryant offer examples such as sh (shoot), ay (say), and ai (sail). Still other sounds can be represented in some words by single letters and in others by digraphs, such as fan and phantom, which begin with the same phoneme but are written as one letter in the first word and as two letters in the second. This is a complicated system and probably, to young children at least, it may seem a capricious and unpredictable one as well, Nunes and Bryant write. Spelling Confusion Spelling words that incorporate digraphs is as tricky as reading them and determining the sounds that they create. For example, the six letters of the six-phoneme word strict are represented by six digraph units: strict. On the other hand, the six letters of the three-phoneme word wreath are represented by just three digraph units: wreath, according to Brenda Rapp and Simon Fischer-Baum in Representation of Orthographic Knowledge.  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹ The Past Tense ​Spellings A particular difficulty for children is learning to spell words that deviate from what they have come to expect in their learning process. This is often the case, according to Rebecca Treiman and Brett Kessler in How Children Learn to Write Words, with the past tense. As an example, they note that the past tense of mess (messed) sounds like mest and that of call (called) sounds like cald, each of which is still one syllable, while the past tense of hunt, which adds the ed sound to make hunted, has two syllables. Children are used to the latter pattern and find the former one odd.