Objectives

Objective 1: Improve the value proposition of enterprise information systems by decreasing the
cost of implementing and supporting them and by increasing their business value.
Objective 2: Treat data as an institutional asset.
Objective 3: Manage enterprise information systems as an integrated portfolio of applications

What is Enterprise System?

Enterprise systems are forming or creating something a number of different applications,
protocols and formats. In doing so, an enterprise system allows companies to integrate business processes,
such as sales, deliveries and accounts receivable, by sharing information across business functions and
employee that controls an organization. These systems can be a multiple independent systems that may or
may not affect with other systems and that process data to support particular business functions or
processes. For example ,the enterprise resource planning uphold the entire sales process that involves pre-
sales activities, sales orders, inventory sourcing, deliveries, billing and customer payments. Enterprise
resource planning, supply chain management and customer relationship management systems are each
examples of enterprise systems.
Enterprise systems are software-based business methodologies that are used across all functions
within an organization. Enterprise are necessary refers to the scope of these solutions that are used
company-wide. Several key 21st century business processes have evolved in large part because of the
availability of enterprise-wide database software applications.
Information systems that allow companies to integrate information across operations on
an enterprise-wide basis.
Web-based information systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain
Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), tying together all aspects of
the enterprise so that operations, the supply chain, distribution channels, accounting systems, and other
information transfers are coordinated among the core firm and all applicable collaborators.

3 Different Types of Enterprise System

 Customer Relationship Management
Customer relationship management systems were developed to address the need to increase the
sales department’s productivity and make the management of a company’s customers an effective
way to increase sales. With CRM functions, such as sales opportunity management, a company
gain more about its customers’ needs and buying behavior and combines this information with
market information to improve the quality of the company’s marketing plans and sales forecasts.
Other attributes of the CRM system, including the integration of this system with other systems
and system access via mobile devices, allow employees to update and compare data regardless of
the system it’s in and to access information from any client site or other location. Equally
important, CRM supports mass e-mail communications and automates the sales process workflow
to improve employee productivity.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the more conspicuous business systems of the
21st century. CRM leverages database technology to track customer relationships more accurately,
to enhance the total customer experience, and to deliver more targeted marketing campaigns.
While marketing departments often spearhead CRM programs, all functions in the organization
 have more customer-centric roles. CRM software solutions are key to getting a complete view of
each customer for more customized relationship management.

 Supply Chain Management

A supply chain refers to the collection of people, tasks, equipment, data and other resources
required to produce and move products from a vendor to a customer. Supply chain management
refers to the management of supply chain activities by the supply chain firms in an effective and
efficient way that will provide a company with strategic advantage. These activities may include
product development, material sourcing, production and logistics as well as the information
systems that coordinate these activities. Information flows allow supply chain partners to
coordinate their strategic and operational plans as well as the day-to-day flow of goods and
materials through the supply chain. The physical flows include the manufacture, transport and
storage of goods or materials.

Supply chain management (SCM) is another 21st century business development that involves the
collaboration of members of a supply chain to deliver the best value solution to the end customer.
Built on software applications, SCM relies on close partnerships between manufacturers,
wholesalers and retailers. SCM software is used for close monitoring and precise automation of
inventory replenishment and management. Transportation and logistics is also key. In his
November 2008 CIO article "Supply Chain Management Definition and Solutions," Thomas
Wailgum identifies five key SCM steps, including: planning, sourcing, making solutions,
delivering them and coordinating returns.

 Enterprise Resource Planning

The enterprise resource planning system integrates software applications just as a company
integrates business processes, such as purchasing, finance, human resources and inventory
management. Within an ERP system, the integrated software modules, such as sales, quality
management and accounts receivable, communicate and share data. Each of these modules
consists of multiple applications that perform the functions required to do a particular end-to-end
business processes. For example, the sales module includes the applications necessary to create
and manage sales contracts, sales orders, sales invoices and sales order pricing. ERP applications
support not only various operational and administrative tasks, such as the creation of an account
payable or a time sheet, they may also be customized to support a number of different industries,
including oil and gas, retail and banking.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is especially dependent on ERP software solutions. Wailgum
points out in another CIO article from April 2008, "ERP Definition and Solutions," that ERP is not
really about planning. The focus is on the integration of departments and functions across the
company, making the word "enterprise" the key. ERP is a single-computer system that allows all
functional areas in the company to collaborate in resource sharing. This is opposite of traditional
approaches of separate resource budgets and processes, and it helps to reduce waste and resource
inefficiencies.

Other example of Enterprise Systems

 Enterprise Application Integration
Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of technologies and services across an
enterprise to enable the integration of software applications and hardware systems. Many
proprietary and open projects provide EAI solution support.

EAI is related to middleware technologies. Other developing EAI technologies involve Web
service integration, service-oriented architecture, content integration and business processes.
Intercommunication between enterprise applications (EA), such as customer relations
management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and business intelligence is not
automated. Thus, EAs do not share common data or business rules. EAI links EA applications to
simplify and automate business processes without applying excessive application or data structure
changes.
However, EAI is challenged by different operating systems, database architectures and/or
computer languages, as well as other situations where legacy systems are no longer supported by
the original manufacturers.

EAI meets these challenges by fulfilling three purposes, as follows:

• Data Integration: Ensures consistent information across different systems.

• Vendor Independence: Business policies or rules regarding specific business applications
do not have to be re-implemented when replaced with different brand applications.
• Common Facade: Users are not required to learn new or different applications because a
consistent software application access interface is provided.

The advantages of EAI are clear:

• Real-time information access

• Streamlining processes
• Accessing information more efficiently
• Transferring data and information across multiple platforms
• Easy development and maintenance.
 Enterprise portals
An enterprise portal provides an organization’s employees, customers and partners with a
single Web-based point for interacting with each other and with applications, processes,
documents and other information. An enterprise portal serves up personalized applications based
on users’ individual roles, locations, preferences or other factors. By delivering customized,
constantly updated and highly relevant content via a familiar Web browser, enterprise portals can
provide valuable support for business process management (BPM) and other organizational
improvement efforts.
 Employee Relationship Management
Employee relationship management is a process that companies use to effectively manage all
interactions with employees, ultimately to achieve the goals of the organization. The human
resources department can play a critical role in this process, both in terms of training and
coaching managers and executives on how to effectively establish and nurture relationships with
employees and in measuring and monitoring those relationships to determine whether objectives
are being met.
Identifying Objectives
Employee relationship management is a general term that means a lot of different things to a lot
of different people. At the outset, it is important to define what is meant by employee relationship
management and, specifically, what areas of the relationship will be managed. For most
companies, relationship management centers around items like attracting and retaining
employees. Common measures of the effectiveness of these relationships include time to hire,
turnover and employee satisfaction.
 • Determining Employee Needs
It is not enough to assume that a company or even its HR professionals know what is
important to employees. Needs vary greatly depending on employee characteristics--age,
gender, etc.--as well as the type of job being performed. It is a good idea to find out
directly from employees what their needs are. You can do this in one-on-one
conversations that take place informally throughout the year, during formal employee
evaluation meetings and through surveys and polls that can provide a quantitative
indication of employee needs.
• Balancing Work and Life Needs
There is a widespread recognition in the 21st century that effective employee relationship
management requires consideration of the whole employee. That means taking steps to
ensure that the employee's work-life needs are well balanced. This can occur through
creative staffing that might involve part-time, flextime or even off-site work assignments.
• Open, Honest Communication
Communication is critical to establishing strong employee relationships. Managers must
be committed to communicating regularly and honestly with employees about the issues
that impact their work. The more open organizations can be, the more likely they are to
establish strong relationships that lead to increased loyalty and productivity among
employees and decreased turnover and dissatisfaction.
• Measuring and Monitoring Results
Effective employee relationship management requires ongoing attention. That means that
managers and their HR departments should be alert at all times for signs of discontent,
which can be subjective, as well as carefully monitoring the results of more formal
assessments. These results should also be shared with employees. Too often employees
are asked to complete surveys and are not informed of the results--or what will be done
with the results.
• Relationships Are Interpersonal
Ultimately, employee relationship management requires the same skills and processes
required to manage any relationship; a clear understanding of employees' needs and a
desire to meet those needs is foundational. Then steps must be taken to interact
effectively with employees through a variety of communication channels, both
interpersonal and formal (e.g., intranet site, employee newsletters, etc.). Finally,
measurement of the effectiveness of these efforts should be frequent and ongoing, with
improvements and adjustments made when results are not showing continual
improvement or satisfactory levels of performance.

 Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is a systematic approach to managing the series of changes
a product goes through, from its design and development to its ultimate retirement or disposal.

Product lifecycle management is associated with manufacturing, but the management structure
can also be used for software development and service provision. PLM is typically broken into
the following stages:
 • Beginning of life (BOL) - includes new product development and design processes.
• Middle of life (MOL) - includes collaboration with suppliers, product information
management (PIM) and warranty management.
• End of life (EOL) - includes strategies for how the products will be disposed of,
discontinued or recycled.

A Product lifecycle management software application can help an organization manage their
product's lifecycles by providing a data warehouse for all the information that affects the product.
PLM software can be used to automate the management of product-related data and integrate the
data with other business processes such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing
execution systems (MES). The goal of PLM is to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. PLM is
considered to be an integral part of the lean production model.

Five Steps to an Effective Enterprise Systems Strategy

During strong economic times, companies often dive head first into their enterprise software
initiatives without considering the multitude of options at their disposal. This may have worked for
companies 10 or 20 years ago, but as Bob Dylan once said: “Times, they are a changin’.”
Looking at the big picture and understanding how various options do (or don’t) align with our
overall corporate strategy are two of the biggest challenges with today’s enterprise technologies. Too
many companies focus on technology without ensuring those technology decisions are aligned with
overarching corporate strategies, which leads to overinvestment in irrelevant software and a poor return
on investment.
Most of the clients we work with simply don’t have the luxury of accepting these dismal results. This is
one of the key reasons why our enterprise and IT strategy service offering is one of our fastest growing
areas of our business.

Below are five key steps to defining a well-aligned enterprise strategy:

1. Clearly define or understand your corporate strategy. Most of our clients have a fairly clear
strategic direction, but just don’t know how to translate that into a meaningful and relevant IT and
enterprise systems strategy. This is why many companies simply buy what is sold to them (such
as shelf ware from big ERP vendors) rather than letting their overall strategy drive their
purchasing decisions. On the contrary, best-in-class organizations clearly define their corporate
strategy and convert into meaningful objectives that can provide clear direction on enterprise
application decisions.
2. Translate your corporate strategy into an operational and business process strategy. This is
where our clients often see a disconnect between the executive boardroom and the front lines of
people designing and executing day-to-day business processes. If your strategy is to centralize
operations across multiple offices and locations, then you will want to engage in business process
management that focuses on building-shared service business processes. If one of your corporate
strategies is to drive top-line revenue growth and increase market share, then you will want to
 focus your business process work on sales, customer service and other customer-facing
operations.

3. Translate your business processes into organizational change strategies. Once you begin to
define your business process and operational strategy, you will then need to define how
your organizational change initiatives will support those “to-be” operations. You will need to
define everything from skills that you have now relative to the skills you will need in the future,
to the roles and responsibilities of all of the employees affected by these changes. In addition, you
will need to address how those changes will be implemented using employee communications,
change impact assessments, training strategies and other key organizational change tools.

4. Define how technology can best support #1, 2 and 3. Notice that we haven’t even discussed
technology in the first three steps of defining the best enterprise strategy. This is because
technology should simply support the corporate, operational and organizational strategies that
you deploy. Now that you better understand what you’re trying to accomplish from a people and
process perspective, you can more effectively navigate through the confusing plethora of options
available in the enterprise technology space: best of breed, cloud, integrated ERP, CRM systems,
business intelligence, mobile applications, internet of things, eCommerce, HCM systems and
hundreds of other possible strategies and tactics. Instead of myopically focusing on an ERP
selection and implementation process as they have done in years past, organizations now need to
focus on how to leverage the best technologies to help them achieve their goals.

5. Define strategic KPIs and benefits realization plans to maximize your return on investment
(ROI). None of this matters if you’re not setting target levels of performance and measuring
results. The most effective enterprise strategies include detailed metrics and key performance
indicators that will determine expectations and define success. In addition, these metrics are
translated into specific benefits realization plans that define how exactly your organization will
achieve target levels of performance.
 An effective enterprise technology strategy requires an independent, technology-agnostic and big-
picture view of how to best align your corporate and IT strategies.

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Activity:
1. Elaborate the meaning of Enterprise Application Integration
2. How the 3 types of enterprise system connect to each other
3. How the enterprise system works
4. Give the 3 stages of PLM
5. Differentiate the enterprise portals and employee relationship management