It is inevitable that as enterprises grow or change to meet market demands and competitive situations, new business requirements drive the expansion of information technology (IT) resources in the computing environment.
Basically, IT changes the way businesses compete. IT became a way for organizational renewal, helping a company to adopt strategies and business processes that enable it to reengineer or reinvent itself in order to survive and succeed in today’s dynamic e-business environment. Successful business growth depends heavily on the ability to update, integrate, customize and deploy applications rapidly and provide fast, reliable, interactive data access to end users, from employees to suppliers, customers and partners.
Nowadays, a typical ERP system offers broad functional coverage nearing the best-of-breed capabilities; vertical industry extensions; a robust technical architecture; training, documentation, implementation and process design tools; global support and an extensive list of software, services and technology partners. ERP vendors have done a lot of effort with developing, acquiring, or bundling new functionality so that their packages go beyond the traditional realms of finance, materials planning & management, and human resources. Traditional ERP applications have so far proven inadequate in this new world of e-business because their primary focus has been on automating internal processes and coordinating transactions, not on enabling external collaboration between a business and its constituents. However, this is rapidly changing as the notion of extended ERP takes hold. Extended ERP takes a different view of the world, and has been promoted by most of the major ERP vendors in the form of two still emerging application areas: 1) Supply chain applications and 2) Customer management applications. ERP has already been or about to be redefined as a platform for enabling e-business globally.
The great benefit of ERP is integration - enabling all users to use the same information and business processes and obtain the same results when the system is interrogated. While there is a myriad of exciting point-specific applications with a strong Internet orientation, these applications do not currently provide strong information integration among companies. Things are about to change, particularly with the advent of new technologies like SOA and XML.
In the Internet age, businesses in all industries need to move from intra-company integration to inter-company integration in order to increase competitiveness. New enterprise applications rely on Internet infrastructure for e-business solutions and Web-based collaboration, so customers, employees, suppliers and business partners work together as if they were all one company.
This paper emphasizes these trends with their impact to the organizations and their ERP systems. Extended ERP systems are described and discussed. The paper includes facts and figures of the global enterprise applications market. Speaking of the international situation, the paper points out the Romanian market perspective and expectations. The figures illustrate the Romanian perception of the phenomenon. In addition, observations and comments enhance a Romanian profile for the e-business enterprise.