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Enterprise Resource Planning – Linking a Business With Technology
The role of computers in this generation has multiplied a lot. Almost all kinds of work that requires precision have been thrown upon computers. Animated films, large-scale machineries, meticulous medical diagnostic studies – man uses computers to manipulate these. Well, it is true, almost in all fields and all businesses – the need for computers to deliver quality and centralized work is needed. Hence, enterprise resource planning or simply ERP was conceptualized and applied.
What is ERP?
According to Wikipedia, “Enterprise Resource Planning is an integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. Built on a centralized database and normally utilizing a common computing platform, ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise-wide system environment.”
Enterprise Mobility Applications
Today, many corporations have large mobile workforces, in sales and field service roles. Frequently, these mobile workers have little or no remote access to core business applications of their organisation. Voice and paper are still the main communication method for these employees to communicate and interact with the corporate backend. An obvious example is a Salesperson, who has to make a voice call to the corporate office to enquire whether an item he is selling is in stock or not. Typically he would make this call in the middle of his sales negotiation with the prospect. If he manages to close the deal, he would manually fill up the order form, which he would either hand deliver to the corporate office at the end of his day or if the organisation is slightly tech savvy, he would fax it to the corporate office. The inefficiencies in this communication approach are apparent. Imagine if the corporation had implemented an enterprise mobility solution – the Salesperson in our example would be equipped with some kind of PDA – to enquire about the stock information he would key in the item code in the stock query application running on his PDA, which would instantly tell him the answer by querying the database in real time. If a sale were made, the Salesperson would fill up the order form on his PDA, which would be uploaded to the corporation’s sales order processing application at the backend. The above example depicts the manual vs. mobile enabled business process for a Salesperson. Imagine how many corporate business processes can be mobile enabled and the resulting efficiency and productivity gains. And what is more interesting is that research in the US indicates that corporations are planning to implement mobility solutions as part of their business strategy and not for productivity gains alone.
Enterprise mobility applications
A corporation can mobile enable its business processes in several ways. There are many solutions in the market place and the choice of what solution to implement depends on the business objectives around implementing mobility. The various mobile solutions available can be classified as follows:
How to Make Money Through Selling Your Enterprise
Selling your business or enterprise is a one time event. It is said that business is an easy come and easy go thing. After years of hard work spending time to make your enterprise into success, there will be a big decision that you will make and that is to sell your enterprise. You will end up selling your enterprise for so much less than with it’s actual worth. Regardless of what enterprise or business you have, know that there are lots of thing to remember. Here are some useful tips in selling your enterprise.
• Assess the Value of your Enterprise
- Determine the actual worth of the enterprise that you want to sell. You can hire an accounting firm to do the job. You have to go over assets, inventory, receivables and profit & loss records for the past years. These will give you idea of exactly how much your enterprise is worth. And it will level up your confidence in asking for a fair asking price.