project,economics,and  cost management

Education and Consulting

Enterprise management

E-mail: Mort@Anvari.Net

e-Manufacturing

Enterprise Information Management is a particular field of interest in the Information Technology and Management Consultancy area. It specializes in finding solutions for optimal use of information within organizations, for instance to support decision-making processes or day-to-day operations that require the availability of knowledge. It tries to overcome traditional IT-related barriers to managing information on an enterprise level.

 

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a term usually used in conjunction with ERP software or an ERP system which is intended to manage all the information and functions of a business or company from shared data stores.

 

Advantages

In the absence of an ERP system, a large manufacturer may find itself with many software applications that cannot communicate or interface effectively with one another. Tasks that need to interface with one another may involve:

· ERP systems connect the necessary software in order for accurate forecasting to be done. This allows inventory levels to be kept at maximum efficiency and the company to be more profitable.

· Integration among different functional areas to ensure proper communication, productivity and efficiency

· Managing inter-dependencies of complex processes bill of materials

· Tracking the three-way match between purchase orders (what was ordered), inventory receipts (what arrived), and costing (what the vendor invoiced).

· The accounting for all of these tasks: tracking the revenue, cost and profit at a granular level.

 

ERP Systems centralize the data in one place. Benefits of this include:

· Eliminates the problem of synchronizing changes between multiple systems

· Permits control of business processes that cross functional boundaries

· Provides top-down view of the enterprise (no "islands of information")

· Reduces the risk of loss of sensitive data by consolidating multiple permissions and security models into a single structure.

 

Disadvantages

Problems with ERP systems are mainly due to inadequate investment in ongoing training for the involved IT personnel - including those implementing and testing changes - as well as a lack of corporate policy protecting the integrity of the data in the ERP systems and the ways in which it is used.

· Re-engineering of business processes to fit the "industry standard" prescribed by the ERP system may lead to a loss of competitive advantage.

· ERP systems can be very expensive (This has led to a new category of "ERP light" solutions)

· ERPs are often seen as too rigid and too difficult to adapt to the specific workflow and business process of some companies—this is cited as one of the main causes of their failure.

· Many of the integrated links need high accuracy in other applications to work effectively. A company can achieve minimum standards, and then over time "dirty data" will reduce the reliability of some applications.

· Resistance in sharing sensitive internal information between departments can reduce the effectiveness of the software.