Mar 13 (Chapter 12): Integrating the Organization

Organizations are anticipating that ebusiness will increase profitability, create competitive differentiation, and support innovative business practices. To achieve these goals, companies must evolve through distinct stages, from integrated processes to truly synchronized inter-enterprise communities. Getting ebusiness applications based on different technologies and with differing business models and data models to work together are key issues for 21st century organizations.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

12.1 Describe the role information plays in enterprise resource planning systems.
The primary purpose of an ERP is to collect, update, and maintain enterprisewide information. All of the functional departments access the same information when making decisions and solving problems.

12.2 Identify the primary forces driving the explosive growth of enterprise resource planning systems.

• ERP is a logical solution to the mess of incompatible applications that had sprung up in most businesses
• ERP addresses the need for global information sharing and reporting
• ERP is used to avoid the pain and expense of fixing legacy systems

12.3 Explain the business value of integrating supply chain management, customer relationship management, and enterprise resource planning systems.

Most organizations piecemeal their applications together since no one vendor can respond to every organization’s needs; hence, customers purchase multiple applications from multiple vendors. For example, a single organization might choose its CRM components from Siebel, SCM from i2, financial from Oracle, and human resources from PeopleSoft. These applications must be integrated in order to gain an enterprisewide view of the information.

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Business Driven Technology (Customized WMU Edition)
Baltzan & Phillips.