E.R.P. - Enterprise Resource Planning

E.R.P. stands for Enterprise Resource Planning; so E.R.P. software is Enterprise Resource Planning software.
So, what does this software do?
Take the activities of a typical company or 'Enterprise', its purpose can be loosely described as 'to manufacture or procure products for sale'. These products may be tangible or intangible, but basically the company must 'Plan' and 'Control' the use of its entire resource base to meet these objectives. That is what 'E.R.P. software' does, it helps the managers and staff of an enterprise to manage its resources to manufacture/procure the products it sells within one software package.
The single software package 'integrates' its elements or modules into one seamless package to control the enterprise activities. The most common activities being Purchasing, Manufacturing, Sales and Accounting (see diagram).
Lets take an example of the inter-relationship between these basic activities -
- first a customer places an order for a product, this places a demand on stock levels,
- if stock is not on hand, then manufacturing needs to produce the product, this may put a demand on purchasing,
- purchasing places an order with suppliers for the required raw materials and components,
- once acquired they are placed in stock, awaiting the start of the manufacturing process,
- manufacturing uses these stocks and along with labour and machinery produces the semi-finished or finished product,
- the product is then placed in stock, awaiting dispatch to satisfy the initial customer order,
- all of these activities have accounting impact on the business affecting suppliers, stocks, expenses, customers, etc.

E.R.P. software helps management control the business and to monitor each process, so that the limited resources of the company are used in the most economic manner.

E.R.P. software is not new, it has been around for at least 20 years, initially with large international companies. As time has progressed, the size level of companies able to install E.R.P. software has fallen, to a point now, where most companies are in a position to install some form of E.R.P. software.

What are the pitfalls to installing E.R.P. software?
The larger the company and the more functions placed on the same system at the same time increases the risk level, so if things goes wrong, it will have a dramatic impact on the financial and operating ability of the company.
However, for smaller companies, which are inherently more flexible with less complicated business processes the risks are still present, but much reduced.
Another disadvantage for large companies and E.R.P. systems is that once installed, they do present a substantial barrier to business process flexibility and change, with the result that many large companies that have installed the same E.R.P. system, end up with very similiar business processes as their competitiors and so look the same to customers and suppliers.

E.R.P. 2 the next generation.
E.R.P. 2 takes standard E.R.P. and extends it by providing for closer relationships between an enterprise and its customers and suppliers. An example of this closer relationship is that an enterprise will allow customers to directly interact with its computer system so allowing them to place orders and investigate the status of its account, outstanding deliveries and orders. Suppliers can be permitted to monitor stock levels and suggest when items need replenishing.
Due to the level of system integration needed between enterprises to achieve E.R.P. 2, this remains, for the moment, the preserve of large companies with the I.T. resources to make it possible.

I.M.S. - Inventory Management Software

Exact inventory control data is an essential part of any successful business.
Inventory Control Software provides you with accurate information on all aspects of inventory in a cost effective manner. It must provide timely and accurate information on the:
- quantity and value of goods held
- receipts of goods from suppliers
- return of goods from customers
- transfer of goods between locations
- removal for sale
- reduction of stock levels due to damage, theft, mis-counts, etc.

The software should also help you:
- improve customer service
- reduce stock levels and holding costs
- reduce stock processing costs
- change from the familiar buy-hold-sell model, to a sell-source-ship model

Inventory data must be at a level dictated by the type of stock held. This may cover: - bin location; color; size; style; lot numbers; serial numbers and expiration dates.
Run out of stock and you will lose sales. Whilst too much stock will adversely impact cash flow.
Inventory Control Software helps maximizes your benefits from 'just-in-time' inventory levels, whilst increasing warehouse productivity and reducing errors due to 'paper errors'.

Sales staff must be able to find inventory easily, using and seeing such items as:
- Fast and flexible product search facility
- Multiple part numbers - your part no; the supplier part no.; the manufacturer part no.
- Product Groups - for faster flexible searching and better reporting
- Recommended Selling Prices
- Cost per unit
- Alternative products
- Minimum order quantity
- Stock and sale unit quantities
- Associated promotion products

C.R.M. - Customer Relationship Management

is concerned about how a customer sees your business and how they interact with your business, in order to develop stronger relationships with them. Good customer relationships are at the heart of business success. One aim of CRM is to provide a cost effective seamless interface with customers no matter by what method they choose to contact you - by (mail, e-mail, web, telephone, face to face, etc.) and no matter at what lifecycle stage they have reached - initial contact, interested lead, qualified prospect, quoting, delivery, invoice, payment, or after sales service and support, followed by a re-purchase.

Improving customer support and service is a business and technology priority for nearly all businesses. Although technology is a component of CRM, it is a mistake to think about it in those terms. CRM is a strategic process that will help you better understand your customers’ needs and how you can meet those needs and enhance your profits at the same time. The strategy must bring together all the of pieces of information about customers and market trends so you can sell and market your products and services more effectively.

This may be by providing true one-to-one marketing and then gauging the effectiveness of such campaigns in real time.
By providing sales and accounting staff with a total view of all customer data and customer interactions, including complete visibility of all financial transactions and website interactions without any additional integration requirement.

CRM helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into customer behaviour and the value of individual customers to the business. With an effective CRM strategy, a business can increase revenues by:
- helping sales staff close deals faster
- providing services and products that exactly met customer requirements
- offering better customer service
- cross selling products more effectively
- retaining existing customers and discovering new ones

C.P.M. - Corporate Performance Management

Many businesses desire strong profits and a cohesive work force, but take little positive action to achieve these goals.

Such desires cannot be achieved overnight.

They require training and a process of continuous improvement and refinement in order to meet the ever changing business environment.

A positive step forward is to install a Corporate Performance Management (CPM) process and ethos in the business.
Quit simply, CPM are activities to ensure that goals are consistently met in an effective and efficient manner. CPM's can be focused at various levels - at cross department business processes; at an individual department; at processes to build a product/service; at groups or teams of employees; at individual employees; etc.


Good Corporate Performance Management is based upon:
- Clear policy statements so staff at every level know what the goals are
- Clear direction to staff at every level so they know what to do to attain goals
- Mutually agreed and credible measurement criteria that makes sense to the manager and to the business
- Identifying areas of weakness and undertaking training to develop and improve such areas
- Timely feedback to managers on their measurement criteria
- Timely feedback to aid continuous process improvement and refinement
- Targeted consequences imposed consistently to develop superior performance and its maintenance
- Allowing for change at all levels as the business environment changes
- Finally, remembering to celebrate achievements


To help achive these aims, software can be used to produce the data for the measurement criteria, be they plans, budgets, forecasts or actuals. For consistent results across all measures, such software should be integrated with the E.R.P. (Enterprise Resource Planning) system used by the business.

On all the above, RCL can help, with its Acceptum Business Software E.R.P. software system which has a unquie SQL Query based Business Score Card function, allowing management to monitor business perfromance criteria whenever required. Being SQL based it can access data from any table within the system.

B.P.M. - Business Process Management

is the management of business processes that are internal or external to the business. It focuses on the integration and collaboration of people, systems, processes, and information across a business, including its business partners, customers and suppliers.

Your unique business processes are what defines your business.
They provide your business with its competitive edge.
They give it the ability to satisfy and retain customers, to maximize partnerships with other businesses, and to out-perform competitors.
It is the coordination of the numerous assets and tasks that together form your business processes. It could well be your most important business asset!

A complete review of Business Processes can innovate a business, re-energize performance and deliver increased value. A process managed business makes agile changes to direction and reduces cumulative costs across its value chain. It pursues strategic initiatives with confidence, be they mergers, consolidations, alliances, acquisitions, outsourcing or global expansion.

Business Process Management discovers what you do and then manages the lifecycle of improvement and optimization, leading directly to new or improved processes.

By its very nature, BPM can be applied to all business processes regardless of function, department, organization or industry. However, experience shows that to be successful, a business should start by solving a specific business process problem that has a clear, short term return on investment.

Broken or inefficient processes, and manual processes are often the causes of poor customer service and overall low business performance. Superior business performance depends on addressing these process problems. BPM coordinates all aspects of a process, ensuring that it is executed quickly, accurately and efficiently. It manages this execution in a manner that can be tracked (audited for compliance) and analyzed, so the process can be improved and businesses can achieve continuous process improvement.

Tangible benefits to a business implementing BPM are:
- Process transparency
- Agile and responsive business – faster, cheaper, more flexible
- Greater productivity
- Cost reduction
- Tighter control and compliance
- Improved customer service
- Connection of disparate systems.

Management Reporting

Many companies have monthly reporting routines which culminate in structured reports being printed and issued to all managers. Such monthly reports containing elements, like
- Balance Sheet,
- Profit and Loss A/c with various comparisons,
- cost centre expenditure with various comparisons,
- variance analysis of product manufacturing costs,
- labour useage, recovery and charge out rates,
- sales and marketing performance with various comparisons,
- management commentary covering the main functional areas and business performance,
- detailed reports from the ERP system.

All of this takes time to prepare and issue - normally one to two weeks.
Making the data obsolete before the report is even issued!

In to-days modern business world with advanced networks and internal web sites, the need to print physical copies of such monthly reports has largely been removed by having a sub-section of an internal web site available to all managers to access and review via a web browser, no matter where they are in the world.

To support the construction of such intranet 'management report' sites it is important that the ERP system used by the company can produce and save reports in HTML format so that they can be easily incorporated into the site. In fact on being produced by the ERP system they could be saved directly onto the web site making them immediately available. So that managers who need to add commentary have the data available on which to comment.

The automatic production of reporting elements and the removal of printing greatly reduces the man hours and elapsed time required to obtain finished reports.

Producing more timely reports makes the data far more relevant for supporting those business decisions required to change course and obtain a better outcome.

It is suggested that an outline of the management report for each period is built at the start of the financial year, so that as the year unfolds, each periods report can be constructed by the accountants and managers concerned with little to no requirement placed on IT staff.