ERP - Overview:

In a day-to-day lifecycle, an Organisation relies on a lot of softwares that include databases, front-end applications, operating systems, integration packages, etc., to run its business successfully and almost trouble-free. After careful and thorough evaluation, a business makes its choices of buying a particular software based on its business needs, implementing costs, ease of use, customization, time to implement the software etc. One among the right solution is to buy an ERP instead of buying several softwares and integrating them. The main advantage of an ERP is that they are GUIs (Graphical User Interface) for easy navigation that provides readymade solutions to any business process. There is no need for the consultants to work from scratch to end and they need to do only the customization part since most of the features are already built-in within the ERP suite.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP):

An ERP is an industry term for activities supported & surrounded by business applications like Human Resources Management, Procurement, Manufacturing, Customer Relationship Management, Sales, Service, Financials etc. These applications are fully integrated to provide the enterprise with the best functional and technical practices.

In general, an ERP system should be:

• Flexible to the changing needs of an organization. It should evolve to the next generation of business applications and extend their value of the applications. Able to support the several back ends (data base) with open data base connectivity.
• Protecting their existing investment.
• Designed in such way that one or several business applications can be implemented. Whenever there is no need, enterprises should be in such a position so that the business applications can be detached and other business applications should not be affected.
• Increasing the customer service by satisfying the needs of the customer.
• Able to talk with other business-to-business transactions.
• Providing a unified data model to single, accurate view of the business application and an enterprise data model to view the complete functions of the enterprise.
• Able to provide quick implementation, optimize performance, streamline support and maximize the return on your investment.
• Able to support latest technologies like Electronic Fund Transfer, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Internet, Intranet, Video Conferencing, E-Commerce Providing Business Intelligence Tools for Decision Support Systems.
• Helping Managers to do best project management.
• Integrating all the departments of a company and across the companies under the same management.

In today�s rapidly changing environment, organizations are not able to meet their requirement and satisfy the needs of the organization. In order to overcome this situation, many leading software companies have designed ERP software, which will fulfill the functions of the organization.