Riordan Manufacturing Riordan Manufacturing is a global plastics manufacturer with about 550 employees. Riordan Manufacturing is owned by Riordan Industries, a fortune 1000 company based in California with more than one billion in total revenues. Chemistry professor Dr. Riordan founded the company in 1991, and it has grown to a global organization with locations in Michigan, Georgia, and China. Riordan Manufacturing placed a service request for their regional branches to review existing business systems. All areas within the organization are using various business systems, all of which represent challenges. The organization needs to identify problem areas and integrate solutions. The current systems differ at each location creating compatibility issues; the Michigan plant's application system developer is no longer in business leaving no access to updates or troubleshooting. San Jose accounting application contains no source code eliminating the ability to modify the program. The F&A department's data are provided from various data files; some data is in hard copy and must be re-entered; other data files must be converted to the corresponding account codes. Turnaround time on Income Statements and Balance sheets (based on the man hours required to complete the task) takes too long; resulting in laborious monthly audits. Sales and Marketing plans to consolidate customer information are done using a CRM system, which uses Historical Sales, Past Marketing Plans and Research, and Sales Databases to create a cohesive flow of information to the Sales and Marketing. This allows the team to use the information to create strategies for future marketing plans and pricing. There is a need to upgrade systems and use software uniformly across the organization. Create a database that will stream line data collection using computerized reporting, automated accounting; installing new accounting applications at all locations creates the ability to share information and reduce time constraint issues when creating reports. Initiate a remote tech support system to assist all locations from one location. The server systems should be implemented logically on the networks at each location but will provide backup data and storage for each location except for San Jose. The San Jose site will have server solutions designed specifically for information about each site location and the company portfolio itself. Some of the most ideal server solutions can be found at Dell. At this time, Power Edge Tower Servers will be a great start. When the company expands, the home office branch can also expand into Blade Servers when needed. Tower servers are the perfect fit for Riordan Manufacturing because the company will be able to centralize all information and make it available to the intranet. In addition to this since the company is already large enough to have multiple locations worldwide, Riordan Manufacturing should convert current servers over to tower servers as well. The IT department will be charge and control of all technologies that interact with the company’s network along with the maintenance of the hardware and site. The intranet site will have the ability to provide all current corporate information to corporate executives while they are in the field, the web server would benefit from this type of upgrade as well.

The software that will be most beneficial to Riordan Manufacturing would be QuickBooks Enterprise Solution this will have all the pertinent and relevant financial and account information for the whole company; eliminating the need for hard copies to be mailed and the additional time required to transcribe all information into one database. This software will allow the company to track inventory and vendors or clients and will provide the company with a new edge in the market with the ability to access information from each branch location while not relying heavily on outdated information.