Enterprise Resource Planning System - Term Paper Example

 Enterprise Resource Planning System Introduction Organisations are established with certain goals and objectives that are expected to be achieved in the course of its practice. In this case, the organisation makes strategies and approaches that are deemed to be essential in achieving the set goals while enhancing its general efficiency and effectiveness. Organisations aim at increasing their overall returns by minimizing their running costs as much as possible while anticipating maximum returns. ERP is a planning system that is often used by organisations in their bid to enhance their effective performance while putting their running costs as low as possible (Dehaghi 2012). ERP systems are designed to ensure an organisation can carry out several functions in a simple way that is convenience to the organisation. Rationale for the choice of this topic The choice of ERP as a work information system of study was motivated by the need to understand how organisations can work out their functions using simpler cost effective methods that can guarantee high returns. It is important to understand that the ERP system as used by organisations, enables them to integrate their internal, as well as external information systems into single and comprehensive solutions that fit in their activities and work schedules (Atherton 2012; Shaul & Tauber 2012). Through research in organisations online platforms and journals, I came to an understanding that the ERP strategy for business management includes all the organizations’ practical systems used in the management of their basic commercial duties that include; purchasing, finance, inventory management among many others in their daily life. This made me curious to understand the main objectives designed in the ERP tool, actually, its main objective as concerns this research, is to enhance information flow in all an organization’s internal functions while at the same time, creating and managing connections to with its external stakeholders. Knowledge Management Using the ERP Tool Knowledge is a single tool that is central to the success and failure of many large and small enterprises and business organizations. An organisation that has a database of key knowledge is always in a better position to understand market dynamics, customer behavior and other important characteristics of the business environment (Chu & Chiu 2013). The organisation then uses this knowledge to enhance its effectiveness and success in the market, on the other hand; an organisation that lacks this knowledge as well as gathering systems fails in its attempts to grow. For this reason, knowledge management is an activity that spurs organisations to tremendous growth and productivity when effectively collected, interpreted and implemented, in fact, knowledge management has emerged to become a hot agenda on business and organizational management platforms. According to Ljungquist (2013), this development has brought together several professionals and active partners in different disciplines in a bid to understand ways of enhancing business and organizational effectiveness through clearly planned systems of knowledge and information management. Knowledge management, as used in the ERP tool and other business systems can be described as the efforts employed in enhancing the value in the processes of generating, sharing as well as application of essential knowledge. The process of gathering and managing knowledge has become a critical component of business organisations, this is because of its perceived important to an organisations effectiveness, market survival as well as establishment of its competitive strengths (Groth 2013). Benefits of knowledge management Different researches have been carried out to identify the exact value that knowledge adds to business functions and processes. One of the benefits of knowledge management in organisations is that it provides a strategy that reflects the organisations direction in achieving its goals and objectives while enhancing its position in the market (Carlson 2013). Mukwasi& Seymour (2012), in their research, explain that an organization’s strategy is simply its position that is embraced in the process of reaching out in the market; it comprises of a definition of core competencies and approaches towards efficiency and effectiveness. The benefits of effective knowledge management can be summarized as shown; Adapted from: Rodríguez& Gairín (2013) According to the diagram above, knowledge in an organisation has two main sub-categories; there is the product and process knowledge, which further branch into market as well as organizational performance respectively (Uden 2013). An organisation that is designing strategies for effective performance relies on the knowledge of these two sub-categories to list the strategies to be used according to the relevance in achieving market and organizational effectiveness for the benefit of the business. In this understanding, reliable knowledge management systems as outlined in the ERP tool can link various organisations functions to achieve the goals and objectives in the two sub-divisions identified from the diagram. Therefore, an organisation has an obligation of ensuring that it creates better systems of collecting and storing its information for its present and future functions. Topic insights from other team members works In identifying this topic, other team members provided important insight in the topic identification as well as analysis of organizational performance and effectiveness in the light of ERP management tool. My friends helped me to make a literature review of the general organizational effectiveness and how efforts are being made by organisations to enhance their knowledge and skills management in the wake of the competitive market environment. The team members provided insight into the ERP systems and its worth to organizations, providing an important assessment and evaluation of how the tool had been used in different organisations with overwhelming output. This way, I managed to compile all the resources necessary in the making of this analysis about ERP and organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Insights from other team member’s topics In this project, different teams were examining various topics according to their preference; I realized that from their reports, there were many similarities with what I was doing. Most of their topics dealt on general organizational management and ways of increasing performance and output in organisations. This placed curiosity and some insight into how organisations handle knowledge and information systems to their advantage, something that made me choose on ERP as a knowledge management tool in business and other organisations. The impact of information and technology on business performance added impetus to my choice of study of the ERP tool. Team members that were focusing in this topic benefited from my insight about knowledge and information management systems in organisations how they performance and quality were generated. The teams members evaluating other topics related to organizational efficiency and effectiveness were helpful in their understanding of this topic. They provided several examples of organisations that have failed because of their inability to create and manage effective information systems. This was important in underpinning the significance of reliable tools like the ERP for knowledge management in organisations. The brainstorming exercise During the brainstorming exercise, were all benefited from the discussions prior to working on this projects. My firm understanding about knowledge management and systems in organizational helped other members shape their topics in line with their topics. At the same time, their inputs were also significant to my topic realignment and collection of the necessary literature review. Teamwork has always been credited for helping members working on certain projects achieve overwhelming results; this was the exact impression that was brought out in this topics analysis. Overall, there was mutual benefit and corporation from all members in their respective groups, something that made the exercise easier to carry own with as well as informative. References Atherton, A. (2012). Organisational ‘know-where’ and ‘know-when’: Re-framing configurations and distributions of knowledge in organisations. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 8(13): 410-421. Carlson M. O. et al., (2013). Building a Discourse-Tagged Corpus in the Framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory. Retrieved from, Chu, M., & Chiu, S. (2013). Effective Marketing Strategies to Attract Business Visitors at Trade Shows. International Journal of Business and Management.25(4): 249-256. Dehaghi, M. (2012). Happiness as an effective factor in organizational commitment of managers. African Journal of Business Management. 6(33): 460-468. Groth, K. 2013. Using social networks for knowledge management. Retrieved. Ljungquist, U. (2013). Unbalanced Dynamic Capabilities as Obstacles of Organisational Efficiency: Implementation Issues in Innovative Technology Adoption. Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, 56(12); 2682-2706. Mukwasi, C & Seymour, L. (2012). Enterprise Resource Planning Business Case Considerations: A Review for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Journal of Innovation Management in Small and Medium Enterprise, 12(9): 1-15. Rodríguez, G, D & Gairín, J. (2013). Unravelling knowledge creation and management in educational organisations: Barriers and enablers. Knowledge Management Research & Practice. 34(8): 23-56. Shaul, L. & Tauber, D. (2012). CSFs along ERP life-cycle in SMEs: a field study. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 112(3): 360-384. Uden, L. (2013). 7th International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations: Service and Cloud Computing. Berlin: Springer. Read More