ERP Delivers The GoodsImplementing enterprise resource-planning systems can be extremely painful, and once you have them up and running they may seem to interfere with the speed and agility needed for electronic business. Are they a waste? No, but the real advantages aren't always noticeable. Throughout the 1990s, the majority of large industrial companies installed enterprise resource-planning (ERP) systems--that is, enormous computer applications allowing a business to handle all of its operations (finance, requirements planning, human resources, and order fulfillment) on the basis of a single, integrated set of corporate data. Enterprise resource-planning systems assures massive improvements in efficiency--for example, shorter interval between orders and payments, lower back-office staff necessities, cheap inventory, and enhanced customer service. Encouraged by ERP's potential, businesses around the world invested some $ 300 billion in it during the decade.
SAP, one of the leading providers of ERP solutions, has thrown its hat into the ERP application rental ring. SAP ERP applications are available on an outsourced, hosted basis. For a fixed monthly rental fee, small to midsize companies can now reap the benefits of a top ERP package without the capital investment and infrastructure needed to implement such a setup in-house. With the emergence of application rentals, however, any size company can have a top-notch ERP system even though they don't have the IT resources or capital traditionally needed. This is because the hardware and software is maintained at the vendor's site and you merely access the system via the Internet or other connection. The SAP ERP offering costs between $ 425 and $ 660 per user per month. It includes the software license, maintenance, and network connection. Although the target market includes companies with an annual revenue of less than $ 200 million, SAP has learned that larger companies are looking very seriously at this strategy, and a few are close to implementing it. Core ERP applications are available, which includes, financials, sales and distribution, manufacturing, human resources, advanced planner and optimizer, and the business information warehouse. SAP ERP helps companies with application outsourcing. It offers: · Consulting to help any size company take full advantage of e-biz capabilities; · Infrastructure and production services including hardware and network routers, systems management services, facilities management, and support services for the life of the system; · Ongoing software and technology upgrades; and · Comprehensive data protection and backup services to lower the risk of business disruption Survey.com reports that recent surveys of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market have revealed poor market knowledge or acceptance of the business-to-business e-commerce portal offered by SAP. Of respondents at companies currently using or planning to use an SAP ERP system, 31.5 percent have "no knowledge", less than 14 percent are currently evaluating it, and only less than 2 percent are in fact using it. These results clearly give us an idea about the damage done to SAP ERP's market position by its reluctance to identify the Internet as an inflection point in the ERP market. SAP ERP is trying hard to catch up, but these surveys shows that the delay in delivering and uncertainty caused by changes in the marketing message, may have pushed many customers to choose instead for third-party solutions to access and make data from SAP ERP transactional databases more extensively accessible. |