What is ERP SOFTWARES ?
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a business management system that comprises integrated sets of comprehensive software.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a business management system that comprises integrated sets of comprehensive software,
which can be used, when successfully implemented, to manage and integrate all the business functions within an organisation. These sets usually include a set of mature business applications and tools for nancial and cost accounting, sales and distribution, materials management, human resource, production planning and computer integrated manufacturing, supply chain, and customer information . These packages have the ability to facilitate the ow of information between all supply chain processes (internal and external) in an organisation. Furthermore, an ERP system can be used as a tool to help improve the performancelevel of a supply chain network by helping to reduce cycle times. However, it has traditionally been applied in capital-intensive industries such as manufacturing, construction, aerospace and defence. Recently, ERP systems have been expanded beyond manufacturing and introduced to the nance, health care, hotel chains, education, insurance, retail and telecommunications sectors. ERP is now considered to be the price of entry for running a business, and at least atpresent, for being connected to other enterprises in a network economy to create“business to business” electronic commerce .Furthermore, many multinationals restrict their business to only those companies that operate the sameERP software as the multinational rm. It is a fact that ERP is for big rms and smaller rms have to adjust their business model and approach according to the practices and software adopted by the big rms. With the opening up of the economy, small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have found the going very difcult. Since they do not have the robustness associated with large companies, SMEs have to tap the power of IT and an integrated information system to stay competitive and customer oriented. ERP is often considered the answer for their survival . Therefore, the ERP software market has become one of today’s largest IT investments worldwide.ERP allows companies to integrate various departmental information. It has evolvedfrom a human resource management application to a tool that spans IT management.For many users, an ERP is a “do it all” system that performs everything from entry ofsales orders to customer service. It attempts to integrate the suppliers and customerswith the manufacturing environment of the organisation. For example, a purchaseentered in the order module passes the order to a manufacturing application, which inturn sends a materials request to the supply-chain module, which gets the necessaryparts from suppliers and uses a logistics module to get them to the factory. At the sametime the purchase transaction shows in general – a ledger module as revenue. Thetraditional application systems, which organisations generally employ, treat eachtransaction separately. They are built around the strong boundaries of specicfunctions that a specic application is meant to cater for. ERP stops treating thesetransactions separately as stand alone activities and considers them to be a part ofinterlinked processes that make up the business.
