Migrating to a Standardized ERP System in a Cloud Computing Environment at ABC Corporation
business
Description
Migrating to a Standardized ERP System in a Cloud Computing Environment at ABC
Corporation
Abstract
The business problem to be solved is how to improve operational efficiencies, reduce IT
costs related to ERP systems, and improve insight into the financial management aspects of the
company for improved strategic planning and performance monitoring.
Company Background
ABC Corporation (ABC) is a twelve billion dollar ($12B), publicly traded, global
management consulting and technology company headquartered in the United States. ABC has
two business units, a public service sector that focuses on supporting federal, state and local
government needs, and comprises eighty-nine percent (89%) of corporate revenues; and a
commercial service sector that supports all other types of industry and accounts for the remaining
eleven percent (11%) of corporate revenues. The company has over 52,000 employees globally.
ABC is the product of rulings by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the
late 1990’s that forced large public accounting organizations to divest themselves of their
consulting branches due to perceived conflicts of interest. Examples of the divestitures include
Arthur Anderson who spawned Accenture, or KPMG that spun off KPMG Consulting (later to
become BearingPoint). ABC spun off from its “Big 5” accounting parent in 1999, taking all of
the parent company’s non-accounting related work with it. By 2000, they were fully
independent of their parent company and began to grow within their U.S. based operations.
During 2002, Arthur Anderson filed for bankruptcy protection and ABC decided to purchase
assets in foreign countries, thereby creating an immediate global presence and also tripling their
revenue base. By virtue of this rapid growth, the existing IT infrastructure was not closely
reviewed and has created redundancy as well as a question as the reliability and accessibility to
Migration to a Standardized ERP System 4
critical global financial data. In order to overcome these issues, “stove-piped” IT solutions that
are unstable or not well integrated with a main system, as well as other solutions that require
manual transference of critical data have been developed.
