* Understand the costs and benefits of modern enterprise systems
* Understand the managerial challenges associated with the selection, implementation and use of enterprise systems in organisations
* Be familiar with the basic Business Intelligence process, the impact of Big Data and other emerging technologies
* Understand the ethical issues surrounding the use of data as a corporate asset
* Critically assess organizational IT initiatives to identify shortcomings
* Work in a team to analyse business cases

The focus of this course will be on how firms implement and use information technologies such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems (e.g. SAP and Oracle) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems. Over the last two decades, the proliferation of these systems has profoundly changed the way in which management information is produced and used within organisations. Large-scale enterprise systems enable organizations to streamline their operations and collect (structured) data on every aspect of their internal organization. Implementing these large systems however often comes with a set of issues and challenges. Once implemented, data originating in these systems provides the basis for the organizations Business Intelligence function which aims to provide historical and real-time insights into business operations to support organizational decision-making. With the rise of Big Data outside the organization, Business Intelligence now also aims to integrate this (unstructured) data to get better insights into external developments.

In this course we will introduce these two types of information systems (ERP and BI) and the managerial challenges associated with them. As such this course will take a managerial approach to ERP & BI Systems. The emphasis of this course will be on the impact these systems have on organisations and people within these organisations. As such we will rely on a mix of academic articles and real-life case studies to facilitate the learning process.

Academic Articles, Case Studies (Harvard Business Cases)

• This course requires a basic knowledge on the role of information systems in organisations. Students should be aware of the various types of information systems that are used within large organisations (e.g. operational information systems versus decision support systems). Therefore an introductory course on management information systems is recommended as a prerequisite. No technical IT knowledge is required.
• An advanced level of English.