Implementation and Integration of ERP with ICT: Case of Rolls-Royce

Executive Summary

The following report deals with implementation and integration of ERP system in Rolls-Royce
plc. A key aspiration of the report is to analyze the implementation of the ERP and its integration
with the current ICT system in the company. The report is based entirely on secondary data. The
report conducted an analysis of the implementation and integration process and found out that
the process has been successful. The process was carried out in four phases and resulted in better
efficiency and more effective management of data. The report has found that major challenges
that occurred was the alignment of older data formats to the current ones, existence of huge
amount of data, integration of the system with older system that has been operational at great
level, training of end users and cleaning up of older data. The significant advantages gained were
more centralized management, creation of a data ware house, deletion of repetitive data and
suspected data and faster and more cost effective MIS.

Table of Contents

1.

Introduction..............................................................................................................................1
1.1.

Background.......................................................................................................................1

1.1.1.

Operations, Product Services and Market.................................................................1

1.1.2.

Competitors................................................................................................................1

2.

The Implementation and Integration Process...........................................................................2

3.

Summary of Issues with the Implementation...........................................................................3

4.

Advantages from the Implementation......................................................................................3

5.

Conclusion................................................................................................................................4

References........................................................................................................................................5

1. Introduction
1.1.

Background

The following report deals with implementation and integration of ERP system in Rolls-Royce
plc. A key aspiration of the report is to analyze the implementation of the ERP and its integration
with the current ICT system in the company.
According to Peter (2012), Rolls-Royce PLC is one of the leading British makers of aircraft
engines, propulsion systems and power generation systems. The company has been famous
mostly as a manufacturer of luxury cars. However the company was parted with its car making
division following bankruptcy and was nationalized in the year 1971.
1.1.1. Operations, Product Services and Market
Rolls-Royces aerospace division manufacturers an comprehensive range of civil and warfare
aircraft engines. The company works on its own as well in collaboration with other companies in
Europe, USA and Japan. Chief offerings of the company comprise of Trent and RB211 turbofan
series of jet engines that are part of Boeing, Airbus and Tupolev aircrafts. The company is global
leader in supply of marine propulsion systems (Bill, 2009). Operations of the company in this
segment ranges from ship designing, integrating propulsion, ship steering and positioning
systems and deck equipments. The company also operates in other aerospace segments like gas
turbines for oil and gas sector and power plants and nuclear power plants for Royal Navy of
England.
1.1.2. Competitors
The biggest competitors of the company who poses the largest threat to the company are General
electric. The main competitive advantage of GE electric is that they have outsourced most of
their operations and thus delivering projects in lesser time and more cost effectively. However,
Rolls-Royce has been a pioneer of this sector and till now it remains the leader and other
companies has still a long time to go before they can match up Rolls-Royces technology, like in
RR Olympus (Rolls-Royce, 2013). However, GE has managed to threaten companys profit

margin owing to its efficiency and speed. Other major competitors include Pratt and Whitney,
Honeywell and UTC Aerospace.
2. The Implementation and Integration Process
Rolls-Royce had affiliated with EDS in 1996 for all its activities of ICT. This partnership implied
that all the ICT related systems of the company would be developed and maintained by EDS.
ERP project in the company was implemented by EDS. The project was carried out by specialist
from EDS. The major integration that was conducted was with regards to Data storage
(Abdinnour-Helm, Lengnick-Hall and Lengnick-Hall, 2010). The new system not only had to
retrieve the data form older legacy systems of the company but also conducted normalization,
screening and storing it in a more modern format within newer systems of data storage.
The ambiguity of data was also dealt with while integrating. Interfaces were built between older
systems and new systems for this purpose so that older systems kept running until new system
fazed them out. Also, the CAD system of the company was not altered since the file format was
of CAD systems could not be changed owing to costs constraints involved. SAP required a
considerably fixed operating structure for its smooth operation. The users in the cross platform
training were trained to adjust to the fact that operational practices will now have to change so as
to align with SAP and this ultimately changed the way the company conducts business. This was
accomplished by creating an internal business process reengineering program (BPR). This
program comprised of four different phases in which the ERP system was implemented and
integrated. The first phase comprised of creating and integrating the existing processes. The
second phase comprised of identification of issues of the integration. The third face comprised of
implementing some of these problems for illustration of SAP for identification of problems in the
current system (Olhager and Seldin, 2009). The last phase comprised of re-alignment and
alteration of the existing process to suit the needs of the ERP system. The newer versions of the
ERP software automatically upgrades the old reports, however specific reports required rewriting
the software. The implementation of the ERP systems also led to the development of a data
warehouse in the company which was previously absent. The data warehouse created a system in
which the data could now be stored in centralized manner. The data now stored went through
there stages of screening editing and ultimately standardizing for newer formats. Further storage

of data was conducted in a more user friendly approach that allowed simpler retrieval of data
from MIS of the business (Mabert, Soni and Venkataraman, 2011). The data ware house
continuously takes in new data and integrates it with existing data.
3. Summary of Issues with the Implementation
Rolls-Royce contains a huge and complicated business operations and the implementation and
integration process had to analyze the implications for the whole business. This also resulted in
issues at management levels, specifically in the initial phase which comprised of creating the
new system and integrating it with the older one. A project of this magnitude meant that
difficulties will keep coming up both during the implementation stage as well as in the future.
The company even though adopted a different way it managed its ICT, however it did not
allowed this project to be just another ICT project. The implementation and integration has
managed to take care of needs of both the end user and the business (Chung and Snyder, 2012).
Following are some of the major issues that were faced during the implementation and
integration of the ERP system.

Integrating the ERP within the existing ICT infrastructure and configuration
Training people for understanding the new changes in the ICT system of the organization
Training people to understand new storage hardware and software
Data cleaning and data ambiguity is a time consuming job since many legacy ICT
systems were integrated into the new systems

4. Advantages from the Implementation

The complete advantages of the systems could not be realized until the system was fully
functional and reached its period of stability which was around two years from the
implementation. After the system became stable and people had become accustomed with the
new system, the advantages of the lower ICT cost were apparent (Chung and Snyder, 2012).
Several advantages have been noted which has implied that project had become a success for
instance:
Creating interface between legacy systems and cleaning up of repetitive and suspected
data had provided the company with more trust in managing its Information

 The implementation of the ERP systems also led to the development of a data warehouse
in the company which was previously absent.
Further storage of data was conducted in a more user friendly approach that allowed
simpler retrieval of data from MIS of the business.
More centralized management of operations which means increased efficiency and faster
information processing affecting the net productivity and output
5. Conclusion
The present report has found out that the implementation and integration process has been
successful. The process was carried out in four phases and resulted in better efficiency and more
effective management of data. The report has found that major challenges that occurred was the
alignment of older data formats to the current ones, existence of huge amount of data, integration
of the system with older system that has been operational at great level, training of end users and
cleaning up of older data. The significant advantages gained were more centralized management,
creation of a data ware house, deletion of repetitive data and suspected data and faster and more
cost effective MIS.

References
Abdinnour-Helm, S., Lengnick-Hall, M.L., Lengnick-Hall, C.A., (2010) Preimplementation attitudes and organizational readiness for implementing an enterprise
resource planning system. European Journal of Operational Research. No. 146. pp. 258
273.
Bill, G. (2009). Development of Piston Aero Engines. Cambridge, UK. Patrick Stephens
Limited. ISBN 0-7509-4478-1.
Chung, S.H., Snyder, C.A. (2012). ICT adoption: A technological evolution approach.
International Journal of Agile Management Systems. No. 2. pp. 2432.
Mabert, V.A., Soni, A., Venkataraman, M.A. (2011) Enterprise resource planning:
Managing the implementation process in Rolls Royce. European Journal of Operational
Research. No. 146. pp. 302314.
Olhager, J., Seldin, E. (2009). Enterprise resource planning: Survey of Rolls Royce.
European Journal of Operational Research. No. 146. pp. 365373.
Peter, P. (2012) The Magic of a Name The Rolls-Royce Story: The First 40 Years. Icon
Books. ISBN 1-84046-151-9.
Rolls-Royce. (2013) Rolls-Royce plc history. [online]. Available at: http://www.rollsroyce.com/investors/company_profile/corporate_history/. [Accessed 28 April 2015].