Erp Course Analsis

Test 1

1. Business function is an activity that is referred to the functional area of operation. The main functional areas are Marketing and Sales, Supply Chain Management, Accounting and Finance, and Human Resources. Business process is a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer. Usually, the business process may be related to two or more functional areas.

How a business process cuts across functional lines in an organization? For example, if the sales department wants to know how many inventories they should have, they should ask the Marketing and Sales about the average sales, and they also have to ask the Accounting and Finance to know how much capital they need.

Managers organize their teams in terms of business process instead of functional departments because the customer for a business process may be a traditional external customer or an internal customer. In this way, their teams can do their work more efficient since one business process can cover many functional departments. From this new method of organization, the company can do their business more productively. Meanwhile, they can share all the data that one business process needs, and it will decrease the cost of operations.

2. Last time I bought a pair of shoes from a NIKE store. When I wanted to fit on a pair of shoes with particular size, they had to check from their system whether they had them, this was related with the Marketing and Sales functional area. Also, they had to set the price, this was also related with M/S. If I wanted to know where the shoes were made in, and what was the material of the shoes, they had to collect information from SCM. Then, the employee who served me was related with HR.

In this case, the information that the business functions need to be available is the date of this sell and which store the sell occurs, as well as the price and name of the shoes. Sometimes, the receipt may include the information of the sales person who serves me.

The M/S needs the information of price and name of the shoes, the date and store. The A/F also needs the price so that they can calculate the sale. The HR may need the name of the sales person to assess the employee’s ability.

3. The main characteristics of an ERP system are as follows:

1) it acts as a company-wide computing environment

2) it includes a database that is shared by all functional areas

3) it can deliver consistent data across all business functions in real time

The newly developed features of the ERP systems are:

1) the hardware and software technology that supports the system is advanced

2) it has a vision of integrated information system

3) it reengineers the company from a functional focus to a business-process focus

4. Oracle’s ERP system is a popular software for managing human resources and financial activities at universities.

Microsoft’s Dynamix is focused on the small to midsized business market.

5. Marketing and Sales is the most important part of one company. This is because M/S include developing products, determining pricing, promoting products to customers, and taking customers’ orders. It also helps to create a sales forecast to ensure the successful operation. B/S is responsible for selling the company’s product, and usually these sales are the only source of revenue. So, the M/S is very important to the development of one company.