Information management using ERP

An enterprise comprises of different departments like finance/accounting, human resource, manufacturing, project management, customer relationship management etc. All these departments share information among them which leads to the manufacturing of a product. In order to manufacture a product, every enterprise first analyse costs/revenues on the basis of customer needs depending on which aggressive cost control initiatives were taken. Flexibility was also required to respond to the changing business requirements. At times various enterprises failed to deliver the product as per the business requirements and one of the major factor contributing to this failure was the lack of timely and accurate information. To eliminate and to control these failures based on lack of information, Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) was introduced.

Enterprise Resource Planning which is also referred as ERP provided the solution to these problems. ERP is a kind of business management software which integrates company-wide information system covering all the functional areas. Initially ERP solutions were focussed on automating the back office functions (accounting, human resource etc) but later on front office functions like customer relationship management (CRM) were also integrated. Enterprise Resource Planning has following characteristics:
1) Integrates majority of business’s processes and allows users to access data in real-time which means the users do not have to rely on periodic updates.
2) It uses a data warehouse where data from all sorts of transactional systems are collected, organized and processed.
3) Consistency, which is managed across all modules that are involved in the process.
4) It is packaged software, so easy to install without involving any elaborate details from IT department.

In the beginning phase of ERP, only the firms that can afford ERP solutions took the advantage of this system which led to rapid advancement in firm’s productivity. Soon, smaller business clients also shifted their focus in using ERP services which met their needs and now even start-up firms can take the advantage of this solution. Enterprise Resource Planning includes various components among them:
- Transactional Database
- Management Dashboard
- Customizable Reporting
- Document Management
- Workflow Management

Implementing the ERP system in organization brings in enormous number of benefits, in which the first and foremost benefit is that it makes communicating the information across various departments effortless. There are various other benefits like:
1) As ERP helps in smooth running of internal business processes, it leads to better outputs that greatly improve the quality and efficiency of the business.
2) It centralizes the business data which eliminates the need of synchronizing changes between multiple systems.
3) It helps in keeping a track of every transaction, starting from order tracking to revenue tracking.
4) It improves the speed and performance of productivity which leads to customer satisfaction and hence improving the customer service.

Only considering the above benefits in implementing ERP services would be not enough. Before going for any ERP solution one should have a thorough knowledge of their existing system capabilities. Going through the current software architecture, its advantages and the obstacles of using it will help you in determining and implementing an appropriate ERP system that can play a vital role in advancing your firm’s productivity.