Information is a key asset for the organizations in the present times. It is becoming increasingly significant for the organization to effectively manage the information that is associated with their business processes. Enterprise Systems or Enterprise Applications are the business systems that are designed for a specific business process to reduce the complexities that are involved with it. These are large software systems that are scalable in nature and are also component based and distributed (Swanson, 2008). There are various enterprise systems that are now available for the organizations to deploy in their business architecture.
Enterprise Applications are used and applied in a variety of business sectors. E-commerce industry is one of the prime industries of these Enterprise Applications.
Billing and invoice is an essential activity that is associated with the e-commerce industries. It is not possible for the system engineers to manually process each of the billing cycle for the user and then present it on the e-commerce portal. It is therefore required to have an automated system that may serve the purpose and carry put the billing activities for hundreds and thousands of users at the same time. These enterprise applications accomplish automatic billing of the particular system and also maintain and manage the information that is associated with it.
Customer engagement and customer satisfaction are the two prime goals for any business organization. The case is the same with the e-commerce sector as well. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the enterprise application that enhances the relation between the business and its customers. It does so by maintaining information associated with customer details, customer preferences, customer expectations along with their contact details and sales history. Resolution of customer queries along with enabling the customers to have latest information on the products and services offered by the organization is also covered by these systems.
There are several business components that are associated with a single business unit. It has become essential to have an integrated unit to bring together all of these components on a single platform. ERP systems are the enterprise applications that integrate all the business functions along with the ones that lie at the back-end. These systems organize and streamline the information that is associated with a particular organization. They find signification application in the e-commerce sector to bring together all the different components on a common platform (Kocakulah and Willett, 2011).
Technology has made several advancements in the recent years and BI tools and applications are one such development. Business Intelligence is a concept that covers a number of different tools and applications for using the raw data associated with an organization in an intelligent manner. There are tools that come under BI such as data mining tools, data warehousing tools, online analytical processing and many more. These tools are used by the enterprises to understand their data patterns and data statistics in an efficient manner (Gonzales, 2011).
Project management has flourished as a discipline in the past few years with the expansion of business and the activities associated with a particular project. E-commerce companies execute various project s simultaneously and it becomes necessary for the industry to effectively manage these projects. Project Management Systems are the enterprise applications that provide a mechanism to automatically manage various areas of a project such as time management, cost management, risk analysis and risk management, performance management, management of human resources, reporting and likewise.
Content is considered to be a king for the enterprises and its significance multiples further in case of the e-commerce industries. The entire customer base that is associated with an e-commerce industry is primarily dependent upon the content that the web site or the web application puts on its portal. It is therefore required to manage various aspects of the content accurately such as content development, content editing, content upgrading and likewise. Enterprise content management is the enterprise application that fulfills the purpose by carrying out the activities to effectively manage the content that is associated with a particular business unit.
There are various drivers that are associated with the enterprise systems and their performance in a particular business organization.
Technology is the first and the foremost driver of an enterprise system. It is this technology and associated advancements that have led to the development and implementation of the enterprise system in the business units all across the globe. Also, technology keeps on changing at a rapid scale and the enterprise systems once implemented in an organization may demand the upgrades according to the same. Upgrading of the system along with the usage of the same is managed and handled by the technological components and features that are present in the system (Liang, 2008).
The requirements of the organization in terms of the business processes that are followed are another driver that leads to the development, implementation and expansion of an enterprise system in an organization. The needs of the organization vary from one another and the enterprise systems that fit according to this also vary. It becomes necessary to understand these needs and make use of the applicable enterprise system in the architecture. Once the accurate selection is made, these enterprise systems then make use of the data and information to execute their purpose (Nimmagadda and Dreher, 2011).
Information that is associated with the organization plays a major role in the functioning of an enterprise application. There is a lot of information associated with a particular organization. For instance, in case of an e-commerce company, the information that a customer relationship management EA would use would include the names of the customer, their contact details, their purchase history, their choice of products and likewise. This information would drive the performance and behavior of the enterprise application in an organization.
Other drivers that play significant role in driving the enterprise applications include the organizational environment along with the resources and their skill sets.
There are various challenges that the enterprise systems bring forward for the end users. Some of these challenges and issues have been highlighted below.
The primary challenge that the end users observe is in association with the compatibility problems. There are various other systems that run in parallel with the enterprise systems within an organization. It becomes difficult to assure that a particular enterprise application is made compatible with all the existing systems and their components. Such issues lead to difficulty in usage along with problems associated with the integration of all the units (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2007).
Another major challenge that is often seen is in terms of the ease of usage and installation. There are often certain complexities that are associated with these enterprise systems for the end users in terms of understanding of the features and functionalities. It may take a while to understand the required steps to execute the enterprise system according to the needs of an organization which would demand significant amount of time and effort. Also, some of the errors that may occur in the execution process may not be rolled back leading to a significant loss or damage (Seo, 2013).
There are a lot of changes that an enterprise system brings along with it once it is deployed in an enterprise or an organization. It might become difficult for the end users to cope up with these changes without letting it impact the productivity and efficiency levels. The primary end users of an enterprise system are the employees that are engaged with an organization. These employees may also not have the required set of skills to operate the automated system and would require training sessions to develop learning of the same (Candra, 2011).
Internet-based technologies have transformed the practices that were previously followed in the business processes. These technologies have enabled the organization to acquire several benefits with their usage.
Tesco is a British multi-national and an online retailer of groceries, home-ware, electrical and clothing. There are a number of benefits that the internet based technologies have made on the organization. Some of the benefits include the emergence of the company on a global platform with the ability to reach out to the customers at any location of the world through its online portal. It has also managed to achieve higher level of customer trust and satisfaction with the help of enterprise systems and internet based customer relationship management systems. Also, the qualities such as availability of services, accessibility of services along with the quality of service has shown some marked improvements.
Internet has allowed the business organizations to perform various activities associated with information sharing, communication along with execution of the business processes with just a click of a button. Also, information storage and its management have become extremely easy with the use of cloud databases that also perform the activities associated with data back-ups and disaster recovery (Shand and Seddon, 2002).
Enterprise systems and applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have several benefits for the organizations. These systems have enabled the organization to achieve operational excellence with much ease. Some of these benefits have been described below.
Conclusion
Enterprise Systems or Enterprise Applications are the business systems that are designed for a specific business process to reduce the complexities that are involved with it. These are large software systems that are scalable in nature and are also component based and distributed. There are various enterprise systems that are being used by the industries in the present times such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Content Management, Automatic Billing Processes, Business Intelligence (BI) tools and many more. These systems offer a number of advantages to the enterprises that enable them to achieve higher levels of operation excellence. There are also certain challenges that are involved which can be overcome by accurate analysis, training and use of the correct methodology and skills to make use of the applications.
References
Candra, S. (2011). The Road of ERP Success: A Framework Model for Successful ERP Implementation. Binus Business Review, 2(2), p.1118.
Gonzales, M. (2011). Diffusion of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing: An Exploratory Investigation of Research and Practice – IEEE Xplore Document. [online] Ieeexplore.ieee.org. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5718885/ [Accessed 31 Mar. 2017].
Gunasekaran, A. and Ngai, E. (2007). Managing digital enterprise. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2(3), p.266.
Kocakulah, M. and Willett, D. (2011). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Implementation: Promise and Problems. Review of Business Information Systems (RBIS), 7(3), p.35.
Liang, L. (2008). Earnings forecasts in enterprise information systems environment. Enterprise Information Systems, 2(1), pp.1-19.
Madanhire, I. and Mbohwa, C. (2016). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in Improving Operational Efficiency: Case Study. Procedia CIRP, 40, pp.225-229.
Matende, S. and Ogao, P. (2013). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Implementation: A Case for User Participation. Procedia Technology, 9, pp.518-526.
Mathrani, S. and Viehland, D. (2009). Business Benefits from Enterprise Systems Implementation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 16(1).
Nimmagadda, S. and Dreher, H. (2011). Data warehousing and mining technologies for adaptability in turbulent resources business environments. International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining, 6(2), p.113.
Shang, S. and Seddon, P. (2002). Assessing and managing the benefits of enterprise systems: the business manager’s perspective. Information Systems Journal, 12(4), pp.271-299.
Seo, G. (2013). Challenges in Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in Large Organizations: Similarities and Differences Between Corporate and University Environment. [online] Available at: https://ic3.mit.edu/ResearchSamples/2013-07.pdf [Accessed 31 Mar. 2017].
Swanson, G. (2008). Material flow, material information, and the analytics of integrative enterprise information systems. Enterprise Information Systems, 2(1), pp.21-31.
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