Functional areas




An ERP system covers the following common functional areas. In many ERP systems, these are called and grouped together as ERP modules:

  • Financial accounting: general ledger, fixed assets, payables including vouchering, matching and payment, receivables and collections, cash management, financial consolidation
  • Management accounting: budgeting, costing, cost management, activity based costing
  • Human resources: recruiting, training, rostering, payroll, benefits, retirement and pension plans, diversity management, retirement, separation
  • Manufacturing: engineering, bill of materials, work orders, scheduling, capacity, workflow management, quality control, manufacturing process, manufacturing projects, manufacturing flow, product life cycle management
  • Order processing: order to cash, order entry, credit checking, pricing, available to promise, inventory, shipping, sales analysis and reporting, sales commissioning
  • Supply chain management: supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, product configurator, order to cash, purchasing, inventory, claim processing, warehousing (receiving, putaway, picking and packing)
  • Project management: project planning, resource planning, project costing, work breakdown structure, billing, time and expense, performance units, activity management
  • Customer relationship management (CRM): sales and marketing, commissions, service, customer contact, call center support – CRM systems are not always considered part of ERP systems but rather business support systems (BSS)
  • Data services: various "self–service" interfaces for customers, suppliers and/or employees

GRPedit

Government resource planning (GRP) is the equivalent of an ERP for the public sector and an integrated office automation system for government bodies. The software structure, modularization, core algorithms and main interfaces do not differ from other ERPs, and ERP software suppliers manage to adapt their systems to government agencies.

Both system implementations, in private and public organizations, are adopted to improve productivity and overall business performance in organizations, but comparisons (private vs. public) of implementations shows that the main factors influencing ERP implementation success in the public sector are cultural.

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