Introduction to the Erp Systems
In today’s business world, every organization aims at properly sustaining and further growing of its internal mechanism by contending with all sales holders, including employees, stakeholders, and the environment. The priority attention in the business process is given to the strategies that are focused on the faster return of investment. Modern companies pursue to progress in designing and integrating, as well as to get the information for tracking the overall improvement of the various business cases. Consequently, the enterprise resource applications, such as Oracle, NetSuite, and Epicor, are commonly employed by large companies in order to increase the organizational performance and achieve the precise enterprise culture of designing the information.
History of Erp Applications
Enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) began to operate since the second half of the twentieth century, based on the Material Requirement Planning and Manufacturing Resource Planning that initially was created for inventory control. Later they developed for integrating business processes, including manufacturing, distributions, accounting, finance, human resources, inventory management, and project management. Since the business concept in the twenty-first century became more sophisticated, ERP was enriched by new areas, such as knowledge management, project management, workflow management, human resource management, customer relationship management, and integrated financials (Bahssas, AlBar, & Hoque, 2015). In 2001, enterprise resource planning was suggested to be an internet-based environment, and in 2004 ERP vendors began to use Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), as a standard to work towards (Bahssas et al., 2015). Nowadays, large vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, NetSuite, and Epicor, prevail in the ERP market.
Enterprise Resource Planning System Oracle
Oracle, as one of the most popular ERP, was founded in 1977 in California and was called Software Development Laboratories, that presently is used by more than 145 countries. Apart from ERP, Oracle also consists of Database Management System, customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM). It provides organizations with the e-business suite as a corporate solution. This includes care business ERP, CRM, SCM, Oracle Financials, Oracle HRMS, and Oracle Sale. Each of them has several modules that are developed in Java (Oracle JDeveloper). As compared by Ganesh (2014), in contrast to other ERPs, this cloud-based software has the tools for the implementation phase (Ganesh, K., Mohapatra, S., Anbuudayasankar, S., & Sivakumar, P.). However, it might need skilled personnel to configure the database and make decisions on crucial installation steps. Moreover, Oracle suggests the tools for defining business processes and data flows. Workflows in ERP Oracle clarify the business process through process diagrams, which in turn allows to simplify the existing process and to adopt industry best practices. It can also simplify the set-up of data by using the specific tool.
Enterprise Resource Planning System NetSuite
NetSuite is another popular ERP, a cloud-based system for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) founded by Evan Goldberg in 1998 with the purpose of providing software and services to regulate operations, finances, and client relationships. They are customized with modules for ERP, CRM, PSA, and e-commerce (Bahssas et al., 2015). NetSuite is a cloud ERP that is an innovative approach to use cloud computing platforms and services to make the business process transformation more flexible.
To illustrate the data configuration process, Bradford (2015) uses NetSuite system as an example to demonstrate the configuration of accounting references. This research shows that the ERP system will only alert sales personnel when a customer orders over the allowed credit limit. On the other hand, it is possible to configure the NetSuite ERP to “enforce holds” to avert a sale to the customer, once the sale is crossing the limit of the receivable balance’s credit limit. NetSuite also includes configurable options, such as using reversing entries for audit trail purposes instead of voiding entries, as well as enabling or disenabling journal entries in closed accounting periods (Bradford, 2015). Cloud computing has been used by vendors of ERP systems, including NetSuite and Epicor, where each vendor implemented a distinctive design, depending on their needs, as well as the customer’s or client’s needs.
Enterprise Resource Planning System Epicor
Epicor is another global business software created in 1972 with the focus on manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services industries. This ERP system aims at reaching to the highest profitability, by accessing the critical key performance indicators (KPI) to control product profitability with the rapid delving into data, as well as making inform decisions with predictive analytics (Bradford, 2015). With such an operating approach, Epicor helps to understand the influence of engineering changes and achieve optimal inventory utilization. However, the ERP failures studies, analyzed by Bradford, show that major brands sued Epicor for “absolutely useless” software (Bradford, 2015, p. 120). Several companies, such as Whaley Foodservice Repairs, ParknPool, and North American settled the lawsuit for the occurred problems with implementation and training.
Conclusion
To sum up, Oracle, NetSuite, Epicor enterprise resource planning systems are the commonly used software, employed by large companies for business process management, aiming at enhancing its organizational effectiveness. The successful outcome of any business requires the explicit corporate culture of designing the information system across the entire enterprise for efficient operating and improving the general performance of the organization. By choosing the right ERP software based on the needs of the company and its customers, the company directly decides to achieve the intelligence, visibility, and efficiency for every aspect of the business process.
References
- Bahssas, D., AlBar, A., & Hoque, M. (2015). Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems: design, trends and deployment. The International Technology Management Review, 5(2), 72. doi:10.2991/itmr.2015.5.2.2
- Bradford, M. (2015). Modern ERP: Select, implement, and use. Today’s advanced business systems (3rd ed.). Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University.
- Ganesh, K., Mohapatra, S., Anbuudayasankar, S., & Sivakumar, P. (2014). Enterprise resource planning: Fundamentals of design and implementation. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.