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Checkpoint: The Contribution of Enterprise Systems

What are enterprise systems? Provide examples of organizational functions supported by enterprise systems.

Enterprise systems are suites of integrated software modules that allow businesses run, organize and communicate over a broad spectrum of business practices and functions. Enterprise systems allow businesses that have a wide range of products, manufacturing, distribution systems, etc… over a wide range of different incompatible systems to be able to communicate with each other through a common central database. The enterprise software that is written is built around thousands predefined business processes. These business processes reflect the most current best business practices at the moment. Software such as SAP, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, and SSA Global are some of the major enterprise systems that are available to businesses. Some particular businesses do not always run the same way as the predefined business practices of the enterprise software suite and therefore would need to sometimes modify some of the software code. This is not always a good practice as the software code is very complex and will most likely lose some of the benefits of the enterprise system. It is usually recommended that the business try and redefine its own business practices to work with the enterprise system rather than customization which can also be very time consuming and costly to a business. Some of the functions supported by enterprise systems are marketing, sales, manufacturing, production, finance, Human Resources, and accounting.

How does effectively implementing and using enterprise systems contribute to achieving operational excellence?

Effectively implementing and using enterprise systems can contribute to achieving operational excellence by centralizing a company’s database and being able to process and distribute that data as needed throughout the company. This is done by feeding the data from numerous...