Feng: Senior Consultant of Financial Management and Cost Control of SAP FI CO, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) consulting company in New York, USA. United States of America

The so-called ERP is the abbreviation of English Enterprise Resource Planning.

It refers to a management platform based on information technology and providing decision-making operation means for enterprise decision makers and employees with systematic management ideas. ERP system integrates information technology and advanced management ideas, and becomes the operation mode of modern enterprises, which embodies the requirements of the times for enterprises to rationally allocate resources and create social wealth to the maximum, and becomes the cornerstone for enterprises to survive and develop in the information age.

Gartner Group proposed that the functional standards of ERP should include four aspects:

1. Integrated functions beyond MRP scope

Including quality management; Laboratory management; Process operation management; Formula management; Product data management; Maintenance management; Control reporting and warehouse management.

2. Support mixed manufacturing environment

Including a manufacturing environment capable of supporting discreteness and process; The ability to combine business processes with international applications according to an object-oriented business model.

3. Support dynamic monitoring capability and improve business performance.

Including the adoption of control and engineering methods throughout the enterprise; Analog function; Decision support and graphic ability for production and analysis.

4. Support an open client/server computing environment.

Comprise a client/server architecture; Graphical user interface (GUI); Computer aided design engineering (CASE), object-oriented technology; Query relational database with SQL; Internal integration

Engineering system, business system, data acquisition and external integration (EDI) are based on.

ERP is beyond MRP II. ERP is essentially based on MRP II, but it has surpassed the traditional MRP II in function and technology. It is customer-driven and time-based.

Inter-enterprise resource planning for the whole supply chain management.

Further, we can define it from three aspects: management thought, software products and management system:

1. is a set of enterprise management system standards put forward by Garter Group Inc, a famous American computer technology consulting and evaluation group. Its essence is a supply chain-oriented management idea that is further developed on the basis of MRP II ("Manufacturing Resource Planning").

2. It is a software product that comprehensively applies the achievements of information industry such as client/server system, relational database structure, object-oriented technology, graphical user interface, the fourth generation language (4GL), network communication and so on. And take ERP management thought as the soul;

3. It is an enterprise resource management system integrating enterprise management concepts, business processes, basic data, manpower and material resources, computer software and hardware.

It is a new generation integrated management information system developed from MRP (Material Resource Planning). It expands the function of MRP, and its core idea is supply chain management. It jumps out of the traditional enterprise boundary and optimizes the enterprise resources from the scope of supply chain. It is a new generation information system based on the era of network economy. It plays an obvious role in improving business processes and enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises. ERP began to appear in the early 1980s. Since 1990s, internationally renowned ERP products such as SAP and Oracle have entered China and expanded rapidly. Then, some early ERP products appeared in China, such as Case ERP, Lima ERP, Hejia ERP and Boko ERP.

The features and core contents of ERP system include:

The business application system required by enterprise internal management mainly refers to the core modules such as finance, logistics and human resources.

The logistics management system adopts the MRP management idea of manufacturing industry; FMIS has effectively realized modern basic financial management methods such as budget management, business evaluation, management accounting and ABC cost collection method. The human resource management system also integrates advanced concepts in organizational structure design, post management, salary system and human resource development.

ERP system is a highly integrated system applied to the whole company. Data is highly shared among business systems, and all source data only need to be input once in a certain system, thus ensuring data consistency. ?

The company's internal business processes and management processes have been optimized and the main business processes have been automated.

It adopts the latest mainstream computer technology and architecture: B/S, Internet architecture and WINDOWS interface. As long as you can communicate, you can easily access the system. ?

Integration, progress, unity, honesty and openness.

Specifically, the relationship between ERP and enterprise resources, the role of ERP and the development of information technology can be expressed as follows:

1. Enterprise resources and ERP

Factory buildings, production lines, processing equipment, testing equipment, transportation tools, etc. They are all hardware resources of enterprises, while manpower, management, reputation, financing ability, organizational structure and employees' labor enthusiasm are all software resources of enterprises. In the business development of enterprises, these resources interact with each other to form the basis for enterprises to carry out production activities, complete customer orders, create social wealth and realize enterprise value, which reflects the position of enterprises in competitive development.

The management object of ERP system is the above resources and production factors. Through the use of ERP, the production process of enterprises can complete customers' orders in time and with high quality, give full play to the role of these resources, and make decisions to adjust resources according to customers' orders and production conditions.

2. Adjust the use of enterprise resources

An important sign of enterprise development is the reasonable adjustment and utilization of the above resources. Without modern management tools such as ERP, the enterprise resource situation and adjustment direction are not clear, and it is quite difficult to make adjustment arrangements, and the adjustment process will be quite long. The organizational structure of enterprises can only be pyramid-shaped, and the cooperation and communication between departments are weak, so it is difficult to grasp the operation of resources and make adjustments. The development of information technology, especially the ERP system designed for enterprise resource management, is designed to solve these problems. Successful implementation will make enterprises make better use of resources.

3. The stage development process of the role of information technology in resource management

The development of computer technology, especially the development of database technology, plays an inestimable role in establishing management information systems and even changing management ideas. The development of management thought and information technology is a mutually causal cycle. Practice has proved that information technology plays an increasingly important role in enterprise management.

SAP is the leading ERP software.

Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing

SAP R/3 software has the following functions and main features:

Functionality: R/3 provides a set of business measures in a modular form, in which the modules include all the required business functions, and connect users with technical application software to form an all-encompassing system for strategic and operational management of companies or enterprises.

Integration: R/3 connects logically related parts together. Repetitive work and redundant data are completely cancelled, process optimization and comprehensive business processing replace traditional manual operations.

Flexibility: The convenient cutting method in R/3 system makes it flexible and adaptable, thus meeting the needs of various users and the requirements of specific industries. R/3 is also equipped with an appropriate interface, which can integrate users' own software or foreign software.

Openness: The architecture of R/3 conforms to internationally recognized standards, enabling customers to break through the limitations of special hardware platforms and special system technologies. At the same time, the open interface provided by SAP can conveniently and effectively integrate the third-party software products into the R/3 system.

User-friendly: Icons and graphical symbols simplify the operation of human-computer interaction. The unified design of the user interface ensures that the staff can use the same familiar technology to complete unreasonable work.

Modularization: The modular structure of R/3 enables users to select new utility programs one by one, or switch to the new organizational structure system completely.

Reliability: As a business partner of users, SAP constantly sets more and more international standards for the quality of integrated software.

Low cost and high benefit: information processing is one of the key points to gain competitive advantage. When competition intensifies, enterprises must work harder to gain market share. This requires the use of highly integrated data processing software, and R/3 is an excellent example of this software.

International application: R/3 supports multiple languages and is designed for transnational operation. R/3 can flexibly adapt to the monetary and tax requirements of various countries.

Services: During the implementation of R/3 system, users will receive comprehensive support and services from SAP technical experts, including organizational structure and technical consultation, project planning and implementation assistance and training courses.

1972, IBM, Mannheim, Germany. Hasso Plattner, a sales consultant, is waiting for the company's reply to his suggestion. His suggestion is to develop financial software packages and replace expensive customized applications with ready-made software packages.

When IBM rejected his suggestion, he and four colleagues of software engineers left IBM and started SAP software company from scratch.

Now, every morning, 80% of the Fortune 500 companies will enter the management and collaborative business platform provided by SAP to work efficiently. Plattner, the co-chairman and CEO of SAP, who has always been aggressive, opinionated and brave to accept challenges, has experienced many storms of SAP. When he saw that SAP was depressed in the software market, he still achieved the profit forecast of 200 1 third quarter. Revenue in the first three months reached 5 billion euros, with a revenue growth rate of 23%. He happily commented: "Although the software market, especially the American market, has undergone tremendous changes recently, customers have postponed it. More and more enterprises are turning to SAP because they believe that SAP can bring them higher return on investment, better functions and convenient integration. "

Headquartered in Waldorf, Germany, this software giant is known as "the world's largest enterprise management solution provider, the world's third largest independent software provider and the world's leading collaborative e-commerce solution provider". At present, it has more than 1.65 million customers in more than 1.20 countries and regions around the world, providing products based on the "five pillars" strategy to the world. They are mySAP SCM (Supply Chain Management), mySAP PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), mySAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Enterprise Portal of SAP Portal and Exchange of SAPMarkets. Globally, SAP has more than 25,000 employees, and at its headquarters, SAP has more than 5,000 developers, and its development laboratories and development centers are all over the world.