Upgrade to an ERP System

¶ … charter summary as well as some scholarly research that covers both organizational culture and project management. The project charter will include the scope of the project, the objectives of the project and the participants and stakeholders that will be involved in said project. The project in question will be an upgrade to an all-encompassing and all-inclusive enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that will replace the disparate and different moving parts that are loosely assembled together as a system right now. While one can indeed over-think a project of any magnitude, a transition to a new enterprise resource planning system is not something that can or should be taken lightly.

Scholarly Literature

As noted in the introduction, there will first be a quick covering of both organizational culture and project management. When it comes to a company that has an active project of any magnitude, the two indeed go hand in hand. This would be the case especially with information technology projects. As noted by Ching et al. (2014), there are effects rendered on the performance of project management tasks and overall progress by the organizational culture that exists within a firm. Four dimensions of organizational culture that are of particular import are institutional collectivism, results orientation, positive work environment and leadership risk tolerance. Put another way, there needs to be a combined and cohesive effort, there needs to be a focus on results, there needs to be a good "vibe" in the workplace and the leadership of a firm needs to be willing to take a little risk here and there. When it comes to transitioning to an ERP system, it goes without saying that there will be risk involved because many ERP implementations stutter or outright fail (Ching, Hoffman, Cao & Schniederjans, 2014). As for organizational culture, firms that are seeking to implement an ERP system have to have a good degree of what is known as organizational readiness. As noted by Ram, Corkindale and Ming-Lu (2015), organizational readiness "is a significant antecedent to the adoption and post-implementation success of enterprise resource planning" (Ram, Corkindale & Ming-Lu, 2015).

The Charter

Scope

Replace the existing customer relationship management, delivery, finance and supply chain modules current in use, all from different vendors, with a singular enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that does all of the needed functions and is fully integrated without having to sacrifice any functionality or abilities.

Objectives

Build and implement the new ERP system by 1/1/2016

Commence a side-by-side comparison to ensure that all of the needed functionalities are retained and the expected new ones are gained

Take down the current framework of systems once the ERP system is fully tested and fully functional

Personnel

CEO -- The ultimate-decision maker and the person that the project manager will report to Project Manager -- The manager of the project. Job is to implement the project as requested and authorized by CEO and other management