Gaining a competitive advantag

Organizations today confront new markets, new competition and increasing customer expectations. Thus today's organizations have to constantly re-engineer their business practices and procedures to be more and more responsive to customers and competition. In the 1990's Information technology and Business Process re-engineering, used in conjunction with each other, have emerged as important tools which give organizations the leading edge. The efficiency of an enterprise depends on the quick flow of information across the complete supply chain i.e. from the customer to manufacturers to supplier. ERP (Enterprise resource planning) systems, have been a major information technology that has been used by businesses today, in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage. But this advantage seems only plausible if the implementation is coupled with process re-engineering, as well.

ERP is an enterprise wide system that integrates primary business applications, including all areas and levels of an organization. All the applications in an ERP suite share a common set of data that is stored in a central database. It aims to serve as a backbone for your whole computing business, integrating key bu

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An ERP system integrates all parts of an organization so that it has more control of its operation. A typical ERP system gives you an 80% solution. Also, managers can keep track of their truck drivers and know whether or not their employees are doing their jobs. Also, another disadvantage would be the privacy within an ERP system? That is, who has the access to the system and who can change the information within the system. This necessitates rapid implementations which lead to shortened ROI periods. In the future, more and more business will be using ERP system to help them manage important parts of their business.

§ Improves timeliness of information by permitting, posting daily instead of monthly.

§ Better monitoring and quicker resolution of queries. Also, one more industry which gains specific advantages from using ERP systems is the project services industry. Implementing the software in a company usually involves changing business processes, that is, the way people do their jobs. At that point there are two things they can do: They can change the business process to accommodate the software, which will mean deep changes in long-established ways of doing business (that often provide competitive advantage) and shake up important peoples' roles and responsibilities (something that few companies have the stomach for).

ERP users can gain competitive advantage from the way they implement the systems and exploit the resulting data. Some important points to be kept in mind while evaluating an ERP software include: 1) Functional fit with the Company's business processes 2) Degree of integration between the various components of the ERP system 3) Flexibility and scalability 4) Complexity; user friendliness 5) Quick implementation; shortened ROI period 6) Ability to support multi-site planning and control 7) Technology; client/server capabilities, database independence, security 8) Availability of regular upgrades 9) Amount of customization required 10) Local support infrastructure 11) Availability of reference sites 12) Total costs, including cost of license, training, implementation, maintenance, customization and hardware requirements.

Not only does an ERP help organizations to manage their tasks more efficiently, it also provides advantages to some specific industries. Its like any tool, you must know how to utilize it for it to be an asset, but first you must evaluate the tool to see if it will fit in with your business, as every business is unique.

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Approximate Word count = 2361
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

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