ERP Systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a highly comprehensive enterprise information management system of the enterprise, including fields such as planning, engineering design, procurement, manufacturing, marketing, production and distribution business, accounting, and customer service [2]. ERP can supply a momentous improvement in the efficiency of a company, but only when it is carried out correctly. Otherwise, it will have an opposite impact on the whole company efficiency in distributing the main resource of company; and it will not help the enterprise to reduce cost and gain the maximum profit. Adopting ERP will usually involves a wide range of organizational change processes, it has a great influence on the management model and structure of the organization, management style and culture, especially its employees. [1] Adopting EPR system appropriately will have great impact on enterprise, because a well-planned and implemented EPR can maximize the usage of the valuable resources. EPR has been adopted wildly around the world, therefore, it has different trends of development in different regions of the world. EPR needs to fit the local situations and structure the best in order to maximize the utilization of local resources.

References

[1] https://www.mdtmag.com/article/2013/10/how-erp-systems-can-increase-businesss-operational-efficiency

[2] http://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=mae

Recently, I have read an article about AI (Artificial Intelligence). A Narrative Science survey last year has found that that 38% of enterprises are already using AI, especially those provide internet services. This is expected to grow to 62% by 2018. AI has been implemented in a very wide range of business from machine learning platform to decision making. Soon this will become a trend for the ERP development as well.

Together with AI is a platform that has been implemented widely by many ERP providers, that is cloud. A few years back, I have read a research from Bloomberg suggested that SaaS (Software as a Service) has been declining from 14% to 8% YoY growth. While SaaS (Software as a Service) is predicted to have a slight downturn due to the grow of IoT (Internet of Things). The cloud market is forecast to grow by 37% by 2020. More than 50% of large corporations in the North-America has been changing their business process application to cloud. It means there is a parallel growing trend of ERP system with the cloud market expansion. The cloud base application creates a more transparent environment for the business operation which reduces the operational and compliance risk. However, it will be a challenge for data security. This grows will require better level of data management between the corporations and between each silo within a corporation.

The change in market and customer demands always require the change from the supplier ends. Any corporation needs to be flexible and agile to this needs. Therefore, such operation systems also has the urge to adapt and support the users.

Source:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2016/10/26/gartners-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2017/#300dae20186b

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2017/01/23/top-10-hot-artificial-intelligence-ai-technologies/#38f0534d1928

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3616417

http://labs.openviewpartners.com/is-the-saas-delivery-model-dying/#.WSYbNBPyvPB

ERP system is a very popular solution for enterprise to adapt nowadays. Study conducted by IQMS had shown that many companies reported that data unification is one of the best advantages of implementing ERP system. After a company had implemented ERP system, different functional departments within the company are able to share data in real time and collaborate throughout the company. Thought data is shared across functional silos, ERP system has strict control over who can see and edit data. Each functional department has its own view; for instance, the purchase department would have the purchase department view, a purchase agent will not be able to see data that is not related to his or her work. ERP system enables the view solution to ensure the security of company data.  Other benefits that enterprises have reported about ERP system are operation cost reduction, improved reporting and planning, and improved efficiency.

LG is a global scaled electronics corporation with 114 subsidiaries, more that 82,000 employees across 40 countries. LG found that the company has high maintenance cost, low transparency, and inefficient decision making for its HR functions. This has become a growing issue for LG to operate as a global enterprise and LG has decided to implement ERP system to solve this issue. The first challenge that LG had ran into was to choose the most suitable solution among the hundreds of ERP solution providers. LG had finally chosen to partner with Oracle to implement the ERP solution since LG has been partnering with Oracle for other projects. After successful implementation, LG HR is now able to manage a single system centrally with minimal maintenance costs. LG can also add transparency in the recruitment process across 40 countries and report to higher management in real time. However, LG ran into the second and most important challenge which was training employees to adapt to the new ERP system. This is also a very common challenge that many companies have faced after ERP implementation. Companies would usually provide extensive training program for employees to adapt to the new ERP program; also, support from the management level will also enhance the adaptation process.

Sources:

https://www3.technologyevaluation.com/research/article/the-5-biggest-challenges-when-implementing-erp-for-the-first-time.html

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/111214/lg-case-study-successful-enterprise-resource-planning-system.asp

http://www.workwisellc.com/15-benefits-implementing-erp-software/

https://www.iqms.com/erp-success/

Benefits of ERP: Advantages and Disadvantages of an Enterprise Resource Planning System

https://selecthub.com/enterprise-resource-planning/benefits-of-erp-systems/

ERP was created in order to close the gap between different silos in a corporation and increase the productivity efficiency. Besides that, there are so many other benefit that an enterprise can enjoy by implementing ERP to their daily operation. I would like to mention some of them here that I think are the major factors:

1. Integrated information: I consider this as the most impressive features of the ERP system. It helps synchronize the data from the beginning steps of your business process until the end. Growing together with ERP on cloud, this features will create a more transparent business environment.
2. Data security and regulatory compliance: aside from the fact that the system is built with firewall and security coding, the restricted view from users also play a part in creating the data security and avoid the violation of authority and between different users. It also ensures the compliance of each business process through layers of organizational levels.
3. Mobility and flexibility: one of the most useful characteristics of ERP is that it is configurable according to your specific needs. For example, the system can be built based on your own business model, be it the traditional or some model that you just created and want to implement to daily operation. Moreover, the system allows you to access in data and work on it wherever you are, as long as you have a device and connection.

With some attractive features mentioned, why do all of the ERP system providers are still working hard to improve their products?

1. System complexity: due to the complexity of this product, the change cannot be made rapidly. And with the growth of current market, how fast we can adapt to the demand is very important. However, this challenge also brings the opportunity to the system providers. It is when they have implemented the system with a certain provider (e.g. SAP, Oracle, Infor, etc.), they tend not to switch to another system.
2. Long-haul implementation process and high investment cost: it is a long process to train the users and enhance their process instead of creating another admin layer. So if the providers are able to close a deal with a corporation, very high chance they will be their long term customers. Small-to-mid-sized ERP system is expected to be in a range anywhere from $75,000 to $750,000. And also because of the above challenge, it is still considered to be costly that is difficult for small enterprises to implement.

Having used ERP systems for almost 6 years, and residing in the Silicon Valley has helped me to have more updates about the innovation, I have observed the following risk exposure to the system. It is not just the risk for the products or system providers but also to the users of the ERP.

1. System migration failure: based on my experience, the validation of data during the integration carries very high risk exposure due to the highly customized character of the system. It is supposed to enable the crossing data between different software. My team and I used to work over the weeks for 3 weeks to validate over 1,000 orders as we found out there was some data mismatch during the system transition. It takes a few weeks to months in order to train a user to be familiar with any ERP software. A research from Panorama Consulting reported that the failure rate of the ERP system has increased from 18 to 21% last year. From there, we can see that the high customized product can have very high probability of system failure.
2. Staff turnover rate: it requires certain academic qualification from the employees. Once these people choose to leave their position, a corporation will need to buffer some delay in their operation. Even when a corporation does not lose any of their manpower, they still may face the resistance of the employees (especially the senior staffs) from adapting to the newly implemented ERP system.
3. Data management: the accuracy of data access can cause the disruption in the operation. For example, any incorrect data access activity of any details in the ERP system can create a mistake cascade to the whole supply chain that leads to customer dissatisfaction or violation of compliance or financial discrepancy, and so on. Together with cloud expansion, there will be higher requirement for data security as well.

In general, ERP is a useful tool to improve the productivity and align the business process. However, there are still many rooms to improve from both customers and the service providers.

Sources:

http://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/7-little-known-erp-benefits/

http://www.workwisellc.com/15-benefits-implementing-erp-software/

https://www.nchannel.com/blog/common-challenges-with-erp-software-implementation/

https://www3.technologyevaluation.com/research/article/the-5-biggest-challenges-when-implementing-erp-for-the-first-time.html

http://www.workwisellc.com/erp-software/erp-software-cost

SAP Book

In today’s competitive landscape, all large enterprise organizations operate with the help of enterprise systems, in particular, ERP systems. These systems add a huge value to these organizations to the point where the business would be unable to run with out them. They have become a vital part of running a business. Utilizing these systems can be extremely complex and require people with highly specific knowledge to run and maintain these systems. Due to their importance to daily operations, these enterprise systems are complex and come with their own inherent benefits, challenges and risks.

Benefits

            The benefits of utilizing an ERP system are vast. Using these systems companies are able to track and manage complex and data heavy business processes that they would be unable to manage without an ERP system. The amount of transactions that are recorded on a day to day basis would be not be feasible to track manually. ERP systems have the benefit of saving companies money by aggregating software for different but interconnected business processes. ERP systems can also simplify the accounting process both internally and for reporting to ensure that an organization is in compliance with the regulatory bodies in which they operate. ERP systems can help standardize a business process with an organization. This has the effect of eliminating waste and increasing efficiency within various business processes and units. The streamlining of workflow and business process alone is enough of to make an investment in an ERP system worth it. The importance of these systems is so great that companies will spend in the millions of dollars on ERP software, implementations, and maintenance to make sure their ERP systems are current.

Challenges

            ERP systems also have their fair share of challenges. The most obvious is the large financial investment a company must make to implement one of these systems. However, we have discusses why an ERP systems will almost always have a positive ROI. The real challenge with ERP systems is their implementation into an existing IT environment, or in some cases as the framework for the rest of the businesses critical applications. Implementation can be very tricky for a number of reasons. First, ERP systems are extremely complicated by nature, so implementing them takes cooperation by both the implementation partner and the organization. It is difficult to ensure that the business process is adequately covered by the ERP system. Another challenge in implementing ERP systems in organizations is customization to fir business specific requirements not covered by the standard scope. Customization is almost always necessary for organizations to realize the full benefit of utilizing an ERP system. If an implementation is botched it could have critical damage to a business’ operations and it not easily undone. The final critical challenge in an ERP system is maintaining it. Before the arrival of ERP systems as SaaS, maintaining and updating the system was costly due to the high levels of customization.

Risks

            Choosing the right vendor from the start can be critical. The complexity of these systems and their importance to daily business operations makes it difficult and impractical to switch ERP providers. Choosing an ERP system that isn’t considered a Tier 1 provider like SAP can be a huge risk to an organization. If the provider goes under, or the system becomes so dated that it is no longer functional an organization becomes exposed to large financial risks. These financial risks can be substantial and the IT resources a business uses could be at risk of collapse if not supported by the ERP systems. There is also large risk of faulty implementation as covered in the previous section. In recent years companies now face the decision of weather or not to migrate from traditional on-premise ERP software applications to their cloud equivalents. These companies who are thinking of migrating stand to take on the risk of data vulnerability since their data would be hosted outside of the organizations IT environment.

Despite their challenges and risks, the benefits of an ERP system make them a critical part of business operation for almost every business. ERP systems have become an integral part an organizations strategy and operations. Employing people to deal with these challenges and risks helps minimize the risk of implementing ERP systems. And surely, the future will pose new benefits, challenges, and risks as these systems evolve.

Being well-known among the corporate operation personnel, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated management software for business process. It usually captures real time situation, which helps create a smoother and more organised overall operation management.

Going back a little back in time to understand the origin and history of business process, since the growth of industrialisation, human has seen the need of a system to manage the overall operation of any business activities. The MRP has become the fundamental concept used in manufacturing in the 1960s. During the 1990s, computers have been widely used in corporate operation, which mean there was a huge demand of computerisation. Together with the extension of MRP-covering areas like Engineering, Finance, Human Resources, and Project Management, the term ERP started to be used in the developed countries.

Nowadays, there are four big ERP solution providers which are: SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Infor. It covers these functional areas:

• Financial accounting
• Management accounting
• Manufacturing
• Order Processing
• Supply chain management
• Project management
• Customer relationship management (CRM – which can be combined or separated from ERP)
• Data services

In general, ERP has two types: on-premise and cloud-base. The concept behind on-premise ERP is the same with the traditional way of installing any software to your computers. And as known publicly through I-Cloud, the cloud-base ERP form is based online like other SaaS. This has been predicted to be the direction of development of the ERP system. Growth in cloud base to create the transparency of the operations between silos in the supply chains. In 2015, top 10 ERP system providers have shared 28% of the market while SAP had 6% (with $5.30 billion in ERP product revenues) , FIS Global had 4% and Oracle had 3%. ERP market is expected to expand to $41.67 billion by 2020 (by Allied Market Research).

Although, the report has shown that the potential grow lie more on the North America region, I believe there are very big potential in EMEA (especially India) and APAC (China and developing markets). The reason is that most of daily operation in these markets still base on Window Microsoft Office. With the growth in demands and third party outsourcing in the supply chain, these regions will help grow the ERP significantly in the next few years.

The cloud report from Allied Market Research also show that the global cloud market in 2015 was $38 billion in revenue. And there is the trend of growing in hybrid model instead of either pure on-premise software or cloud. Facing the rapid growth of cloud that big players have been trying to promote (Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Apple I-Cloud, etc.), the cloud in my point of view will grow even more than the forecast given in the report.

On the other hands, with the growth of online retail, the consumerisation may be the future trend for ERP as well. And with the globalisation of mobile devices, ERP mobilisation is another idea to improve the ERP. In conclusion, by the essential nature of ERP in the operation and the needs from the current agile market, there are many trends being forecast of improvement.

Sources:

• ERP History – ERP and More!. Retrieved from http://www.erpandmore.com/erp-reference/erp-history/
• Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
• Eric Kimberling (2014, April 9). Panorama Consulting Solutions. Retrieved from
  http://panorama-consulting.com/top-five-predictions-for-the-erp-software-industry-in-2020/

  Arron Continelli (2017, February 22). Business.com. Retrieved from

  https://www.business.com/articles/managing-resourses-erp-industry-trends-that-impact-bottom-line/

  https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/ERP-market

  https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/hybrid-cloud-market

  https://www.appsruntheworld.com/top-10-erp-software-vendors-and-market-forecast-2015-2020/

       Over the last decade there has been a dramatic shift in the way enterprise software was deployed and implemented by businesses. The cloud is something of a buzzword in Silicon Valley. It gets tossed around often, referring to from everything to personal data storage on your iPhone, to large complex systems from computing systems like IBM’s Watson. It is also used to describe software hosted as a service of SaaS. Software being offered via the cloud is not a new concept with companies like Salesforce.com reaching over a decade of operation. However there has been on sector of cloud computing that has been slower to adopt than other facets, and its cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. Large companies have been weary to adopt these cloud ERP offerings for a number of reasons. In particular security of the critical data was a large issue. However as cloud computing is becoming more widely adopted and more accepted as secure as traditional on-premise ERP systems. It is this adoption of the new ERP systems by large corporations that will shape the market in 2017. The current state, and near future for companies small and large is SaaS. This will open the door to many new trends that have not traditionally been seen.

1. All enterprise level companies will soon have their ERP system hosted in the cloud. Security issues will be addressed and enterprise organizations will realize the value of simplification of their IT environment. Traditional on-premise applications will be phased out of these organizations all together.

2. Small to medium businesses will adopt cloud ERP systems instead of disparate systems as solutions mature and prices for a full ERP suite are drive down by competition. As more cloud ERP vendors enter the market price will allow even local mom and pop shops to run full ERP suites for their business.

3. The adoption of cloud ERP will decrease the need for large IT staffs in organizations. Updates and but fixes will be done seamlessly through the cloud from the vendor allowing companies to downsize their IT staff and allow existing IT professionals to focus their attention from maintenance of these systems to helping solve other problems in their respective organizations.

4. Finally, the cloud ERP market will grow larger and larger. As large enterprise organizations begin to shift over to the cloud the market will boom. I believe that a few major players will dominate the market. The ERP vendors that can best design ERP systems that will easily integrate with other areas of companies IT infrastructure will win. ERP might even begin to be offered as a package with other software and database packages. Vendors who can offer customers everything from hardware to the software as one package will gain the largest share of the market.

The shift of these systems to the cloud opens an exiting world of possibilities for companies large to small. The flexibility and ease of implementation will transform IT making it simpler than ever to run a company.

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) systems are the unsung heroes of the digital economy. Almost every business transaction is processed by an ERP systems. Whether you order your groceries online, download music online, get your paycheck issued, or see your doctor, an ERP system will handle the business transactions. ERP systems integrate all areas of an organization including accounting, sales, production, purchasing, and inventory.

This makes ERP systems incredibly complex. A typical ERP systems is shipped with more than 20,000 database tables. Organizations have to choose from hundreds of software modules to configure the ERP system that helps them to realize their strategy.

This course allows you to cut through the complexity of ERP. Upon successful completion you:

• have a solid understanding of the conceptual and technological fundamentals of ERP,
• can analyze and evaluate design options for ERP-driven business processes, and
• have a moderate level of comfort working with SAP ERP systems.

The chances are high that you will be working with ERP systems throughout your career. This course enables you to establish a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

Cryptocurrency was never intended to be invented. The invention was a digital cash system which is completely decentralized, without a server or central authority similar to a Peer-to-Peer network for file sharing, which led to the emergence of cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency can be defined as limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions. A cryptocurrency has a network of peers which records all transactions. A transaction is complete only when it gets confirmed by miners and it is permanent, forming a part of historical transactions called block chain.

Working of Cryptocurrency

Some of the popular cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Monero, Ripple. Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and often regarded as the first cryptocurrency, even though prior systems existed.

Advantages of Cryptocurrency:

• No central authority, flexibility to make transactions all across the world.
• Almost impossible to manipulate transactions due to the additional layer of security called cryptography.
• All transactions have to be confirmed by miners, and once confirmed they are immutable.
• Personal information is hidden, thereby reducing the possibility of identity theft.
• Minimal processing fees.

Disadvantages

• If the holdings are not backed up, a computer crash can cause loss of cryptocurrency.
• There are constant fluctuations of cryptocurrency value.

http://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/

http://www.moneycrashers.com/what-are-bitcoins/