The main reasons that businesses consider the addition of a new, of the shelf ERP systems or replace homegrown, systems are varied; however they can all be categorized under greater visibility and management control. Managers need to know instantly and accurately:
- Can we build it or supply it?
- What will it cost?
- Do we have the necessary materials, resources or people?
- Where it and what is is its status?
- When will we ship or deliver it?
- Did we make any money?
- Will we continue to make money?
- How much have we sold?
- What have we shipped?
- What is the complete inventory status?
- Who are our Customers?
- What demographic information supports the products that we are supplying?
- What trends are emerging from our Customers buying habits?
- Are our suppliers and partners enhancing our product or service delivery?
- What have been our most effective marketing campaigns?
- Do our Customers come back and/or are they happy with our after sales service?
- Are our staff effective in their roles, have they adequate training?
- Are all personnel and departments meeting our Key Performance indicators (KPI’s)?
As one manger of a large company said, “You can’t manage what you don’t know; you need reliable and timely information”. ERP must remove Enterprises addiction to systems that cause separate information silos. Often, finance doesn’t talk to production, and production doesn’t talk to purchasing and planning. This detached infrastructure does and continues to create confusion, misunderstanding, and errors and limits a company’s ability to be effective in meeting their strategic plans.
The Promise Driving ERP
The need to integrate a broad range of disparate technologies, along with processes they support, into a common denominator of overall functionality.
The need to create a foundation on which next generation applications can be developed. ERP acts as the central nervous system. As a fully integrated system, ERP automates all departmental information into a single relational database. As the entire quotation through shipping process uses the same information from a single data-flow, data is entered only once which improves accuracy and reduces cycle time. Information is retrieved quickly and easily for real hands-on decision making. ERP breaks the information bottleneck and provides up to- the minute information to the right person at the right time.
Be the first to rate this post
- Currently 0/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5