Task:

You are employed as the Finance Manager at Brum Brew, which for the purposes of this case study is a fictitious medium-sized Craft brewery, based in Birmingham. The company employs 75 staff, and is currently in its 5^th year of operation. Its mission statement has evolved to:

To deliver unparalleled customer experience, placing our customers first, via a collegiate cultural approach. One that focusses its USP on sustainable premium brews sourced only from natural ingredients, to become the UKs 1^st choice purveyor of craft beer.

Brum Brew, two years ago decided to automate its business functions by installing the SAP Business One ERP cloud-based solution, please click on the following link for more information regarding this software. The company installed the Finance, Purchasing, and Stock & Distribution modules to marry up to their existing point of sales system Zettle, see the following link, and form their ERP system. It is prudent for you to research the functionality of each of these modules in order to inform your coursework assignment.

As the company has continued to expand to its current-level of manpower and operation, the Managing Director, in line with the companys increasing use of Microsoft software products, wishes to replace the Zettle and SAP ERP system with an equivalent Microsoft Dynamics ERP system, see link, to address current software incompatibility issues. Whilst, the company has found SAP useful, they have also found it both limiting and rigid in terms of adapting to emerging business need. SAP One also lacks compatibility with the Office 365 suite, which Brum Brew currently use. Replacing SAP One with Microsoft Dynamics will not only enable integration with Office 365, but also greater flexibility to tailor tools specific to business need. For instance, Brum Brew require the new system to incorporate a commerce function to develop an online sales platform. Adopting Microsoft Dynamics with Office 365 will enable the company to develop its own business analytic tools, via Microsoft Apps, to interrogate live data instantaneously, a feature that cannot be readily done with its current SAP One system. One feature the company wishes to enact using the new software system is to capture live sales data from customer activity on the new online platform to inform customer trends, interests, and sales forecasts. An activity which supports the companys mission statement to become the UKs number one choice.

To address this business process improvement, Brum Brew have asked you, the Finance Manager, to project manage this business improvement change.

Project constraints:

• The project has to be implemented into the business within 12 months, without impacting on its day to day operation
• The project planning, and its implementation, has to run side by side with the companys existing day to day operations, until the system change-over date to Microsoft Dynamics. This change over should be seamless, resolve current software incompatibility problems and incorporate all the historical data from its previous ERP system.
• The ERP system requires an additional commerce functionality
• The company requires the number of ERP software license holders to increase from 10 to 20.
• Staff involved in the project will need their time bought out. You are required to provide a ballpark estimate of staff costs attributed to the project.

Resource Constraints: Managing Director Finance Manager/Project Manager Accountant Operations Manager Operations Staff x 3 Purchasing Manager Sales/Marketing Manager Sales/Marketing staff x 2 IT Manager IT Staff x 2 Software vendor costs Annual salary 50,000 37,000 25,000 33,000 24,500 each 30,000 31,500 24,000 each 30,500 24,500 each To be estimated