Well.. I have not been very productive these few days during the study week, so I've come up with a new way to study - THROUGH MY BLOG!!
HAHAHA.
Anyway, shall we start?? :D
You may be thinking that ERP equals to Electronic Road Pricing, those evil thing you will see on the road when you are about to enter the expressway. No no no, that's not what I'm talking about. In fact, ERP here is way far from evil. It's somewhat angelic in nature. The saviour for most businesses, which helps them a lot towards achieving their long term goal. Yep. It's called Enterprise Resource Planning System.
What the heck is Enterprise Resource Planning System???
According to Deloitte Consulting, it is a packaged business software system that allows a company to automate and integrate business processes, share common data and practices across the enterprise, and produce and access information in a real-time environment.
According to me, ERP system is just a system that an enterprise use, in order to maximise and plan their resources. True? Hey, it isn't called Enterprise Resource Planning system for no reason, right? Hahahah. The resources I'm talking about here constitute to many things, like their manpower, finances, R&D, sales and distribution processes, production planning, and supply chain. They are stuff you own and use, which is why called resources.
How it helps in planning the resources is another story. Basically, ERP is like a common language that everybody uses, which helps greatly in integrating business processes. When all processes are integrated, it results in having common practices and common format for documents (so it makes sense to everyone). ERP also means an existence of a shared database, and with such, timely information can be produced for better decision making.
Sales and Distribution Processes? How do you own such a thing?
Well, businesses have their own sales and distribution processes, but most of them are completely similar to one another. Like, say, first, a customer will be triggered to browse through to your shop, look at what you offer, explain to the salesperson on what are the things he needs, then the salesperson will check if the shop has the stuff he wants, if yes, then he will deliver the stuff to the customer, then he will make his way to the cashier and pay. You OWN the process. It's yours. People can't anyhow buy your things. They can't have the goods delivered to their hands, then the salesperson will check the inventory, then they pay, then they explain the things they want to the salesperson, then they will walk to the store and see what the shop has. NO. Most businesses just don't go that way.
Of course, there are businesses that have a unique sales and distribution process. Look at eBay. The seller post their goods on the portal, state the closing date for bidding, customers will browse through the shop, find the thing they need, they bid, eBay will close the bidding on the closing date, the seller will see who's the winning bidder, then the one who bids the highest price will get the good. After this comes the delivery and payment processes, which differ for every seller. This is eBay's sales and distribution process.
However, most businesses use the old-school 'Pre Sales --> Sales Order Processing --> Inventory Sourcing --> Delivery --> Billing --> Payment' because it's simply the best way to perform a sales process. It is used by most enterprises and is proven successful. This is called best practices. I'm not saying that eBay isn't good, it's just unique.
Okay...
ERP of course offers businesses with the best practices. But if you wanna be unique like eBay, but also wanna have an ERP system to integrate your business processes across your enterprise, not to worry, because most ERP system is build to have an open architecture, which means, you can mix and match, people.... You can CUSTOMISE the system to suit your own. HURRAY!!
to be continued...
