A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration, School of Management

Research Studies Project Report (M.B.A.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001

The origin of Enterprise Resource Planning software can be traced back to the sixties, with the creation of formulas for efficient inventory management. Since then it grew bigger and got linked with other software towards the inter company data sharing system it is today. Focusing on the processes in a company, it streamlines and integrates the different functions of an enterprise. It also provides better and faster information for decision making because of process automation and optimization calculations, improving competitiveness of the business. Integration of data and processes is a current topic of interest, next to three others: CRM, ASP and SMEs. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) makes ERP more useful to companies by providing more useful information about customers and their needs. Another important evolution is the phenomenon of Application Service Providers (ASP), that use the internet to their advantage by offering software directly on-line. The SME are targeted at the moment, mainly for the fact that the original market of big companies is saturated, but also because of the evolution of cheaper but powerful hardware and because it becomes a prerogative to be a market player to have an ERP system installed. New types of ERP solutions have emerged recently. All of them smaller versions of the traditional ERP solutions, highly or moderately pre-configured. As a general rule, it can be said the bigger the company, the less they can use the pre-configured solutions. Very highly pre-configured solutions are ASP solutions. They are mainly offered to small companies, while medium sized companies can opt for moderately pre-configured software. T.he big companies that choose to implement software will have to choose between the Reference Model Approach, which uses pre-established processes as a basis, and the traditional approach of totally custom made software. Very small companies are advised not to go for an ERP solution at all. When it comes to choosing a particular vendor, one should be careful and examine each vendor's strengths and weaknesses.