Problems faced by VISTA Builders before introducing the new system Initially, the company operated under different lines, with each line taken as a single entity. There was no consolidation of operations. These lines include the fiberglass insulations, external siding and roofing materials. Each of these lines had its own set of information systems. The company had more than two hundred rigid, old fashioned and isolated systems. Truck carriages, pricing schedules and product lines were also separate and different for each plant. Customers – due to the disintegrated system – had to make separate telephone calls when ordering each item. A customer had to make up to three different calls – one for the external sidings, another for fiberglass insulations and another for roofing materials. The company appeared as a collection of autonomous or rather independent fiefdoms. For example, before centralizing purchase, the sourcing manager, Mr. Vik Mike said that they were buying widgets from all over the world without enough knowledge of whom they were going to buy from and did not know how much they cost. This is before the company began using the SAP’s R/3 software. The management, technological and organizational issues faced by VISTA Builders face The whole process proved very expensive, estimated at about £100 million and it was also time consuming. This means that it took several years to be fully implemented. The company faced a drop in overall production and there was a deterioration in customer service during the first six months. Installing something like a new SAP means a lot since it entails changing how people have been operating in the last two decades, like in the case of the VISTA builders. The first problem that the organization faced was technical problems. The response time changed from seconds to minutes with the introduction of the new system. VISTA Builders director of global development, David Johns affirmed that the functionality was not as it was supposed to be and this, according to him, was due to inadequate testing. Another set of problems that arose with the introduction of the new system were business problems. People were assigned new roles. There were changes in communication, business processing and even in management. The new SAP system, for example, required the entire co-operation to come up with a single product and price list. The staff resented this since they were incapable as a result of lack of enough knowledge. The staff had not been trained and the workload was overwhelming. This made them very erratic in their operations. In any business or organization, configuration is a great challenge. It requires a motivated team that is selected with a lot of keenness. It requires a team that is motivated and empowered to perform. To come up with such a team, it requires a serious employee education through vigorous training (Daniel, Jeane, & Marie, 2000) John admits that they had under-estimated the impact that an overhaul of an old system would have had on their operations. ERP systems are quite complicated and errors are the order of the day. In the old system, VISTA builders could afford to easily work their way out of errors without being noticed or without being caught and this only affected the local functions. In the R/3 system, there was no time to correct errors since databases were updated immediately the data was entered. Data flows instantaneously. It moves from purchasing to logistic syst