Assignment 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Assignment 4 - Essay Example Similar was the case when MRP II (Manufacturing Resource planning) came, it also worked on certain functional areas of an organization and other areas could not yield benefit from it. From 1975 till 1990 all the key players (Baan Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP, PeopleSoft) which now provide ERP solutions laid their sound foundation in the industry providing business solutions at various levels and each focusing on its core competency area. Though the actual development of ERP started from 1990’s onwards; people still argue that ERP existed in the form of earliest Inventory Control Systems MRP& MRP II only with additional facilities of integrating organizational activities and cross departmental communication. ERP in 90’s decade focused more or integration of business activities across functional departments and introducing of other business functions including CRM,SCM etc. Now the key ERP developers are working towards a web enabled ERP system making it much more user friendly allowing external access to authorized users. As the time passes ERP is now moving towards an ERPII which will further improve and enhance its competency and efficiency. Q:Briefly describe two main players (SAP and Oracle) in ERP market and explain what components are common in the two players’ ERP products Ans: SAP’ the venture was a joint effort of five former IBM employees who in the mid 70’s sat down with a vision of developing a software which would integrate business functions and process while setting certain standard in the market. As of 2009 SAP is the largest enterprise software company in the world best known for its ERP and business solution providing. On the other hand some 35 years ago initially two computer programmers later on joined by the third started working on an already present prototype on which no one was willing to put an effort into. They at that knew that using this prototype they can revolutionize the business computing. Oracle best known for its flagship product and Oracle Databases became the second largest enterprise software provider in the world after acquiring PeopleSoft in 2004 and by 2007 oracles had the largest software revenue. Both SAP and Oracle provide business solution hence they are working on the same line. Modules for business functions like CRM, SCM exist in both their ERP’s. Both are customizable according to the needs, environment and culture of the organization along with pursuing SaaS (software as a service) . Strategy of both have now changed to taking more time in implementation i.e. to satisfying the customer completely but at the same time the cost escalates aswell. SAP & Oracle both have their similarities and weakness but in the end it depends upon the structure of the organization and in the end result can vary for each individual organization. Q:What will ERP fix in a company? Ans: Implementation of ERP in an organization although is costly but in the long run i t bears more advantages then initially invested. Mainly organizations choose ERP to integrate and align the business functions and intra organizational as well as inter organization communication. ERP eliminates the risk and threat of manipulation of financial data by introducing data integrity throughout the organization. As all