Challenges Faced by BPO Firms in India
It is a fact that India has been at the forefront of the BPO/Services revolution and its firms have garnered a huge chunk of the BPO/Services market. However, the firms that operate in the BPO space in India face their own challenges as far as the conduct of business is concerned. For instance, one of […]
Technical Foundations of ERP Architectures
Information technology is changing at a fast pace. Underlying ERP technology is needed to keep pace with first changing IT scenario and should also be flexible to adopt ever changing business scenario. ERP technical architecture basically defines layout of layers of application deployment between servers and desktops, interfaces and software objects. ERP architecture is no […]
Top Six Economic Consequences of the Refugee Crisis
The picture of Aylan Kurdi, a six year old Syrian refugee who died when his boat capsized as his family was illegally migrating to Europe shook the world in 2015. Germany and most European countries opened their borders to refugees from Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Almost everybody considers it a great humanitarian gesture. Nobody should […]
Why Project Managers Should Not Overpromise and Underestimate at the Same Time
The Perils of Overpromising It is often said that project management is both an art and a science. It is a science because project managers have to estimate time and cost that it takes to actualize the deliverables. It is an art, as they have to manage resources, people, and other stakeholders. In this context, […]
Creating a SIPOC Chart
The SIPOC Chart, being one of the fundamental documents of any process improvement project must be developed in such a manner that it is easy to understand. It must also be coherent with the logic inbuilt in the process. There is a method which has been described to ensure the proper development of the SIPOC […]
Use of computer systems is a post second world war phenomenon. The first working computer was developed by two scientists at the University of Manchester, UK. However, commercial applications of computer commenced during the 1960s.
In the sixties, computers were bulky, noisy and without the facility of standard operating systems. The organizations used to develop computerized systems that were stand alone; tailor made and without an integrated approach.
The software development, in a sense, was a re-inventing wheel, as the basic business process is similar for all organization in the same business sector. Due to this restrictive environment, Development, maintenance, and modification cost became prohibitive. Developer ended up developing isolated and piecemeal systems, even within an organization. Thus, a payroll system, accounting system, and inventory system were developed in isolation as per specific need of business units and were incompatible with each other.
Stand alone systems, in vogue during the sixties, were incapable of processing planning requirement of an enterprise encompassing production planning, procurement, and inventory, which became an impediment to adopting Materials Requirement Planning (MRP).
MRP was first adopted by IBM and J I Case (a tractor maker from the USA) during the late seventies, when integrated systems started taking shape. The basic idea of MRP was to assimilate planning and scheduling elements to the manufacturing process. The process of MRP was to plan and procure purchase requirements based on finished products, inventory on hand, allocated inventory and expected arrivals. Subsequently, it was supplemented by Capacity Requirement Planning (CRP) to create capacity plans of shop floors and sub=contractors.
There was continued development of MRP system during the 1980s. The need moves beyond shop floor, and MRP II was introduced incorporating planning element of distribution as well as forecasting requirement.
ERP was introduced in late 1980 to integrate other business functionalities not covered by MRP or MRP II. It is not confined to manufacturing only but covers all facets of organization such as:
ERP development from software solution provider mainly emerged as a sequel of their MRP products. Some of the early solution providers are:
Few vendors did not follow this course. Starting point of Oracle ERP was their accounting package whereas People-soft ERP evolved from their HR suite.
During the 1990s, ERP products continued to evolve. Vendors added new functionalities, incorporated Graphic User/ Internet browser interface and brought out new versions of their products.
Some solutions were found to be more suitable for a particular vertical such as discrete manufacturing, utility, process industries, public sector and retail. Several vendors brought out reference models of their product, meaning that through pre-configuring basic and common data, a particular flavor of their product will be more compatible with the business need of a particular sector/ sub-sector.
Traditionally, the biggest purchaser of an ERP solution is fortune 500 companies. But, this market has since been saturated. Vendors are now looking to increase their presence in small and medium business sector. Due to fierce competition and financial crisis, there are also some takeover and mergers across ERP solution providers during early 2000 such as Oracle taking over People Soft, Infor taking over BaaN and Microsoft taking over Axapta.
ERP solutions, which were mostly, operating as a back-end system, is now broadening its horizon. ERP vendors are extending their products to become Internet-enabled. ERP extension products (mostly as an add-on to their existing products) now provide solutions for Advanced Planning and Scheduling, Manufacturing Execution System, Advanced Business Intelligence and Dashboards, Salesforce Automation, Product Lifecycle Management and Warehouse Management.
Business to Businesses and Business to Commerce functionalities, as add-on solution, is now getting seamlessly integrated with Back-end, thus making it possible to bring e-commerce under the gambit of ERP.
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Configuration Control and Setting Up of Base in ERP System
February 12, 2025
