Today enlarging, result of current revolution Web linked to applications jobs, the worldwide market of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is irrefutably dominated by SAP, which keeps 40 % of parts markets, and that gives the majority so of the big worldwide groups. However, the opening of ERP in protocols Web also allows to the SMES to achieve these solutions jobs more and more easily. That's how in France, the market develops strongly since 2000 in some sectors (industry, service), PME-PMI constituting the person over 18 economic activity of the hexagon.

Worthy downward of MRP (Manufacturing Resource Planning), whose function was to manage and to plan industrial production (predictions of sales, management of sales / purchases, management of priorities), ERP was born thanks to the appearance of microcomputing and of technologies Web, favouring the circulation of the fluxes of data.

ERP, so called PGI (Integrated Software packages of Management), is applications purpose of which is to co-ordinate all the activities of a firm (vertical said activities such as production, supply or horizontal as marketing, sales forces, management of human resources, etc.) around the same System of Information: they owe their foundation to the notion of integration, which allows:

• In its vertical dimension, to share data in an internal way between several applications, each being ideally devoted to the management of a service of the firm;
• In his horizontal dimension, to make announce the different services of the firm with their equivalents at the various external partners, clients and suppliers.

So, the advantages of ERP are numerous. The following points will notably be kept:

• Optimisation of the fluxes of management, diminishing the time of treatment;
• Integrity, coherence and uniqueness of IF, with the reduction of the costs of service which it implicates;
• Minimisation of costs linked to possible connections between not integrated specific applications;
• Improvement of communication (internal and external!), giving one more high efficiency.

However, it is necessary to admit that some factors do not pronounce easy the decision to adopt a solution ERP:

• Important costs of engineering, linked to the process of complete integration of the software tool within structure;
• Too broad functional perimetre often in comparison with the real needs (especially within SMES!);
• Limited suppleness of ERP, any firm being unique in its processes, what draws development away of specific for the high cost, or an adaptation of the processes of the firm in ERP;
• Need of service goes on;
• Difficult taking over of ERP by the personnel, not much used to this type of technologies, who requires therefore a behaviour in change.

It is therefore in this process of e-transformation, to measure well advantages and disadvantages of the installation of ERP, and of especially to accomplish a comparative of existent solutions to determine the one who will be suitable the best for the activity of the firm. Offer is indeed very various in this context making more active, and can go of a complete solution SAP to easier and lighter solutions to be included, under licence GNU / LPG. Attention however, price and functionality, it goes without saying of solution to be favoured is not the only criterion to be taken into account: they indeed consider that the cost of the software tool represents less than 20 % total costs of installation of such system

This newsletter was published on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 14:55 and is classified in e-business You can follow answers to this newsletter with the thread RSS 2.0. You can answer, or make a rear-view mirror-link since your site.