October 09, 2000 @ 06:40 pm·Filed under Books
By Alexis Leon, Tata McGraw-Hill, 2000.
To survive, thrive and beat the competition in
today’s brutally competitive world one has to manage the future.
Managing the future means managing the information. Today, the
difference between market leaders and followers, successful
companies and sick industries, profitable organizations and
losers, is the way in which the companies make use of information—information
generated by the company (the internal information) and the
information about the business environment. All companies generate
huge amounts of data—financial data, details of the customers,
purchase details, employee data, and so on. Similarly the company
management should make conscious efforts to keep themselves aware
of what is happening in the market place, what and how the
competitors are doing, what are the consumer and market trends and
so on. Only an organization that makes the best possible use of
this information can succeed. But the problem is that in this age
of information explosion to collect, collate, summarize and refine
the huge amounts of data is a daunting task. People alone cannot
do the job. In order to manage the information, in order to
deliver high quality information to the decision makers at the
right time, in order to automate the process of data collection,
collation and refinement, organizations must make Information
Technology an ally and should harness its full potential and use
it in the best way possible.
Almost all organizations are turning to some
sort of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package as a solution
to their information management problems. ERP packages if chosen
correctly, implemented judiciously and used efficiently will raise
the productivity and profits of companies dramatically. But many a
company fails in this because of wrong product, incompetent and
haphazard implementation and inefficient or ineffective usage. The
most crucial factor that decides the success of an ERP
implementation is how the employees use the system. Even the best
ERP system can fail if the employees are not interested in using
it or using it wrongly or inefficiently. To get total and complete
employee support and participation the organization must make it a
point to educate the employees about the potential benefits and
give them the necessary training.
This book is about Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP)—its evolution, implementation, and advantages. The book is
divided into five sections — Introduction, Implementation,
Business Modules, ERP Market and Present and Future of ERP. The
first section gives an introduction to ERP, what is it, what are
the benefits and what are the related technologies. Section two
deals with the ERP implementation issues. It starts right from the
beginning—selection of the ERP package for the company—and
discusses all issue that will crop up before, during and after the
implementation. Some of the topics that are discussed are package
selection, implementation lifecycle, implementation methodologies,
implementation costs, implementation team, role of vendors and
consultants, contracts with vendors and consultants and so on.
Section three deals with the major modules in an ERP package and
how each module functions. The fourth section is about the ERP
market place and the major players in the ERP marketplace. Section
five deals with the technological advancements that will change
the nature of today’s ERP packages. This section also covers the
future trends in ERP market.
The appendices include ERP resources on the
Internet, ERP—A manufacturing perspective, ERP FAQs, ERP
glossary and ERP case studies (success stories). The book also has
an appendix—Careers in ERP. This appendix gives the guidelines
on how to make a switch from other areas to the ERP profession and
how to make that transition successful and as risk free as
possible.
The book is mainly for managers and executives
who are entrusted with the job of implementing an ERP system in
their organization. The book contains all they need, package
selection, costing, implementation methodologies, team
organization, training, dealing with vendors and consultants, post
implementation strategies and so on. The book is not specific to
any package. The book will come in handy for anybody who wants to
know about ERP, what is its future, how a company can benefit from
ERP and for those people who want to make a career switch to ERP
segment. This book assumes nothing; all concepts are developed
from grounds up and integrated in such a manner that will provide
the necessary logical flow for the reader.
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