5:43 AM | Posted by seangkhun

Symantec’s ERP Turmoil

CASE STUDY

Members:

1. Lyheang Hught 5317190024

2. Bian Yan 5317190019

3. Chheav Nuon 5317190010

4. Bangyu Luo 5117192003

5. Chike Shedrack Umeadi 5317190003

Introduction:

Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of personal computer security software. Founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with a National Science Foundation grant, Symantec was originally focused on artificial intelligence-related projects, including a database program. ). In 1984 Symantec was acquired by another, even smaller computer software startup company, C&E Software, founded by Denis Coleman and Gordon Eubanks and headed by Eubanks.

Nowadays, Symantec Corporation is considered to be a leading software vendor specializing in security and information management. It has operations in more than 40 countries and over 17,500 employees. Even since the company started its creation in the 1982, it has been the acquisition of other companies. For examples, in the year 1990 Symantec acquired Peter Norton Computing from Peter Norton; in the year 2004 Symantec acquired Brightmail by $370 million cash and in the year 2005 Symatec acquired Veritas software by approximately $13.5 billion. Symantec and Veritas were of similar size and specialized in different types of software. Symantec’s focus was security and information management for customers meanwhile Vertitas specialized in storage management software geared toward large-scale licensing. In late 2005,Symantec began an ERP rollout as Project Oasis to create a single ERP system, within which all of the company’s extensive network of resellers, integrators, distributors, and customers could place orders for over 250,000 different products Symatec offered in the same way.

An overhaul of the combined company’s enterprise systems was needed to combine Symantec and Veritas’s data from key business processes, and it led to numbers of steps and many missteps. Customers and Partners were unhappy with New system. Moreover, many customers lost their loyalty to Symantec. Finally, Project Nero had helped Symantec from the worst of the Crisis.

1. What concepts in this chapter are illustrated in this case?

Concepts of ERP Systems in this chapter are illustrated in this case.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is sales-oriented application that facilitates establishing relationship between your organization and customers. ERP is much more than just a computer software. An ERP System includes ERP Software, Business Processes, Users and Hardware that run the ERP software. An ERP system is more than the sum of its parts or components. Those components interact together to achieve a common goal - streamline and improve organizations' business processes. Most important factor for ERP system is the users. Successful implementation of any ERP System more depends on intelligent users who are going to use them, because any standard ERP Software would consist hundreds of input information for any particular business activity. Thus good knowledge of each entity of system to the users is most important factor in ERP Software.

Benefits of ERP

ERP software attempts to integrate business processes across departments into a single enterprise-wide information system. The major benefits of ERP are improved coordination across functional departments and increased efficiencies of doing business. The implementations of ERP systems help to facilitate day-to-day management as well. ERP software systems are originally and ambitiously designed to support resource planning portion of strategic planning. In reality, resource planning has been the weakest link in ERP practice due to the complexity of strategic planning and lack of adequate integration of ERP with Decision Support Systems (DSS).

In addition to increasing efficiencies, other major benefits to implement ERP:

· Formation of a backbone of data storage and accessibility that allows global wide access.

· Greater accessibility to data, allowing management up-to-the-minute access to information needed to make key decisions.

· Ability to track actual costs of activities and perform activity based costing.

· Elimination of duplication and the current practice of building stand-alone databases and spreadsheets to enter and manipulate data for reporting purposes.

· Establishment of uniform processes that are based on recognized best business practices.

There are four components of an ERP System -

1) ERP software,

2) Business Processes that ERP software supports,

3) Users of ERP systems, and

4) Hardware and Operating Systems that run ERP applications.

2. What management, organization, and technology factors were responsible for Symantec’s difficulties in overhauling its ERP systems?

Management, organization, and technology factors that responsible for Symantec’s difficulties in overhauling its ERP systems were:

Management:

-Customer relationship management

• Since CRM is a strategy used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them, but Symantec seemed to be neglecting customer service, making call centers more difficult, crossing sell products ineffectively ,and increasing marketing and sales processes, because the company was unprepared to meet unhappy customers who need help from support team ; wait time of calls also ballooned average from 2 minutes to 25 minute; ordering products from Symantec became more difficult; and the processes of placing orders became more complicated and were usually damaged by numbers of step and amount of information. So, Customer relationship management was one of factors to be responsible for Symantec’s difficulties in overhauling its ERP systems.

- Human resource management

· Symantec hired untrained and unskillful employees to help unhappy customers with its new system. They spent long time but nothing could be solved. So, Human resource management was one of factors to be responsible for Symantec’s difficulties in overhauling its ERP systems because Human resource management is the management of individuals working in an organization. It is responsible to hire people for the organization, train them to perform their assignments, provide benefits for their work and solve issues if any.

Organization:

-Senior management or Management team

Management team is generally a team of individuals at the highest level of organizational management who have the day-to-day responsibilities of managing a company or corporation. But, after setting up Project Oasis, they seemed to be not responsible to manage the company. They were slow response to solve the problems. They also neglected to coordinate the development of its new ERP system with the launch of other products from different divisions within the company.

Technology:

-Software licensing program

The new software licensing process didn’t work well. With the ex- Software licensing program, customers could put in an order and receive a license certificate within a couple of days. After the rollout, licensing became much more difficult for customers and partners. They have to wait for many weeks to receive their licenses.

3. Was Symantec’s response to the problem adequate? Explain your reasoning

After analyzing this case study, I would like to say that Symantec’s response to the problem was not adequate.

In order to support my personal reasoning, I would like to tell the goal of Customer Relationship Management in Enterprise Resource Planning first. The goal of Customer Relationship Management in Enterprise Resource Planning is that a business can:

Ø provide better customer service

Ø make call centers more efficient

Ø cross sell products more effectively

Ø help sales staff close deals faster

Ø simplify marketing and sales processes

Ø discover new customers

Ø increase customer revenues.

But, how Symantec response to the problems was as following samples：

· The initial reaction to the launch of the new system was technically negative and the increased steps were very complicated. Then customers began calling Symantec’s support team in record number. But, Symantec was not prepared to meet the increased demand for customer support or to deal with such amount of unhappy customers.

· Buying Symantec products through distribution via companies like Ingram Micro became unusually difficult and took a long process time. But Symantec was slow response to fix these issues.

· Symantec set up Project Nero to recapture the loyalty of customers and used Net Promoter methodology to measure and increase customer loyalty. But，they did not release the results of its Net Promoter surveys to the public, so the extent to which it had repaired its reputation was still unclear.

· The most important thing is that Symantec spent approximately $13.5 billion to acquire Veritas software. But the company seemed to be neglected the problems concerned an overhaul ERP issue.

For these reasons, I would like to say that Symantec’s response to the problem was not adequate.

4. What would you have done differently to prevent the implementation problems that arose at Symantec?

If I were a CEO of Symantec, I would have done differently to prevent the implementation problems that arose at Symantec that:

· As far as oracle E-Business suite was concerned, I would have used low and well planned customized versions for the system for both companies, yet meet all the needs of the customers and partners.

· In addition to that, for the two companies I would have used a common system of enterprise to combine both companies’ data. This would have been helpful in reduce the costs of maintainance of software.

· Further more, for each new Service Life Extension Program and system I would introduce in the company, I would see to it that I select among my employees a team responsible for educating the customers and partners about them and afterwards offer services to them. This would have been vital in that it would reduce on the calls and discouragements of the customers and the partners. Hence, it would increase customers’ satisfaction.

· Also for each new development of system I would make in the company, I would coordinate it with other products from different divisions within the company. This would reduce on the confusion among customers, partners and employees in the both companies.

· As for the company’s low earnings I would have reduced the costs and expenses annually by restructuring the company’s activities to see that they fit in the budget of the company.

5. If you were a partner or customer of Symantec, would you have switched vendors in response to the ERP overhaul issues? Why or why not?

No, if I were a partner or customer of Symantec, I wouldn’t have switched vendors in response to the ERP overhaul issues.

Because the strategy to solve the problems and result of solving problems were that:

Start to fix the problems

After encountering the bad lesson, Symantec started to fix the problems and set up Project Nero to recapture the customers’ royalty.

Set up Executive team to recapture customers’ loyalty

Executive team like John Thompson, chairman and chief executive officer, James Beer, executive vice, president and chief financial officer, Enrique Salem, chief operating officer, and David Thompson, chief information officer were coordinating to fix the ERP overhaul issues and following the Project Nero to recapture loyalty of customers.

The executive leadership Committee meets every two weeks

The executive leadership committee- which is chaired by Salem and includes division and department vice presidents, as well as CIO Thompson and Parrish- meets every two weeks to review loyalty metrics and identify what each unit manager is doing to improve their scores and efficiency.

Solution

Symantec launched a concerted short- and long-term program to resolve poor user experience and change management issues. These measures included using the Net Promoter methodology to measure customer loyalty and set strategic direction, creating a corporate-wide product and project calendar to avoid conflicts, and establishing an executive management steering committee to oversee new IT projects and product launches.

As a result of Symantec's use of Net Promoter and the organizational postmortem conducted under Project Nero, the vendor has a master product release calendar, formalized interdepartmental lines of communications for IT project implementations and an improved change management process- all designed to ensure there are no slips in the customer experience.

Result

So far, Symantec and its customers report a near-full recovery from the ERP crisis. Symantec's post-launch effort resulted in significant system presentation changes, as well as improved customer experience.

Prospects

From the case of fixing problem in year 2005 on, they have been developing their company to be better and better. Revenue of Symantec every year that you can know by the fortune lists which range companies by earning revenue. On the fortune lists, Symantec began with place 792 in the year 2005 by earning Revenue 1,870.1$ millions, jumped up to the place 672 in the year 2006 by earning Revenue 2,582.8$ millions, jumped to the place 515 in the year 2007 by earning Revenue 4,113.5$ millions, jumped to the place 461 in the year 2008 by earning Revenue 5,199.4$ millions, jumped to the place 419 in the year 2009 by earning Revenue 5,874.4$ millions, and it’s on the place 353 in the year 2010 by earning Revenue 6,149.9$ millions. Symantec has been developed to be better and better and Symantec’s has been increasing every year after the fixing problem in year 2005.

Those are the reasons why I wouldn’t switch the vendors in response to the ERP overhaul issues.

References:

v http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://crm.manufacturer-supplier.com/crm-pic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://crm.manufacturer-supplier.com/&usg=__NuXqiPdmRzpc_BPk6EnDGf1g1bg=&h=336&w=336&sz=22&hl=zh-CN&start=5&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=-uAau6aOj-fIMM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=119&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcustomer%2Brelationship%2Bmanagement%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dzh-CN%26tbs%3Disch:1

v http://www.symantec.com/business/products/activating/licensingportal/index.jsp

v http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

v http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/symantec-high-availability-solution-oracle-e-business-suite

v www.symantec.com.

v http ://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci213590,00.html

v http://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/symantec-high-availability-solution-oracle-e-business-suite

v http://www.google.com/images?hl=zh-CN&q=symantec&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

v http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/full_list/

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