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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems result in efficiency and data consistency in a business. The major requirement in today's ever-changing business situation is the need for a system which can evolve as per the organization's requirements. Static systems can only respond to static situations. So, the evolution of a new breed of systems like dynamic ERP is essential. To have rapid change and response models, it is very important that the ERP and the actual business processes co-evolve. In such a scenario, it will require a greater commitment from the vendors and from mere implementers; the role has to be that of co-innovators.

 
 
 

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Enterprise Systems (ES) is employed by organizations for integrating and automating the business processes which in due course, leads to strategic value. Keeping this in mind, ES can be seen as composed of two dimensions: Business scope and information processing sophistication. It comprises the following elements:

The ES supports three different domains—internal to a firm, the value chain and a set of collaborative peers. Manufacturing, finance, HR come under the first domain whereas supply chain and peer networks fall under the second and the third domain. The internal processes are easy to connect but integration outside the internal area requires management attention and has to face system hurdles.This refers to the kind and level of information that is available. The information is generated at three levels - transaction automation, process management, and knowledge management. The current generation ERP systems are mostly considered to be passive and they capture transactional data.Typically, ERP works on a model where there are standard business processes defined in the system. The organizational processes are either built or mapped around it. If the process in the organization and ERP do not match, they are re-engineered to fit into the system. The process becomes very fast as human involvement in transaction becomes limited.

At this point, the ability to take action on gathered data comes into picture. Here, the ability of a system to work on certain predefined algorithms comes into play. Suppose the inventory gets depleted beyond the critical level, can the system generate an order that is optimum in every sense? Process management, of course, requires defining business rules - that is a human being's capability to understand what will happen in a particular scenario. The next generation ERP systems, in all probabilities, will consist of decision capabilities. Decision capabilities do not mean that these systems will replace human beings but they are expected to help in reducing the chances of errors. Here, the amount and need of human intervention is reduced.

 
 
 
 

E-Business Magazine, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, ERP, Enterprise Systems, ES, Knowledge Management, Process Management, Application Service Providers, ASPs, Technological Innovations, Resource Management, Architecture Capability Maturity Models, ACMMs, Business Environments, Information Technology.