ERP System On Cloud: Features, Advantages And Demerits

What Is ERP System On Cloud?

What Is ERP System On Cloud?

What Are The Features, Advantages And Demerits Of Cloud ERP System?

What Are The Concepts Of Cloud Computing And Enterprise Resource Planning?

Which Are The Popular Organizations That Have Implemented Cloud ERP Systems In Their Businesses?

ERP or enterprise resource planning is simply defined as the major procedure or an integrated control or management of any specific kind of business process, which are eventually mediated either with the help of software or technology (Asl et al. 2012). This ERP or enterprise resource planning can also be termed as the particular section of the software for business management or the significant collection of several integrated applications that any specific organization solely uses to properly store, manage, collect, retrieve or interpret any type of information or data from the various business operations and activities (Zeng and Skibniewski 2013). The most popular and significant companies or organizations subsequently use the ERP or enterprise resource planning system within the businesses in present days. Due to the proper integration of business processes, the flow of information is extremely smooth and hence this system is very popular for the users. Cloud computing on the other hand is quite different from ERP (Shaul and Tauber 2013). The technology of cloud computing is utilized by the users for the purpose of transferring any type of data or information through the connection of Internet without any type of complexities. This particular technology significantly depends on the sharing of resources to successfully achieving the economy scale. The most significant advantage of the cloud computing technology is that there is extremely less spending on the resources of computing (Monk and Wagner 2012). Moreover, the infrastructure cost or the maintenance cost are extremely lesser in this technology.

The following research report outlines a brief discussion on the perfect combination of the cloud computing and ERP or enterprise resource planning system. Several choices or options are present, which should be checked within the ERP or enterprise resource planning software. These several options are on the premise that is referred to the specific traditional approach. In this particular approach, any organization purchases each and every license for the ERP or enterprise resource planning system and thus again installing within the business. The typical system of ERP or enterprise resource planning is solely responsible to properly provide a perfectly and periodically upgraded or integrated view of the main activities or procedures of the organization by simply using all the similar databases. These databases are maintained or managed by the DBMS or database management system. This research report will be focusing on various case studies as well that have successful stories of ERP systems on cloud.

What Are The Features, Advantages And Demerits Of Cloud ERP System?

There are several objectives of the research report of Enterprise Resource Planning on Cloud are given below:

To learn about the enterprise resource planning software.

To understand about cloud computing concept with its features and advantages.

To understand the significant features of system of cloud ERP.

To learn about practical case studies on the system of cloud ERP.

The ERP or enterprise resource planning is an important and popular technology in the technological field (Seethamraju 2015). This particular technology is eventually used by each and every famous as well as successful companies or organizations to integrate their business operations or processes. This technology of ERP comprises of several significant features. These features are given below:

1. i) Streamlining of Processes: The first and the most important feature of ERP software is that it helps in streamlining every business process (Kwak et al. 2012). Each and every organization comprises of the various business processes and operations. All these business processes and operations are vital for the business and hence these should be properly executed without any type of problem. However, it has been noticed when any of the business operation or process is executed separately, the resource consumption of time and money are much more than the other business processes. This type of problem could be easily executed with the help of enterprise resource planning software (Hasibuan and Dantes 2012). Thus, streamlining of process is important for any business to properly mitigate the problems.
2. ii) Managing CRM: The next important and significant feature of the enterprise resource planning software is the proper management of CRM or customer relationship management. This specific feature of enterprise resource planning helps the organization in managing all the clients or customers to sale of their business (Leon 2014). The CRM module of the business is used by every organization. These organizations have incorporated the ERP software solution in the businesses. The CRM module must ensure the fact that the customers should be managed properly. The growth or development of the business depends on CRM.

iii) Capability of Customization: The third feature of ERP software is customization capability. This particular feature helps the clients to customize every business activity or process easily and promptly (Ptak and Schragenheim 2016). Furthermore, this feature decreases the consumption of time or expenses. The enterprise resource planning software is not at all viable as the business process are altered or changed.

1. iv) Reduction of Time Consumption: Another important feature of the software of ERP is the reduction of total time consumption (Seo 2013). As the time consumption is extremely low, this particular software of ERP is popular for the particular organization.

1. i) Providing Competitive Advantages: The first advantage of enterprise resource planning software is to provide competitive advantages or benefits (Matende and Ogao 2013). All of these competitive benefits are extremely vital for all companies to obtain importance as well as popularity within the market.
2. ii) High Efficiency: The next benefit of the enterprise resource planning software is to remove or eradicate each and every repetitive process and hence the need of the manual entry of data is reduced to a greater level (Zeng and Skibniewski 2013). Furthermore, this particular software is responsible for the perfect streamlining of various business operations.

iii) Collaboration: The third advantage is that it helps in simple collaboration of all the present business processes. Perfect collaboration within the various departments is mandatory to make the system or business consistent and working (Asl et al. 2012).

1. iv) Flexibility and Scalability: Another significant advantage of the enterprise resource planning software is that it is extremely flexible and scalable and thus could be easily utilized.
2. v) Cost Effectiveness: The next important advantage of the enterprise resource planning software is that it is absolutely cost effective and hence can be easily afforded by every organization thin their businesses (Monk and Wagner 2012). The administrative and the operational costs hence could be easily reduced or diminished by the proper utilization of this software.
3. vi) Higher Productivity: The productivity becomes extremely high with the presence of the software of ERP.

Although, this software comprises of various advantages, there are some of the major demerits of this technology. They are given below:

1. i) Tough Migration of Data: The data migration is much more complicated and tough and thus this software is often avoided by various businesses (Shaul and Tauber 2013).
2. ii) Higher Indirect Costs: Another important disadvantage of the ERP software is that the indirect costs or expenses are much more than the direct costs and thus the smaller organizations cannot choose this particular software for their businesses (Kwak et al. 2012).

iii) Security: Since, the implementation of this software is completely on the vendor dependency, security is often lost and the users lose their confidentiality of data.

Cloud computing comprises of various important characteristics (Zissis and Lekkas 2012). The most significant features of the technology of cloud computing is given below:

1. i) Resource Pool as well as Elasticity: The technology of cloud computing helps in resource pooling and provides elasticity to the clients (Dinh et al. 2013). It uses the feature of multi tenancy by which all the resources could be easily allocated or removed according to user choice.
2. ii) On Demand Services: The technology of cloud computing is perfectly based on self service and on the models of service. The user is enabled to interact in the cloud to perform any task.

iii) Service Quality: cloud computing is also responsible for improving the overall quality of the services (Arora, Parashar and Transforming 2013). For this higher quality of services, cloud computing is utilized by every user.

There are some of the major benefits of cloud computing technology. These benefits are given below:

1. i) Easier Implementation: The most significant advantage of cloud computing is that it helps in easier implementation (Xu 2012). This is due to the scalability of the software.
2. ii) Easy Accessibility: The second benefit is that cloud computing helps to access the data from anywhere.

iii) Higher Flexibility: Another important benefit of this cloud computing is that it provides high flexibility to the business (Jadeja and Modi 2012).

1. iv) Data Recovery: The data can be easily recovered efficiently.

Although, this software comprises of various advantages, there are some of the major demerits of this technology. They are given below:

1. i) No Redundancy: The lack of redundancy is the major disadvantage of cloud computing technology (Fernando, Loke and Rahayu 2013). Thus the cloud server is not redundant in nature.
2. ii) No Control: The lack of data control is the second demerit of this technology.

iii) Issues in Bandwidth: The bandwidth of cloud computing is much lesser than normal and this is one of the major problem for the cloud providers as well as the users (Chen and Zhao 2012).

What Are The Concepts Of Cloud Computing And Enterprise Resource Planning?

The cloud based ERP software helps to allow all the users in accessing the applications of software that are eventually running on all the shared computing resources via Internet connection. Each of these resources should be controlled within the data centres, which are subsequently dedicated to host the various applications over the various platforms (Wang et al. 2012). This cloud based ERP software can be defined as the specific software as a service or SaaS model that enables all the users to access the software of ERP over Internet. The overall cost of this software is extremely less as the resources of computing could not be controlled or maintained on premises.

1. i) Easy Usability: The most significant feature of the cloud ERP system is that this software could be easily used by everyone and does not comprise of any complexity and is thus claimed to have an easy usability (Hashem et al. 2013). Moreover, the application could be selected easily and promptly.
2. ii) Flexibility and Scalability: The next significant feature of the cloud ERP system is that it is extremely flexible and scalable. This feature refers to the fact that there is an ability in growing as well as contracting the cloud based applications according to the demands (Garg, Versteeg and Buyya 2013). Each and every cloud provider comprise of various robust system that are used to handle according to the cloud computing. This even helps the organizations in not paying any type of penalties and thus saving organizational resources.

iii) Simple Customization: The third significant feature of the cloud ERP system is that it comprises of simple customization (Lee and Zomaya 2012). The various tasks of every user are eventually performed according to the demands.

1. iv) Constant Support: Another important characteristic of this software is that it is responsible for providing constant support to all the users or clients. For a constant customer support of 24*7, cloud based ERP software is the most popular for every user and hence becoming one of the major software for every client.

This cloud based enterprise resource planning software has various advantages (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). They are given below:

1. i) Avoiding Upfront Costs: One of the most significant benefits is that it helps to avoid all the upfront expenses or costs. The various infrastructure costs of computing like data server or hardware are explicitly avoided in the process.
2. ii) Reduction of IT Supports: The next important advantage of the cloud based enterprise resource planning software is that it helps in the reduction of all IT supports (Hashizume et al. 2013). All of these support services are eventually provided by any data centre.

iii) Elimination of Costs: The next important advantage of the cloud based enterprise resource planning software is that it helps to eliminate or eradicate the extra costs or expenses.

1. iv) Presence of Disaster Recovery Plan: A proper DR plan is present within the software of cloud ERP (Seethamraju 2015). Hence, there is extremely less chance of data loss or data theft. Moreover, data can be backed up easily.
2. v) Avoiding of Attacks: The fifth significant benefit of this cloud based ERP software is that it helps to avoid all types of attacks in the server of the organization.
3. vi) Lacking Hardware Installation: Another significant benefit of the cloud based ERP software is that it does not need any kind of installation of hardware (Hasibuan and Dantes 2012).

vii) Easier Accessibility: Moreover, data can be accessed simply and promptly and thus problems could be avoided.

Although, this software comprises of various advantages, there are some of the major demerits of this technology (Leon 2014). They are given below:

1. i) Issues to Integration: The first issue is that it has problem in integration and thus could be properly integrate all the business processes properly.
2. ii) Implementation of Management Processes: The management processes can be easily implemented and this is the second demerit of cloud ERP system (Ptak and Schragenheim 2016).

iii) Tough Decision Making: The process of decision making is much tougher with the presence of cloud ERP system.

1. iv) Migration of Data: The final problem is the migration of data. It is much difficult.

Various popular companies have eventually implemented the cloud ERP software to execute the business operations or processes (Seo 2013). Three significant case studies of cloud ERP software are given below:

1. i) Baldinger Bakery: It is one of the most popular bakeries that is doing business for 128 years. For the exponential growth or expansion, this bakery has decided to open more branches (Matende and Ogao 2013). This bakery has implemented cloud ERP software and within only three months, this organization has increased 30 percent sales and delivery accuracy of 99 percent.
2. ii) Coffice: The second case study is of Coffice that manufactures coffee machines. This organization is going from various issues regarding inventory processes and accounting processes (Zeng and Skibniewski 2013). After the successful implementation of cloud ERP software, the problems are being mitigated easily.

iii) Living Proof: The third case study is of a hair care products organization, Living Proof. After the successful implementation of cloud ERP software, the overall revenue of this particular organization has eventually incremented and also there is an increment in portfolio of the products (Shaul and Tauber 2013). At a range of 330 percent of total revenue of the organization has incremented and hence these have become extremely successful within their business. The ability of brand has improved.

The above mentioned three case studies properly demonstrate the fact that cloud ERP software is the most significant requirement in any business to gain competitive advantages.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above research report, conclusion can be drawn that ERP or enterprise resource planning system is the wide set .of activities that eventually help any organization or company to manage or control their business. The major aim or objective of the enterprise resource planning system is the significant integration of all the back office operations or processes of business as well as the proper facilitation of any flow of information in an organization to make all the decisions of business properly driven by data. Each and every suite of this enterprise resource planning software is constructed to collect and organize the data from any management level of organization. This is done to connect each of the business operation in all the respective departments. There is a structured approach within the software of enterprise resource planning for helping the company to automate and standardize each and every business process, hence improvising the efficiencies of operations. There is an integrated approach to manage all the business processes for the purpose of ensuring the significant fact that money or time could be easily saved. The technology of cloud computing can be defined as the process, which is used to properly deliver the hosted services over the connection of Internet. Cloud computing helps in enabling the client companies; to consume all the computing resources; such as applications, storage and virtual machines. The various computing infrastructures could also be built as well as maintained with the help of cloud computing. Cloud computing comprises of four deployment models for their clients. These deployment models are public cloud, private cloud, community cloud and finally hybrid cloud. This particular technology even comprises of three architecture models for their clients. These three architecture models are IaaS or infrastructure as a service, PaaS or platform as a service, SaaS or software as a service. ERP system on cloud or simply cloud ERP system can be defined as the proper combination of the technologies of cloud computing and enterprise resource planning. This particular software is hosted on a platform of the technology of cloud computing and also on the premise in the data centre of the organization. Each and every application of ERP or enterprise resource planning majorly involves every module for the finance department or the human capital management. This type of cloud ERP system is completely related to disaster, backup as well as software availability. The above research report has clearly demonstrated every vital concept or feature of cloud ERP software, enterprise resource planning system as well as cloud computing technology.

Which Are The Popular Organizations That Have Implemented Cloud ERP Systems In Their Businesses?

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