The Information Technology industry is renowned for its adoption of acronyms, which are often widely used, but not fully understood. As one of the longest standing ERP vendors, we often get asked by prospects (and potential employees) to define ERP.

Broadly speaking ERP is yet another industry acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning.

The term itself is not self-explanatory and refers to the business software that has been designed to record and manage your enterprise data.

An ERP System automates and integrates core business processes such as taking customer orders, scheduling operations, and keeping inventory records and financial data. In essence, ERP systems can drive huge improvements in the effectiveness of any organization by:

assisting you in defining your business processes and ensuring they are complied with throughout the supply chain;
protecting your critical business data through well-defined roles and security access
enabling you to plan your work load based on existing orders and forecasts
providing you with the tools to give a high level of service to your customers
translating your data into decision making information

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Benefits of ERP

To realize the full benefits of an ERP system it should be fully integrated into all aspects of your business from the customer facing front end, through planning and scheduling, to the production and distribution of the products you make.

By automating aspects of business processes, ERP makes them more efficient, less prone to error, and faster. It also frees up people from mundane tasks such as balancing data.

By integrating disparate business processes, ERP ensures coherence and avoids duplication, discontinuity, and people working at cross purposes, in different parts of the organization. The cumulative positive effect when business processes integrate well is overall superior performance by the organization.

In addition ERP will enable you to produce financial and boardroom quality reports, as well as to conduct analysis on the performance of your organization. A best of breed ERP system should extend beyond your organization and integrate with both your supplier and customer systems to ensure full visibility and efficiency across your supply chain.