The term ERP

The term ERP is relatively new and was invented by the Gardner Group in the middle of the 70ties. However, ERP systems have existed for the past 30 years carrying different names and content. Terms like business systems, standard systems and standard package have covered a similar type of systems.

ERP is the abbreviation of Enterprise Resource Planning and its purpose is to combine the handling of the following business processes

• Marketing
• Sales and service
• Logistics and distribution
• Production
• Human resources
• Economy

 

ERP system's importance for a company

Since ERP systems cover more and more of a company’s business critical processes, it means that the dependence on these systems will increase. Problems occurring from such systems consequently may result in an inability  to sell, produce or invoice.

 

ERP systems or ”best of breed systems”

Unlike ERP systems, the so-called ”best of breed” systems typically only cover a single business process and need to be integrated with other systems in order to cover all business processes.

A typical "trademark" of an ERP system is:

• it is a configurable standard system
• it covers many types of businesses
• it covers all or many functions within the company
• it includes an integrated data model
• it works process-oriented