Management
Century 21 real estate agency is a US based company which is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey. It was established in 1971 by Art Bartlett and Marsh Fisher, two real estate agents in California. It is therefore a global company which provides proper services for the customers who need fine homes as well as other luxurious products. It is imperative to note that many people who buy or sell their properties are sometimes busy performing other duties hence they may have a stressful time. In this regard, century 21 offer their services to such people including offering advice to the customers, and helping them to navigate the best path during home acquisition process. This is achieved through the use of state of the art sales tools and technology which put into control the sale or purchase of properties.
On the other hand, Oracle e-business suite is an internet enabled architecture that can be managed from a single site. With oracle e-business suite a company can operate a single date center with a single database which is similar to ERP products. E-Business suite contains a number of product lines which can be implemented by users in their business. It include the companys enterprise resource planning (ERP) products as well as supply chain management (SCM) and customer relation management applications which are licensed separately to ensure that companies are able to select the combination which is suitable for their business processes. In this way, the users are able to streamline their business processes in such a way that the organization will be able to succeed in the simplest form possible.
Proposal and justification for oracle e-business suite
Being a multinational real estate company, I would propose that Century 21 adopt oracle e-business suite in order to simplify its business processes and as a way of speeding its production processes. Although the company has greatly used online marketing to attract customers, it has not fully adopted proper e-business based on the believe that their customers are always within their reach. This is brought about by the fact that Century 21 real estate agency has established over 50 branches in the US as well as in many other countries around the world. However, having so many branches in many localities may not be guarantee that the company is in a position to reach all the customers. In this regard, the company needs to fully take up e-business and especially the use of oracle e-business suite to ensure that all customers are reached and are guaranteed satisfactory services.
Applications that are needed to support Oracle e-business suite
In an attempt to ensure full support of Oracle e-business suite, there are some major applications needed to work hand in hand with the architecture. One of the applications that are needed to support Oracle includes asset life cycle management application. Since the operating assets of an organization which range from plant and equipment, to rolling stock and operating production machinery are the heart and core of the business, the ability to monitor those assets during their useful life is critical to their success. Oracle Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) provides the total solution since it is the cornerstone of a unified approach to capital asset management and long-cycle product service. In this way, the company will be able to deal with the assets that are long-lasting as oracle will enable proper tracking as well as maintenance of the assets.
Therefore, Asset Lifecycle Management consists of many solutions that are part of Oracles E-Business Suite Financials family of applications (Susan, 2001). Customer relationship management is yet another application that is needed to support oracle. Oracles integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution is a set of applications that give the company information-driven sales, service, and marketing since it is built on an open, standards-based architecture that streamlines business processes, improves data quality, and allows all key divisions to draw from the same source of data. With Oracle CRM, century 21 real estate agency owns the single best tool for customer success as well as accurate information. Likewise, Oracle supply chain management is an application which integrates and automates all key supply chain processes, from design, planning and procurement to manufacturing and fulfillment, providing a complete solution set to enable companies to power information-driven value chains. Century 21 real estate Company can anticipate market requirements and risks, adapt and innovate to respond to volatile market conditions, and align operations across global networks. In the same way, a unified data model provides a single, accurate view of the companys entire supply chain. Hence, century 21 Company can implement lean, demand driven principles and manage their increasingly complex and global supply chains. It is imperative to note that, when Oracle Supply Chain Management runs on Oracle technology, the companys speed of providing services and the company performance optimized and streamlined (Thomas, 2005).
Application interface
Oracle e-business suite use open interfaces for its applications. Open interfaces therefore includes oracle payables, oracle general ledger, oracle receivables, oracle assets, cash management, inventory as well as purchasing. Oracle general ledger refers to the section of the budget chapter that is responsible for uploading budgets. It also contains an importing journal and loading dairy rates in the user guide. Likewise, oracle payables contains credit card transaction interface table, invoice import interface which is used to review columns in a table, payable open interface as well as purchase order matching. In this way, century 21 real estate Company will be able to monitor all the transaction online without having to employ many employees to the job. In the same way, oracle receivables contains auto Invoice, Auto Lockbox, customer interface, sales tax rate interface as well as tax vendor extension. In oracle assets, there are ACE interface, budget open interface, mass addition interface and production interface which are all incorporated in the user guide to help the company manage its assets (Paul, 2000). In addition, oracle cash management contains bank statement open interface, forecasting open interface and reconciliation open interface which are incorporated in the oracle cash management user guide to help the company to manage its income. Also, oracle inventory contains customer item interface, open item interface, open transaction interface, cycle count interface as well as move order open interfaces. These refer to the inventories in the manufacturing and distribution open interfaces manual. In this way, century 21 real estate Company may be able to offer all customers especially online quality services
Difference between oracle applications and the current systems
One of the differences between oracle applications and the current system is that assets life cycle management applications provides the companies which uses it ability to monitor assets during their useful life without incurring high cost. In this way, the company is able to identify possible problems and solve it in advance. Whereas, the current system require an administrator to monitor the progress of the assets manually. Likewise, Oracles integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications give the company information-driven sales, service, and marketing since it is built on an open, standards-based architecture that streamlines business processes, improves data quality, and allows all key divisions to draw from the same source of data unlike the current system in which sales, marketing as well as provision of services are conducted differently and may not be information driven. Similarly, Oracle supply chain management application integrates and automates all key supply chain processes, from design, planning and procurement to manufacturing and fulfillment, providing a complete solution set to enable companies to power information-driven value chains. This is contrary to the current system which does not automate all the supply chain processes. Instead, the current system automates some while other processes are done manually. It is imperative that century 21 real estate Company embrace oracle e-business suite, since it will realize improved performance, increases sales as well as strong advantages to assist them out compete its competitors in the market (Jorge and Thoben, 2003).
Benefits of oracle business suite
Through the use of oracle e-business suite, century 21 real estate agency may gain various benefit in their business. One of the benefits include large oracle database since the main USP of Oracle enterprise resource planning is that it is based on Oracle Database, which in itself is a market leader. Hence the company will be in a position to take advantage of the advances in the database technology which is provided by oracle e-business suite. Likewise, the company will benefit from oracle consultants. It is vital to note that, as far as the components of the suite itself are concerned, Oracle Financials is a market leader. This makes it possible for Oracle human resource management system and Payroll system to catch up very fast. So the market indications are pretty positive and the company has enough consultants in the market to redeem. In the same way, century 21 real estate agency will benefit from user interface that are user friendly. Since Oracle Applications user interface comes in two flavors, including the Oracle Forms and the Oracle Self Service Application (HTML), the previous is meant for the power user and provides incredibly quick learning curves for people from the finance and other domains. The Oracle Self Service Application is an HTML based solution and specifically caters to the global organization where Internet plays a major role (Lisa, 2001). Another benefit that Real Estate Company will realize from Oracle e-business suite is role based security. Since Oracle has been a lead the way in Database Security systems, Oracle Database is indestructible. This is due to the fact that Oracle Applications seem to gain from legacy of secure systems. Hence, it is clear that the role based security system offered by Oracle applications is one of the better security models available. Therefore century 21 real estate agency will be secure following security aspects of Oracle. In addition, century 21 will benefit from best software which cater for specific area of human resource management and finance among others.
Basing on the above analysis on e- business, it prudent to note that e-business is a vital aspect in business especially for those organizations which need to extend their market globally. Consequently, the use of systems architecture to support e-business is equally critical since it simplifies all the processes that are involved in production of goods and services. In my opinion, it is of the essence that business undertakings take up e-business system architecture so as to ensure that all their customers are provided with sufficient as well as quality products in order to ensure effective satisfaction for their customers. In this way, the companies will be able to maximize productivity and to gain competitive edge in the market which are fundamental tools of addressing the stiff market competition.
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