Moving to Midsize

2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (12) ◽  
pp. 48-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Thilmany

This article elaborates the benefits of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for small-to-midsize businesses. A large number of small-to-midsize engineering and manufacturing operations are now bringing enterprise resource planning systems into their operations. ERP software is distinct from a product lifecycle management application, which is where engineers store information about the product they’ve defined. ERP systems link design and manufacturing with business processes such as new orders, purchasing, credit, accounting, supply chain management, and planning. They stretch from business headquarters across production facilities, warehouses, and sales offices. By linking these operations, ERP helps executives understand and forecast all the factors—from sales and purchases to asset utilization and hiring—that might affect profits. An ERP system offers control over all areas of the business in one centralized place. Several developments are now helping smaller companies make the transition: costs for ERP systems are coming down, implementation is becoming easier, and systems are targeted to smaller players.

Author(s):  
Kelvin Kabeti Omieno

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a complex and comprehensive software that integrates various enterprise functions and resources. Although ERP systems have been depicted as a solution in many organizations, there are many negative reports on ERP success, benefits, and effect on user performance. Previous research noted that there is a lack of knowledge and awareness of ERP systems and their overall value to ERP organizations. ERP systems have been widely studied during the past decade; yet they often fail to deliver the intended benefits originally expected. One notable reason for their failures is the lack of understanding in user requirements. There are many studies conducted to propose software quality models with their quality characteristics. However, there is currently no dedicated software quality model that can describe usability maturity and involve new features of ERP systems. This chapter proposes a framework for evaluating the usability maturity as a quality attribute of ERP systems.


Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are implemented in companies to improve their business processes. An ERP system entails extensive functional and technological aspects during its implementation. Teaching ERP systems for computer science students implies addressing these two aspects: ERP functionality and technological features. It is a challenge for teachers to design practical experimentation that students can perform in the teaching environment, due to the prerequisite of a deep understanding of the business processes, business user requirements, and the technological complexity of ERP systems. In order to improve student skills in ERP systems, we encourage active learning among students. In this chapter, we present a methodology using open and closed practicals to learn about both technical and functional aspects of ERP systems. Using these practicals allows us to prepare and organize this teaching/ learning process.


2011 ◽  
pp. 758-765
Author(s):  
Leopoldo E. Colmenares ◽  
Jim O. Otieno

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is an integrated set of programs that provides support for core organizational activities, such as manufacturing and logistics, finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources. An ERP system helps the different parts of an organization share data and knowledge, reduce costs, and improve management of business processes. In spite of their benefits, many ERP systems fail (Stratman & Roth, 1999). Implementing an ERP system is a major undertaking. About 90% of ERP implementations are late or over budget (Martin, 1998), and the success rate of ERP systems implementation is only about 33% (Zhang et al., 2003).


Author(s):  
N. Brehm ◽  
D. Lübke ◽  
J. Gómez

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems consist of many software components, which provide specific functionality. As ERP systems become more complex, the financial expenditures that are associated with the application of such systems dramatically increase. Furthermore, ERP system development of nowadays is product-oriented and coordinated by only one instance at any one time. Consequently, each product has a separate data model, which is the basis for the integration of various types of business applications. Based on this fact, the selection of the covered functional enterprise sectors as well as the implemented functions is controlled by the respective vendor, too. Thus, enhancements and modifications of the standard software product are incumbent upon the software vendors. A cross-vendor standardization of data models for ERP systems and the establishment of unified architectural model, however, would change this situation. The new idea is to develop a novel ERP system architecture, which facilitates an overall reusability of individual business components (BC) through a shared and non-monolithic architecture based on Web services. The presented approach uses Web services to wrap up ERP components that are provided within a distributed system, which appears as an ERP community and serves as a vendor-independent platform.


Author(s):  
Cesar Alexandre de Souza ◽  
Ronaldo Zwicker

The 90’s witnessed an impressive growth of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the market of corporate IT solutions. For instance, O´Leary (2000) reports that a single ERP system (SAP´s R/3) is used by more than 60% of the multinational firms. Among the explanations for this phenomenon are the competitive pressures suffered by the companies that have forced them to seek alternatives for cost reduction, differentiation of products and services and integration of their business processes. The ERP systems evolved exploiting the need for quick deployment of integrated systems to meet these new business requirements, while companies were (and still are) under pressure to outsource all the activities that are not embraced by their core business.


Author(s):  
Leopoldo E. Colmenares ◽  
Jim O. Otieno

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is an integrated set of programs that provides support for core organizational activities, such as manufacturing and logistics, finance and accounting, sales and marketing, and human resources. An ERP system helps the different parts of an organization share data and knowledge, reduce costs, and improve management of business processes. In spite of their benefits, many ERP systems fail (Stratman & Roth, 1999). Implementing an ERP system is a major undertaking. About 90% of ERP implementations are late or over budget (Martin, 1998), and the success rate of ERP systems implementation is only about 33% (Zhang et al., 2003).


Author(s):  
Biswadip Ghosh ◽  
Tom Yoon ◽  
Janos Fustos

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, such as SAP, feature a rich set of integrated business applications. However, to maximize the long term benefits from ERP implementations, organizations need to careful manage the post-implementation phase and focus on supporting end users to achieve better fit between their business processes and the ERP system features. This study develops a research model based on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and finds support for a positive and complementary relationship between continuous training resources, functional fit capability and business process success. An increase in continuous training resources increases the functional fit capability for the organization and is seen to improve business process success. The results support the need to focus on continuous end user training throughout the post implementation phase as a key contributor to ERP systems success for any organization.


For small and medium-sized companies the fit between their business processes and their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a critical success factor. The functions and features for essential tasks must be geared to the demands and skills of the individual users. This paper reports on the usefulness of several methods for eliciting user input which served as a basis for requirements for a personalized ERP system. It describes the yield of heuristic evaluations, both by experts and by developers, and a focus group with six users representing the main user types. The focus group consisted of an identification of the most important functions, task demonstrations, and a mini design workshop. As a demonstration of the results of the various user-focused methods, some noteworthy findings on the personalization of ERP systems are presented.


Author(s):  
Joseph Bradley

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are off-theshelf software systems that claim to meet the information needs of organizations. These systems are usually adopted to replace hard-to-maintain legacy systems developed by IS departments or older off-the-shelf packages that often provided only piecemeal solutions to the organization’s information needs. ERP systems evolved in the 1990s from material requirements planning (MRP) systems developed in the 1970s and manufacturing resources planning (MRPII) systems developed in the 1980s. ERP systems serve the entire organization, not just material or manufacturing planning. One advantage of ERP is that it integrates all the information for the entire organization into a single database. Implementation of ERP systems has proven expensive and time consuming. Failed and abandoned projects have been well publicized in the business press. ERP systems are “expensive and difficult to implement, often imposing their own logic on a company’s strategy and existing culture” (Pozzebon, 2000, p. 105). Most firms utilize a single software vendor for the complete ERP system throughout their organizations. The integrated nature of ERP software favors this single-vendor approach. An alternative strategy adopted by some firms is the best-of-breed approach, where the adopting organization picks and chooses ERP functional modules from the vendor whose software best supports its business processes. Organizations adopting best of breed believe that this approach will create a better fit with existing or required business processes, reduce or eliminate the need to customize a single-vendor solution, and reduce user resistance. Jones and Young (2006) found that 18% of companies used this approach to select ERP software packages. This article examines what the best-of-breed strategy is, when it is used, what advantage adopting companies seek, examples of best-of-breed implementations, and differences in implementation methods.


Author(s):  
Jorge Marx Gómez ◽  
Daniel Lübke

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an emerging architectural style for developing and structuring business applications, especially enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. SOA applications are composed of small, independent, and network-accessible software components, named services. The service composition is normally based on the enterprise’s business processes. However, current composition standards like BPEL have no ability to interact with users. Therefore, we propose a mechanism for including user interaction descriptions into the composition and extending the composition platform for generating user interfaces. In our case study, a federated ERP (FERP) system, this mechanism has been implemented in a prototype based on yet another workflow language (YAWL) dynamically generating Web pages for accessing the ERP system. Because every aspect including the user interfaces can be manipulated through the service composition, such systems are highly flexible yet maintainable.


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