Maximizing Return on Investment Using ERP Applications

WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

As described in Chapter 3, the evolution of ERP platforms during the last two decades has dramatically increased the number of tools that are available to leadership groups to help define, support, and institutionalize changes to business processes and improve overall business performance. Also from Chapter 2, the amount of knowledge of business processes in general, cross-functional integration specifically, and the design approaches necessary to effectively deploy these systems have not kept up with the potential that they represent to achieve a return on investment for the business. This is never more obvious than when we come to business process analysis/design/reengineering. Management groups continue to ask questions such as

• Are we going to ERP or BOB? (best of breed)
• Will we implement ERP or SOA? (services oriented architecture)

These are not questions that add value to the discussion and generally reflect the attitude that these systems are all about IT, when ultimately they are all about business needs. The leadership of any organization must decide on a design for the enterprise applications platform that usually includes an ERP core but may also include some best of breed (BOB) systems. These will very likely all be tied together using services oriented architecture (SOA), whether that is in native integration tools (SAP Netweaver or Oracle Fusion) or is on a fully proprietary platform. Beyond that, these integration tools will continue to evolve ...