Adriaan Vorster is an old fashioned analog electrical systems engineer employed by the University of Johannesburg as Chief Information Officer.

He has designed, written, implemented and life cycle managed information systems for use in tertiary education and industry and has been a consultant to industry for a number of years, specializing in enterprise architectures. He has contributed to international and local conferences and has published on the use of the Zachman Framework in mine planning.

He has spent the last three years replacing the information systems at UJ with an ERP suite whilst coping with the incorporation of two Vista campuses to the Rand Afrikaans University and the subsequent merger of RAU with the Technikon Witwatersrand to form the University of Johannesburg.

Presentation
Enterprise Architecture and Value Realisation
Information systems, as critical business process enablers, are increasingly being relied upon to provide answers instead of merely processing data. Internationally the reliance on technology alone to deliver benefits has been replaced with a deeper understanding of the complexities and interdependencies inherent to supporting the modern enterprise. The life cycle management of the information systems domain is replacing earlier attempts that focussed on isolated pieces of the whole and invariably led to the fragmentation of the enterprise.

Feeding off the experiences gained during a recent ERP implementation, as well as experiences in the consulting industry, this paper deals with the impact of Lehman’s laws on information systems and provides a bare knuckle look at the realities and complexities of implementing an ERP system into a modern distributed business enterprise.

The presentation will examined the essential difficulties associated with the implementation and life cycle management of information systems, a very complex issue that has in most instances not been well handled by enterprises, vendors or the consulting industry.

The Framework is used to generate the governing constraint set and valuable guidance concerning the stages of ERP implementations will be discussed.

return to program