The Contribution of Enterprise Systems

An enterprise system is classified as a system of integrated application-software packages that use data storage and transmission to support the flow of information, reporting, and analytics in the company as well as in some cases it is used outside of the company by colleagues and clients. Enterprise systems manage the flow of information relevant to those within the company as well as those outside of the company that have permission to access certain information. If a company has multiple lines of products and information that is relevant to all products such as statistical data that needs to be shared with all people within the company, an enterprise system exists to enable the sharing of information. An enterprise system provides as single system central to the organization which ensures that the information can be shared across all management and functional levels Enterprise systems are also invaluable with elimination of problems with information fragmentation which can be caused by having multiple information systems in an organization. It does this by creating a standard data structure. Typical information systems are housed in data centers and would run enterprise software as well as include application such as; content management systems that would cross organizational borders.
Enterprise systems provide value for increasing operational efficiency, as well as provide wide information to help managers make informed and effective decisions. Implementing an enterprise system contributes to achieving operational excellence. When an employee enters the information into the enterprise system, there is less time used in sharing the information. Enterprise systems rely on human intelligence. Humans must use dashboards and reports to learn from their data and most decisions are managed with work lists. A person needs to log on and act on work list items before a process continues, and most monitoring and alerting functions are mostly focused on telling what happened rather than on what to do about it. These applications have been built around a mindset that automates the collection of data an organization requires, the decision is left of to the people to make. Enterprise systems also help large companies that have many operating units in different locations to enforce standard practices and data so that everyone can do business in the same way worldwide. This helps firms respond to customer requests for information and products. Since the system integrates orders, manufacturing, and delivery data, manufacturing is better informed about producing what the customer has ordered, procuring exactly the right amount of components or raw materials to fill actual orders, staging production, as well as minimizing the time that components or finished products are inventoried. Some of the challenges of enterprise applications are expense. The software can be very expensive to both purchase and put to work. It takes years for large companies to put an enterprise system into action. They can change the way a business operates and does business. Since these applications solely rely on human intelligence, there can be many problems with how the data is entered into the system. Since smaller business only deal with a couple of suppliers, the use of a telephone or a fax would suffice in the ordering of products. Large corporations the problem is much more complex. With a large company and the fact that they deal with multiple suppliers as well as carriers, the information shared is vital to the efficiency of a business. The problems that would arise from these applications could be human error with the entered and shared data between the manufacturing, production as well as the delivery of the product. If a human error is involved, then there could be an issue of not having enough raw material or components needed to complete customer orders, having an overstock of product, as well as carriers having to reschedule delivery times to fit an extra delivery to get additional products to a company. There is also an issue with these application recording thefts of products which cause an inaccurate count of inventory. In conclusion, having a strong enterprise system can strongly enhance the efficiency and informed decision making abilities of a company. The information entered can be immediately accessed to inform other departments on what needs to be done at that time. They also promote strong communication between the production, manufacturing and suppliers on what merchandise needs to be produced or delivered. The downfall of these applications is the cost and the time it takes to implement them into the corporation. Also, these applications rely solely on human intelligence, and if the data is not accurately entered in the system the communications between departments is flawed, which in turn causes issues between each department and will affect the efficiency of the company. Furthermore, it all depend on what applications a company wants or needs, and what they are willing to spend to build an enterprise system as well as the proper implementation to minimize the problems that could arise.