A company called Colony Nursery and Landscaping opened a new store located a few hundred miles away from its original location. The company wants to implement an award system that awards their customers with points whenever customers make a purchase, but the two stores are not able to share information. Colony Nursery and Landscaping will need to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that will solve the information silo problem by collecting and making this user data available. Colony Nursery and Landscaping is hoping that by providing customers with this award system, they will be able to maintain competitive advantage. Colony Nursery and Landscaping cannot afford to purchase, develop, or maintain this system on-site, so they are investigating cloud solutions.

In addition, for many organizations, Colony Nursery and Landscaping included, information silos make it difficult to tap into needed information. Discuss whether or not the problem of information silos can be solved by using the cloud. Some organizations do not have the resources to construct or maintain their computer infrastructure, so they utilize cloud services instead to reduce costs and improve scalability.

Discuss whether or not the cloud offers solutions for Colony Nursery and Landscaping and identify an application that the ERP system could provide.

• Define what an information silo is.
• Explain why information silos are a problem for organizations.
• Discuss why organizations are moving to the cloud.
• Determine whether or not using cloud services, such as a cloud-based host for data storage, would solve the ERP information silo problem at Colony Nursery and Landscaping.
• Explain how using the ERP system and awards program would provide a competitive advantage for Colony Nursery and Landscaping.
• Discuss why the implementation of an ERP system might require business process reengineering for Colony Nursery and Landscaping. Be sure to explain the business processes that will be affected (e.g., the customer awards system). Use diagrams or tables as needed, but this is not required.