Rite Aid Corporation which ranks as the third largest retail drugstore chain in the United states, control about 2,380 drugstores in 28 states across professionals pharmacy service, a full selection of health and personal care products, an assortment of general products in the nation and in the District of Columbia ( Rite Aid, 2007 ). Rite Aid has a great management team to help them with their success their team includes Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Special Advisor, Corporate Strategy ,Chief Operating Officer ,Chief Administrative Officer ,Executive Vice President – Pharmacy, Executive Vice President, Store Operations ,Executive Vice President and General Counsel( Rite Aid, 2007). Differentiate between management and leadership is very different for example, response to its huge losses, Rite Aid has said it expects to spend more than $94 million to reassess and restate its financial results for 1998 and 1999( ). Furthermore, that includes rerunning mainframe-based accounting systems and paying IT people overtime to work with internal and external accountants and auditors during the process. Still, Rite Aid does not plan to replace its combination homegrown Computer Corp. accounting system.Rite Aide challenged by the complication and lack of standard interfaces the finance and accounting functions support throughout the organization. Data is not formats or transported in standard border or structure. Manual work is required to fit data within budget codes and corporate formatting standards. This manual system is error prone and open for possible scam and abuse.
Hardware, software, support and maintenance costs grow each year with multiple systems in each local region running different types of software and hardware. The application and hardware support teams are larger than could be possible with one integrated solution.
Rite Aide has choices in the solution that our organization can implement to solve these financial systems integration issues. The main issue facing it’s Financing and Accounting department is the lack of standardized systems, which includes software, data interfaces, and processes. Here are some solutions, Solution 1: Maintain and Enhance Existing Systems, the organization has three very different Finance and Accounting functions that need to be consolidating to provide a seamless environment that is able to grow with the business. One option would be to continue focusing the attention of IT and Financial Services Divisions on maintaining and enhancing the existing systems. This would require no upfront capital expense, but does not meet our short or long-term business requirements.
Although Riordan Manufacturing could easily go with an entirely different system altogether, they need to pick the best one out of the bunch because we have already invested heavily on customizing each system organization. For example, Aidewill not have to convert the data across the entire organization and training would only be focused to regions migrating to the new system.
Solution 2 : Rite Aide need to change the reporting systems it could be enhanced to have exporting capability for different formats, flexible report controls like chart, barcode for item tracking, rich text, and sub-report controls that allow for custom designs. HTTP handlers and web server control to make it easier to view reports from multiple locations. Reporting data needs to be in both RAW and parsed format, the RAW should be able to use third party reporting tools, designed the way the user needs to see the data. There should be a master report option that allows the user to make a template of the most used formats to see different data sets. The interface to the software must be instinctive and user friendly, optimized to prevent slow down while large amounts of data is displayed for reporting. The interface will require usability testing for the employees to give feedback of what does and does not work as anticipated. Only after resulting repairs are complete can the interface can be deemed user optimized. This would be an expensive and tedious process that may not help with support and hardware costs. The overall cost of this project alone could exceed that of a complete system conversion or replacement.
. In order to fully integrate the different systems into one solution that everyone can use across the entire organization data would need to be merged into one data source. Three very different systems support each independent operating area within the company; the format of the data would need to be prepared so that it can be exported to a data format that can be read generally by all systems. At two of the sites, the systems run on the UNIX platform; and while they are completely different solutions, they would more than likely be able to read each other’s data with just a little bit of modification. However, the corporate office uses a Windows based solution which is an entirely different platform from the other two. .
A plan will be drafted and implemented that would involve third party vendor support and the IT department. The plan would involve working with a data mapping vendor like IBM to see if the data can be exported to a universal format. We will need to map the data elements for the destination system to be capable of importing the file. We must first use data analysts to map the logical format of the various source systems and the associated data elements in the new ERP system.

Hardware upgrades and Software Implementation Tasks
Before any hardware upgrades are performed, we need to do an analysis of all systems to make sure that there is not equipment already satisfying the requirements of the new software. In addition, this will be providing for a perfect time to do an inventory scan for asset tracking. Once the analysis phase is completed, the required hardware upgrades will be ordered for implementation. The software implementation tasks are, planning, implementation strategy, scheduling, and training. that all employees are trained. Training of setting up new hardware and the software for new employees needs to be covered and to make sure that all users have been setup with the appropriate accounts and passwords. Cross training of technical support staff moving to the new system must also be a priority in making the system operational across the enterprise.
For the continued success of Rite Aid we must migrate to one ERP system. This project is critical for the success and future supportability of our financial software and finance, supply chain and billing departments. If this work delayed, it may put at risk our ability to compete in the world marketplace and put this organization at incredible risk in financial audits. However for Rite Aid to succeed in this marketplace today’s world it need to become more employee friendly and more IT Knowledgeable.

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