Riordan Software Architecture

Riordan Software Architecture

Riordan Manufacturing specializes in the design and production of plastic goods and is the chief subsidiary of Riordan Industries, Inc.--a growing Fortune 1000 company. The enterprise consists of the corporate headquarters in San Jose, CA, a beverage container plant in Albany, GA, a customized parts plant in Pontiac, MI, and a fan parts plant in Hangzhou, China (Riordan Manufacturing, 2005). As part of company's strategic vision to achieve greater operating efficiencies, Riordan hired Team C to develop a software architecture that will help integrate key functions, reduce unnecessary data replication, and increase real-time business intelligence. Riordan is particularly interested in adopting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) technologies. Team C will identify and briefly describe all the applications required of Riordan's operations and discuss the conceptual architecture developers may use to construct an integrated solution.

Required Applications

Customer Relationship Management

Riordan needs application tools to help manage clients more effectively from the initial identification of client leads through customer retention initiatives. Part of Riordan's strategic goals include improving customer satisfaction by 20% and securing the top 20 largest accounts in the field (Riordan Manufacturing, 2005). To help reach these goals, the firm will need a three-pronged approach to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program. They will need to integrate sales force automation, customer service, and marketing automation with other departments (Robinson, 2011).

Sales and Marketing

Riordan currently has several disparate databases and methods of capturing historical sales records and marketing initiatives. The company will need a consolidated sales and marketing application accessible to all affected departments utilizing a relational database management system (RDBMS).

Project Management

Riordan needs an application to help plan and track company projects to aid in time and resource allocation with the goal of reducing project costs. Several open-source and commercial applications solutions are available such as Microsoft Project, Primavera P6 pro, Redmine, and ProjectPier.

Manufacturing Product Planning

Riordan needs an application to help plan manufacturing activities based on available materials, customer demands, and human and systems performance characteristics. The goal for this application is to produce a manufacturing schedule that will meet customer orders while maintaining the lowest supply and storage inventories possible.

Supply Chain Management

Riordan has historically maintained a good track record of supplying customers locally, but has sometimes failed to meet customer deadlines in the northern part of the United States, particularly in the winter months (Riordan Manufacturing, 2005). Part of the new distribution strategy will be to acquire a new Supply Chain Management (SCM) system. The goal of the new system is to make the management of customer processing, specifically non-local customers, more efficient. The new system will require tight integration with inventory and supplier management and will make available more options for on-time customer fulfillment, especially during those winter months.

Distribution

As an expanding company with facilities located world-wide, Riordan must improve the management of its internal and external resources. Riordan needs a complete distribution software package that will tightly integrate supply chain management, inventory, accounting, and customer relationship management.

Human Resources Information System

Riordan Manufacturing Company's HRIS system was installed in 1992 and has been part of the financial system package used to keep track of all employee information. When there any changes made by employees, the employees are required to submit them to both HR and their managers in writing. The employee change is recorded and transferred over to the payroll department for updating. The goal is to update the existing HRIS system with the installation of a single application that will keep all HR data access streamlined and efficient.

Finance & Accounting

Riordan's finance and accounting functions are independently operated at each facility. The data from each facility is not aggregated into a central data repository. To solve this problem, Riordan will look at software packages such as QuickBooks, which will integrate well with the existing Human Resource Information system (HRIS) to organize the finance and accounting requirements in real-time.

General Office Applications

Riordan will utilize Microsoft Office Suite 2010 for utilizing Microsoft Word for document writing, Microsoft PowerPoint for presentations, and Microsoft Excel for spreadsheets, and Microsoft Exchange server with Microsoft Outlook on their desktop and mobile computing devices for email.

Web Publishing

For Web publishing Adobe® Contribute® CS5, software will be utilized to provide a powerful web publishing and website management tool that integrates authoring, reviewing, and publishing in an easy-to-use "What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get" (WYSIWYG) HTML editor. This application will increase web publishing productivity collaboratively while simplifying oversight and approval tasks.

File Sharing and Collaboration

To ensure secure file sharing and collaboration, FolderMaestro enables business file sharing and file collaboration for users around the world. Instead of using email, FTP, or a centralized file repository, FolderMaestro ensures that project files are always up to date on every file server through real-time file replication.

Teleconferencing Distance Learning

Riordan needs obtain teleconferencing technologies to help drastically reduce traveling expenses related to systems training. The company may consider