Assignment Brief:

The project team encounters manifold technical and organizational issues which have led the project to a state which requires a decision about its continuance. Due to new expansions and technological advances, decisions needed to be made concerning the sourcing strategy and implementation of new systems. These decisions involve discussion of strategic alignment of business and IT, issues involved in selection and customization of an Enterprise Resource Planning package.

You need to read the case study "From order-to-cash to wall-to-wall: Four SAP implementations at Smithfield Foods" and prepare the report for this project. This report will provide a comprehensive description of the operational planning and the approach taken to implement the new systems. The project report should explain the development plan: how the system will work technically, what services it will provide, it's sourcing strategy, considerations associated with and the effects of its rollout.

The project report will be presented in the format of a written report containing the following sections:

1. Executive Summary - a one-page summary of the contents of the report suitable for a management audience.

2. Table of contents. The table of contents lists the main sections (headings) of the report, and the page on which each begins. If your report includes tables, diagrams or illustrations, these are listed separately on the page after the table of contents.

3. Introduction - This section should provide an outline of the organization, background of the organization, its situation (needs and threats), and objectives that the report is proposing to address.

4. Sourcing strategy: This section should outline the approach of procuring new information system/s. You need to define the sourcing strategy and explain why or why not this sourcing strategy was a good choice.

5. Driving Factors: This section should outline the main requirements for each system and explain the capabilities that were improved or new capabilities that were introduced by using the new systems as part of the changes in the corporate strategy.

6. Transition Plan: This section should explain the rollout strategies for each of the new information system across the organization. You should outline of the main steps in each rollout strategy and explain whether the selected approach was the best option for each implementation and why.

7. Integration Techniques: This section should outline whether there were any integration techniques used during the implementations. You need to explain the type of integration and why that approach was selected.

8. Change and Risk Management: This section should outline the risks involved in the sourcing strategy selected above, installing and implementation of the new system, and outline the approaches that are taken to manage those risks. You also need to propose a change management strategy.

9. Changes & implementation effects. Leading towards the conclusion this should outline what changes are placed in different perspectives of the company (use the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard) and explain how these changes affect the overall business model.

10.Conclusion: This section summarizes the key findings from the previous sections and may be numbered here for clarity. Relate your conclusion to the objectives of the report and arrange your points logically so that major conclusions are presented first