Re: ot: Please reference to excellent Enterprise Resrouce Planning book references
- From: "Juan Carlos Reyes Pacheco" <juancarlosreyesp@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Dennis Williams" <oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 15:19:39 -0400
Thanks a lot Dennis, I know how big they are, but if you want to start one,
you have to start from somewhre, I know about accounting, employee, etc.
What I was looking was good sources for ideas designing erps.
On 8/8/06, Dennis Williams <oracledba.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Juan,
You've set a rather ambitious task for yourself. First of all, ERP is
mainly a buzzword. It consists of whatever a company decides it should. As
you have stated, an ERP consists of modules. The modules are where the real
significance is, the real brains. The rest is just how you get the modules
to communicate. Usually the key module is the general ledger module, since
money is the key resource in an organization and the general ledger tracks
the money. There are other modules that usually round out a fully-fledged
accounting system such as budgeting, accounts payable, accounts receivable.
Then there are other modules that companies have come to expect from a
fully-fledged ERP system such as payroll, support for human relations, and
perhaps inventory control. But the point is that at some point there is
discretion whether to include particular modules or not in a vendor's ERP
design, depending on what the vendor's clients are requesting, and where the
vendor's competence lies.
To develop any of these modules would take an education in that
subject and years of professional practice. A company which wishes to
develop one of these modules first hires a team of competent professionals
in that subject area to design that module.
Once you've developed individual modules, then you must decide how the
modules will exchange information. A key decision is how frequently the
modules need to exchange information. Sometimes it must be real-time.
Sometimes you want an overnight cycle. Sometimes it is a month-end
accounting cycle.
In summary, ERP systems, even small ones, tend to be vast, sprawling
affairs with complexity that boggles the imagination. But the number of
features varies according to the size of organization which purchases them.
Take payroll for example. Say you are a payroll clerk paying a dozen
employees at a small organization. You just need a very simple payroll
program to assist you. Maybe only one employee has a garnishment against
his/her wages. You just handle that manually without assistance from the
program. Now, suppose you manage a payroll department for a medium-sized
company and you pay thousands of employees. Now there will be hundreds of
people with garnishments against their wages so you must have a payroll
program with a good garnishment feature or you'll spend a lot of time each
month handling the garnishments manually. So small organizations use simple,
cheap programs with few features, while large organizations use complex,
expensive programs with many, many features. Hopefully this gives you some
small insights into the ERP landscape.
From the point of view of a database administrator, it is all tables
and demanding users. You aren't expected to be an expert in any of the ERP
modules. But you must ensure the users don't encounter any database errors
and fix any errors promptly and courteously. You should have a professional
demeanor that lets you work with many types of people.
Dennis Williams
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