Competitive Advantage of Multinational Company in Pakistan through the Implementation of ERP Software

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF MULTINATIONAL

COMPANY IN PAKISTAN THROUGH THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF ERP SOFTWARE
Abida Ellahi*

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence on the impact of enterprise resource planning systems for multinational company
adopting them, with particular emphasis on its competitive edge as part of business processes .By studying its business process,
the focus of this study is to determine the level to which ERP systems have helped companies in achieving that, focusing
attention on amalgamation of work. This study has examined the underlying reasons why a particular multinational company
chooses to convert from unadventurous or conventional information systems (IS) to ERP systems. In this paper preliminary
interviews are used as a tool of primary data gathering. The results confirmed an increase in sales while decrease in cost and
time.
Keywords: Multinational corporations, Enterprise Resource Planning, Competitive Advantage, Conventional Information
System, Modules, Resource based theory, Customer order processing, Cost, Time, Sale

INTRODUCTION that compete in the world market want to be better,

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence
on the impact of ERP systems for companies
adopting them, with particular emphasis on their
competitive edge as part of business processes. The
theme of this study is to determine the extent to
which ERP systems have facilitated the companies
in attaining the competitive advantage, focusing
attention on integration of work.
Recent and rapid changes in the business milieu
such as privatization, deregulation, globalization
and as a result the augmented competition have
transformed the large organizations into giant
multinational corporations (MNCs).
The changing business environment of world
has implied the need for MNCs to search for new
ways to survive and succeed. A little competition
can be a healthy thing. It can also be both costly
and terrible if a company is not up to par with others
in its particular business or industry. A company
can, however, significantly increase its chances of
coming out on top by creating a competitive edge.
Having a competitive edge means the possession
of an advantage over its competitors. Companies
to make processes more efficient and to improve
the quality of their products.
For many years, IT and innovations in the
software and communication technologies have
presented many solutions in order to fulfill all these
aims. The technology put forwards the essential
tools for MNCs to respond effectively and
efficiently to the changes. Similarly in today’s
highly automated IT/Technology-led business
milieu, MNCs are compelled to keep them up-to-
date with the innovative technologies in order to
remain competitive. An example of such
technologies is an enterprise resource planning
(ERP) system. An ERP system is a generic term for
an integrated enterprise-wide computing system.
It includes a set of business applications (modules)
used to carry out the common business functions
such as supply chain, customer relation
management, accounting, stock control, logistics
etc.
The essence of a complete ERP system is to
automate business processes, share common data
across the organization but most importantly, to
produce real-time data. These in turn result in

*
MS Leading to PhD Islamic International University Islamabad, E-mail: abidaellahi@gmail.com

Vol. 2, No. 1, January-June 2010 39

 Abida Ellahi
higher effectiveness and efficiency in operations
and consequently improved customer satisfaction
which leads to its competitive edge. In this study, a
case of multinational company operating in
Pakistan, is discussed in order o understand the
underlying reasons for ERP systems success or the
benefits accrued.
After introduction the preceding sections of
paper are prior research related to ERP and MNCs
in section two, research methodology in section
three, results and discussion are in section four,
while section five concludes.
LITERATURE REVIEW
ERP in Developing Countries
During the past 30 years the overall business
environment and the information technology
embedded within it have seen a lot of tremendous
changes (Huber, 1991). Bretschneider (1997)argues
that according to practical observation of
management no other technology affects day to day
activities of managers than do recent advances in
computer technology.
Over the last decade, companies have neglected
legacy or traditional systems in order to adapt a new
class of broad packaged application software which
is designed to integrate the core business activities
of an organization. These are called Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems, enterprise-wide
systems, or enterprise systems (Arik &Tony, 2002).
Many researches have done on ERP
implementation issues and cases in the developed
countries (e.g Duplaga & Astani, 2003; Mabert., Soni
& Venkataramanan, 2000) but unfortunately there
are not enough studies about the experiences of
developing countries especially in Asia. However
some researchers have examined the issues of ERP
implementation and national cultures in Asian
countries (Liang., Xue., Boulton & Byrd, 2004; Soh.,
Kien & Tay-Yap, 2000). Among these researches
most of the studies discussed the drivers,
implementation setbacks, factors effecting ERP
successful implementation and the resulting
benefits of ERP. It is important to note that new
technology issues are different in developing
countries from those observed in developed
countries. The reason for this difference may be
40 International Journal of Data Analysis and Information Systems © Serials Publications
different economic, social and cultural aspects.
Davison (2002) suggests that awareness of cultural
differences and preferences can certainly help to
improve the assessment of ERP suitability and any
successive implementation, and that a one-size-fits-
all approach is unlikely to be successful.
Competitive Advantage
According to the Porter (1980) competitive
advantage is positional superiority based on
combination of differentiation, cost superiority or
through operating in a protected niche. Meta.,
Fuerst & Barney (1995) delineate the concept of
competitive advantage of firm by regarding it the
implementation of a value creating strategy which
is currently not being implemented by any
competitor.
The sources of competitive advantage have been
discussed in many contexts. One of them is resource
based theory (RBT). RBT emphasizes the importance
of internal sources of an organization. According to
RBT the source of competitive advantage lies in
internal sources, unique competence and core
capabilities of an organization (Barney, 1991;
Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). The linkage of RBT to
competitive advantage and sustainable competitive
advantage can be observed by two central
perspectives. One is resource necessity paradigm and
other is core competencies perspectives.
Resource necessity view confirms that, firms
will have a competitive advantage only if they have
valuable, rare non-sustainable, non imitable, non
replicable, heterogeneous and immobile resources
(Teece., Pisano & Shuen, 1997). Day & Winsely
(1988). in their studies discussed on two definite
sources entailed in creating a competitive
advantage one is superior skills and other is
superior resources. Hunt and Morgan (1995)
proposed the categories of potential resources.
These are financial, physical, legal, human,
organizational, valuable and relational.
Based on the above discussion it is concluded
that RBT provides a framework for understanding
the sources of competitive advantage.
ERP and Competitive Advantage of MNCs
According to Parrish (2006) the globally integrated
enterprise has appeared when companies have
 Competitive Advantage of Multinational Company in Pakistan through the Implementation of ERP Software
Figure 1: RBT based Framework of Competitive Advantage
(Barney, 1991)
realized that they must reinforce their global
processes and operate as a single, global business
if they want to continue to grow and succeed in
the twenty-first century. The benefits of doing
this include improved business management,
greater efficiency into processes as well as
increased customer loyalty, real-time information
for improved decision making and lower
IT support costs. The increased concentration on
enterprise resource planning as a business enabler
is leading the way for the globally integrated
enterprise.
The most dominant market for enterprise
resource planning vendors has traditionally been
the multinational corporations (Clemmons &
Simon, 2001). Until recently, most vendors have
promoted a “one size fits all” solution built on best
practices of industry. This approach forced
organizations to either conform to the best practices
as suggested by vendors and implementation
consultants or rely on extremely costly
reconfiguration of their ERP package.
Mostly the primary intention of every MNC is
to obtain the distinctive knowledge so that it helps
to establish themselves as centers of excellence
(Moore & Birkenshaw, 1998). Whether it is the
matter of distinct knowledge base of the head
quarters or of the subsidiaries of MNCs, it has been
widely observed that enterprise messaging system
is a key managerial function necessary for achieving
competitive advantage (Grant, 1996).
Tarafdar & Roy (2003) observed that enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems are designed to
Vol. 2, No. 1, January-June 2010
integrate various functions and processes and are
used by organizations as the first-level systems in
their information architecture. Companies can fail
to achieve strategic benefits if integrating business
processes using the modules provided by ERP
software prevent the firms from best utilization of
these unique benefits which can be sources of
advantage over competitors. However, ERP
systems may be unable to provide a competitive
advantage based upon the foundations of system
value, distribution, and inimitability. On the
contrary competitive advantage can be gained by
careful planning and unbeaten supervision of ERP
projects and the post implementation alignment of
the ERP system with the organization’s strategic
direction (Yin, 2002). The above mentioned
literature review indicates that some major aspects
of enterprise resource planning have been studied
in different researches as shown by many researches
especially in context of multinational companies as
a source of their competitive advantage. These
researches show that enterprise resource planning
soft wares are the current scorching issues of
business environments and it can be a source of
competitive advantage if carefully analyzed from
all aspects.
RESEARCH SETTING AND METHODOLOGY
The Site
ICI being a multinational company is one of the
world’s major specialty chemicals and paints
businesses with products and ingredients
developed for a wide range of markets. ICI was set
up as a public limited company in Pakistan in 1952.
In Pakistan its head office is located in Karachi. ICI’s
presence in this part of the world, however,
predates the formation of the public limited
company and indeed Pakistan itself. Quality of
products and services and innovation has been the
foundations of ICI Paints. Critical success factors
of growth for ICI Paints are the deployment of new
technology, innovation and the successful
marketing and promotion of key brands.
Technology and innovation are important factors
for ICI Paints. Success is enhanced by being first to
the market with innovative, value-adding products
and services that meet market needs. ICI is the
subject of the study in this paper.
41
 Abida Ellahi
Research Design
The research presented in this paper is a case study.
In this, the impact of ERP systems for company
adopting them, with particular emphasis on its
competitive edge as part of business processes has
been studied.
The following research questions were designed
to guide this research effort.
• Why the multinational company chooses to
convert from unadventurous or
conventional information systems (IS) to
ERP systems?
• What are the effects of ERP in terms of
increase in sales and decrease in time and
cost of operations?
The competitive advantage of ICI paints is
studied in terms of reduction in time and cost of
operations while increase in sales orders. Because
of the exploratory nature of this paper, the open-
ended, face-to-face interviews with key informants
were selected as tool to gather information. The key
informants for the study were 30 employees at both
strategic and operative levels who had sufficient
knowledge of the particular ERP software being
used by ICI Paints company. The employees of sales
and IT department were interviewed. Along with
the interviews, secondary data was obtained from
the company’s reports and literature review.
Figures about cost, sales and time (three variables
of competitive advantage) were provided by ICI
paints head quarter Lahore. The analysis of data
has been carried out on the basis of primary data
obtained from ICI paints head office Lahore and
ICI paints Islamabad.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The study aims to assess the competitive advantage
of ICI company as a result of implementation of
ERP. With the help of preliminary interviews,
technical and sales information was collected. ERP
contains many modules. Modules are the
complementary units comprising the whole ERP
software. It was not possible to study all the
modules at once due to resource constraints. Hence,
for this study one module, which is customer order
processing module, was selected.
42 International Journal of Data Analysis and Information Systems © Serials Publications
Reasons for Choosing ERP
The results of interviews show that in order to
compete in the world market ICI has an aim to be
better, to make processes more efficient and to
improve the quality of their products. As for many
years, IT has been seen as a tool for achieving all
these aims so ICI paint took the advantage of IT.
As a starting point, the management or the
administration has used word processing and
accounting systems. While successful in this
approach, the company identified that there is a
need for integration of isolated systems like
manufacturing, sales etc. The company realized that
more sophisticated systems are needed to solve
problems of handling and disseminating complex
information, to automate processes within
procurement, to get an overview of production and
to optimize production, etc. To avoid duplication
and to utilize data as best as possible, to make more
advancement in the sales processing system like
customers order processing etc, the integrated
system was required.
The system before the implementation of
integrated software was partially manual. The
software used was inventory sales receiving system
(ISRC). This software was in-house developed. The
software could not fully meet the high demands of
company work processes like inventory,
warehousing and specially the customer sales
processing. So the company decided to switch from
the present system to more sophisticated ERP
system. The particular software implemented as
ERP was Business Planning and Control System
(BPCS).
Technical Information of BPCS
BPCS is an acronym for business planning and
control system, pronounced as “Bee picks”. BPCS
was developed by system software associates (SSA)
and is used to control the operations of
manufacturing companies. BPCS is in the category
of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Many of the BPCS applications are somewhat stand-
alone. Companies can choose to implement only the
financial applications or of the manufacturing
applications or both. BPCS has a competitive
strength over other ERP vendor competition,
however, because of its manufacturing and
planning applications. BPCS is one of the most
 Competitive Advantage of Multinational Company in Pakistan through the Implementation of ERP Software
popular AS/400 software packages that address the
core system needs of industrial sector companies.
As the applications of BPCS is dependent on
the version released. ICI paints are using the BPCS
4.0 5cd version offered by SSA. BPCS was first
implemented in ICI paints in the year 1993.
However in 1993 some applications were adapted
by the company. After the successful
implementation and working results of the software
in 1998 it was decided to fully implement the BPCS
software. The applications of ERP are deployed on
client server basis. The operating system in ICI
paints running the BPCS is OS/400 R5v3. OS/400
is the operating system IBM uses for their AS/400
(now called iSeries) computers. The server
platforms used in the company are DB/2 which is
a data base management system in which data is
stored in the form of tables and the relationship
among the data is also stored in the form of tables.
Order Processing Module of BPCS
According to the respondents, ICI paints in terms
of employees, products and services is a large sized
company. It has a direct interaction and deals with
the customers on daily basis. For this purpose, the
company has to be sensitive towards its customers.
In order to retain the customers, the company needs
to become fully active in dealings with the
customers. Customers of ICI paints are mostly
permanent customers and comprising of dealers.
The orders are placed by customers through
different mediums like telephone, personal coming
etc. One of the departments of company is located
in Islamabad. It is a warehouse and not a
manufacturing plant. All the products come from
Lahore on daily basis. This section deals with the
matters of sales of paints in range of approximately
six hundred and eighty kilometer area. The main
areas are of Rawalpindi division, Hazara division
and many other small areas of NWFP excluding DI
khan.
In ICI paints Islamabad inventory sales
receiving system (ISRS) software was used for
twelve years. When an organization acquires a
computer system, accounting is normally the first
business application that is computerized. In the
past most businesses had to develop their own
accounting software. In ICI paint ISRS was also in
house developed system.
Vol. 2, No. 1, January-June 2010
The system was unable to fully integrate all the
customer relevant data. As a result of it, the
company was facing many problems. The main
problems faced were that transactions were not
timely, mishandling of data because data was not
well organized, lack of accuracy of data, difficulties
in report generation etc. One problem always leads
to another problem. Customer orders were received
on manual forms. This acquired more time than
automated system. After the implementation of
customer order processing module of BPCS the
disadvantages or hurdles faced by conventional
system were overcome.
Order processing and billing of BPCS is a highly
functional module with many facilities. It is
designed to allow entering the orders quickly and
effectively with maximum flexibility in the
minimum time. It has enabled the entry of orders
quickly and accurately and than process them
whatever the source may be e.g. phone, fax Internet
or palm devices.
Order processing and billing includes multiple
customer and transaction inquiries thus enables
to access these within an order. The customer order
processing module effectively manages customer
sales orders like order entry and order
maintenance. It supports the order management
process with visibility into product availability,
order status, customer credit information, product
pricing etc. It also maintains the sales history of
customer.
Orders were collected by getting the
information from dealers on manually filled order
form all over the country. These forms were sent/
brought to sales offices. Post ship invoicing was
carried out. Order fulfillment and backorders were
tracked manually. After BPCS orders were collected
on forms from dealers. Then orders are processed
in customer order processing module.
In 2005 the sales force of ICI paints became
automated with palm devices. After this advent,
orders are now collected on electronic forms using
palm devices from dealers. Debtors and stock
position is also available in these devices. Daily,
sales officers synchronize these devices with the
computer. In this way order’s information is
transferred into BPCS and then invoices are
generated from BPCS.
43
 Abida Ellahi

Figure 2: Overview of Sales Order Process

Each customer is allocated a separate code. All

categories of products, their color, required
quantities, requested delivery dates etc, from the
dealers are collected on palm devices (It was taken
on forms before) as indicated in the figures 2 and 3.
Figure three is showing palm devices (PD)
forms. The dealers name is saved in the PD and
then on his requested order the product type,
quantity, packs size etc. all are feed in PD. Then
palm devices are connected with the help of data
cables to the system (BPCS) in order to transfer the
data. The further processing is carried out in order
processing module. The invoice is generated in the
system. The sales history of customer is checked.
Along with it, every customer has a credit limit. The
credit limit is checked and than other information
is adjusted in the system like order date, its delivery
date etc. The slip is released, printed and than
confirmed. After it, the warehouse availability of
requested products are checked and confirmed.
The customer account management module of
order processing module contains two sections one
is “bill to” and other is “ship to” section. The bill to
section contains the features of invoice address and
contact information. It provides the separate
customer alpha lookup for account inquiries,
defines the billing company and currency. The ship
to section contains the multiple delivery addresses
for the customer. Some times the ship to address
differs from the bill to address. It contains a default
route code to filter the pick lists. Some of the screen
shots of business planning control software are
shown in figure 4 and 5. Figure 3: Screen Shots of Palm Devices

44 International Journal of Data Analysis and Information Systems © Serials Publications

 Competitive Advantage of Multinational Company in Pakistan through the Implementation of ERP Software

requested, order status, amount due are displayed

Figure 4: Screen Shot of Order Processing Module of BPCS
The figure shows the order inquiry section of
customer account management. In it the customer
number is visible as each customer is allotted a
separate number. The address is also mentioned on
it. The date of receipt of order, the amount in
Pakistani currency, the name of person who has
received the order on palm device, order status,
order type etc. are also displayed on one screen shot.
The order status shows that either the order is of
industrial (I), decorative (D), or refinish (R) paint.
on it. The order status represents the partially
picked, partially shipped, partially invoiced
quantity remaining and backorder (number of
items).
This section allows selecting any part of the list
like customer (number, name), customer purchase
order (sales person, warehouse), item (number,
description), request date range and order number
etc. Multiple filters can be selected to narrow the
argument search like customer, salespersons,
warehouse, and item.
If an order is cancelled by customer then
it can be deleted easily without affecting the
order from customer order processing module.
Each customer has its own credit limit, special
pricing and terms. The credit limit is established
by values or days which are checked automatically
at order entry time. The discount rates are also
displayed.
Observed Potential Benefits of ERP
According to the respondents after the
implementation of BPCS the company observed and
experienced the tremendous increase in sales or
orders, reduced cost of operations, reduce time of
operation, efficient performance of employees and
information availability etc. Employees or users of
the software are given on the job training because
it is not very much difficult to operate especially
for sales department.

Table 1
Cost, Sales & Time of Operation Figure
Operations of Before After After automated
customer order ERP ERP sales force
processing implemen- implemen- with palm
module tation tation devices (2006)
year year
(1997) (1998)
Cost of operations 7 Million 5.1 Million 5 Million
Sales 8.9 Million 13.3 Million 34.5 Million
Figure 5: Screen Shot of Order Processing Module Time of order 2-3 days Twenty Twenty
delivery four four hours
In the above figure the screenshot of customer hours (as requested
order inquiry in customer order processing module by customer
is displayed including the history of previous orders Source: ICI Paints Headquarter Pakistan
of particular dealer. The order amount, when it was

Vol. 2, No. 1, January-June 2010 45

 Abida Ellahi
The table 1 shows the figures of total sales, cost
and time of the company. The sales figures of ICI
Islamabad were in few lac (two to three) per year
before ERP implementation. However after its
implementation the sales increased up to seven to
eight lac per year. In 2006 first time the sales raised
up to one million. Orders are delivered within
twenty four hours within the city (Islamabad range)
and it can take up to seventy two hours outside the
range.
The data in the above table indicates that the
benefits of ERP are obvious in terms of reduction
in time and cost of operations while increase in sales
order. The only reason for this is that orders are
entered in less time in computer and then further
processing of sales order like verification of stock,
credit limit etc. can be done in less time just in a
click. Orders can be fully processed in less time.
They are delivered within twenty fours hours.
Similarly cost is reduced in sense of reduction of
manual record keeping (stationery), and errors
reduction in the manual record keeping etc. All of
the data indicates that utilization of enterprise
resource planning software can make business
processing more efficient and effective thus leading
to competitive advantage of a company. The
Figure 6: ERP in MNC Working in Developing Country:
A Source of CA
46 International Journal of Data Analysis and Information Systems © Serials Publications
benefits occurred while leading to the competitive
advantage in this case of the company can be
discussed in terms of resource based theory.
The above model clearly indicates the potential
benefits experienced by the company operating in
Pakistan. According to the model ERP provides
value, rareness, non imitable and organized
resources by providing sharing benefits, adding
value by reducing cost, understanding clients,
external focus, development of integration and
business capabilities, replacing outdated
information system thus reducing the cost, and by
providing customization by modifying
functionalities of modules in compliance to its
business. It is obvious that these can lead to the
competitive advantage of a firm.
CONCLUSION
The assertion of this study is that an ERP system
grants the potential for augmented knowledge
capabilities for business and the resulted
knowledge capabilities such as generation,
combination-recombination and exploitation of
knowledge which can provide a source of
competitive advantage especially for multinational
companies.
During the carrying out of this research it is
observed that ERP provides applications for
financials, supply chain, distribution and
requirements planning for multiple projects carried
out by a company. Similarly it also facilitates
intelligent resource planning as a solution of
problems of rapidly increasing and changing
constraints such as materials availability, market
speed, and business costs per location. Similarly an
ERP system also allows decision makers to become
an intelligent and responsive organization in the
global marketplace.
The study also shows that ERP is not just a
computer project; it’s a major business decision
challenge. Choosing a poor technology can lead to
a series of problems, but choosing a system that
does not truly match the needs of the business can
create even more serious difficulties, even if it is
based on the latest and greatest technology.
But from all these points it is concluded that
acquisition of this software is expensive but once it
is being implemented it offers such types of
 Competitive Advantage of Multinational Company in Pakistan through the Implementation of ERP Software
advantages which lags behind the cost of
implementation and diminishes its importance and
sorrows of being costly or expensive.
In short from this study conclusion can be
drawn that ERP functions can be used to implement
completely new ways of performing business
processes. Of course, competitors may follow along
and use the same approach. However, it may often
be a good strategy to attack from a different
position. Not all competitors have the ability to
compete on another playing field, such as on
information technology. The companies that build
up competence in this area may therefore get an
important strategic or competitive advantage.
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