Organizations today confront new markets, new competition and increasing customer expectations. Thus today's organizations have to constantly re-engineer their business practices and procedures to be more and more responsive to customers and competition. In the 1990's Information technology and Business Process re-engineering, used in conjunction with each other, have emerged as important tools which give organizations the leading edge. The efficiency of an enterprise depends on the quick flow of information across the complete supply chain i.e. from the customer to manufacturers to supplier. ERP (Enterprise resource planning) systems, have been a major information technology that has been used by businesses today, in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage. But this advantage seems only plausible if the implementation is coupled with process re-engineering, as well.

ERP is an enterprise wide system that integrates primary business applications, including all areas and levels of an organization. All the applications in an ERP suite share a common set of data that is stored in a central database. It aims to serve as a backbone for your whole computing business, integrating key bu

ERP users can gain competitive advantage from the way they implement the systems and exploit the resulting data. Also, users say the systems can make them more nimble in the marketplace than companies with hard-to-change custom programs. ERP systems are business tools, said Jim Shepherd, an analyst at Advanced Manufacturing Research, Inc., in Boston. ``They are tremendously advantageous in the hands of someone who knows what to do with them, but they can be dangerous in the hands of someone who doesn't.'' Users find that the biggest gain from ERP packages is that they force a company to institute a proven set of business processes, rather than reinvent the wheel. ``One of the big advantages of packaged applications is that as the state of the art moves, you move with it,'' said Martin Richie, director of the ERP competence center at Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, in Seattle. ERP systems also allow users to turn on and off functionality as needed to adapt quickly to changes in their business, where a customized application has to be rebuilt. What these applications do is capture data about historical activity, current operations and future plans, and organize that in a way people can use. When you look at the flexibility in big ERP systems, once implemented, they can look entirely different from one organization to another, a set of building blocks, and it's how you put those building blocks together that gives you an advantage.

The promise of ERP is great but so is the expense in terms of time, effort and money. Implementing the software in a company usually involves changing business processes, that is, the way people do their jobs. So employee resistance to these changes can be a major thorn in a company's side and usually requires that executives hone their change management skills. With careful planning and lots of elbow grease, though, ERP can work and make many an enterprise work better. The success of an ERP solution also depends on how quick the benefits can be reaped from it. This necessitates rapid implementations which lead to shortened ROI periods.

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