Enterprise Resource Planning:
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an important area, which has fully revolutionized the business environment. Several organisations and business systems have re-engineered the processes and have gone for adopting ERP. Other organisations are preparing themselves for adopting ERP. It has been estimated that business around the world has been spending almost $ 10 billion per year on ERP systems. ERP targets to integrate business processes through the support of an integrated computer information system.
ERP is a software architecture that facilitates the flow of information among different functions of an enterprise. It encompasses a wide set of activities supported by multi-module application software that helps a manufacturing or other business firm to manage its business activities, as product planning, inventory, purchasing, management vendor/customer service, and order tracking. Finance, Logistics and Manufacturing, Human Resource Development (HRD), and Supply-Chain are some of the commonly available application modules with mostly vendors. ERP uses a client/server environment, supported by modern Graphic User Interface (GUI) technology. The core of the entire ERP system is integration of commonly designed applications and consolidating all of the business operations into uniform system environment.
Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to
- learn several aspects related to ERP,
- know basic definition of ERP,
- understand major features of ERP,
- get insight regarding the scope of ERP,
- learn useful guidelines for ERP implementation, and
- understand difficulties in ERP implementation.