Enterprise Resource Planning is the most exciting development in business today. It offers a wealth of opportunities for increased efficiency and productivity by bringing a company's many different functions together into one large integrated database/system. Enterprise Resource Planning is an industry term for the broad set of activities supported by multi-module application software that helps an organization. It helps in product planning, parts purchasing, managing inventories, supplier interaction, better customer service, and order tracking. It can also include application modules for the HRM (human resource management), Finance aspects of a business. It is integrated with a relational database system. The deployment of system can involve considerable process mapping, GAP analysis, and SRS study.
An ERP system integrates variety of business functions such as Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Financials, Projects, HRM and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in a single database. This database can allow every department of a business to store and retrieve information in real-time. ERP software is designed in different modules in a proper structure. It means organization can select the modules they need, customize modules from different ERP vendors, and add new modules of their own to improve business process performance.
The term ERP originally referred to how a big organization planned to use their organizational wide resources. But now SMEs can also implement this. Ideal ERP software consists of following modules: Purchase, Inventory, Finance, Manufacturing, HRM, Project, CRM, and Portal for suppliers, customers, and employees (they can access relevant data from anywhere).
Enterprise Resource Planning is not only software that automates the processes of the organizations but is a complete solution to run the business more efficiently and beneficially.
