Week Twelve - ERP and Collaboration

1.   Explain the business value of integrating SCM, CRM and ERP systems

 SCM, CRM and ERP are the backbone of e-business. Integration of these applications is the key to success for many companies. Integration allows the unlocking of information to make it available to any use, anywhere at any time. The following figure illustrates primary users and business benefits of strategic initiatives.

—2. What is meant by “extended ERP”?

Core ERP components are the traditional components included in most ERP systems, which primarily focus on internal operations. Extended ERP are the extra components that meet the organisational needs not covered by the core components and primarily focus on external operations.

—  Extended ERP components include:

—        Business intelligence (BI)

—        Customer relationship management (CRM)

—        Supply chain management SCM)

—        e-Business components include:

—             e-Logistics

—             e-Procurement

—3. Why it is important to have an enterprise-wide view of data?

 

ERP systems collect data from across an organisation and correlate the data, generating an enterprise-wide view. The true benefit of an ERP system is its ability to take the many different forms of data from across the different organisational systems and correlate, aggregate, and provide an enterprise-wide view of organisational information.It is important to have an enterprise-wide view of data as without the ability of information to be shared across organization, inconsistency across business operations occour.

 

—4. What are some ways that different departments or even different organisations collaborate?

 Organisations create and use teams, partnerships, and alliances to:

—        Undertake new initiatives

—        Address both minor and major problems

—        Capitalise on significant opportunities

 

  Organisations create teams, partnerships, and alliances both internally with employees and externally with other organisations.Information technology can make a business partnership easier to establish and manage. The Internet has dramatically increased the ease and availability for IT-enabled organisational alliances and partnerships. Information partnership – occurs when two or more organisations cooperate by integrating their IT systems, thereby providing customers with the best of what each can offer. Collaboration systems such as groupware enable, support, and facilitate internal and external team collaboration.People skills, or soft skills, in addition to business knowledge and analytical skills are important. Successful people rarely work in isolation.

Collaboration systems include:

—  Knowledge management systems (KMS)

—  Content management systems (CMS)

—  Workflow management systems (WMS)

—  Groupware systems

—5. What is Knowledge Management?

—  Knowledge management (KM) – involves capturing, classifying, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing information assets in a way that provides context for effective decisions and actions.