ERP is an acronym for enterprise resource planning which is all about automating and integrating a businesses core functions. Enterprise resource planning is not a new modern integrated system, it is a concept has roots that date back to the early 1960’s where it was used as an inventory management and control system within the manufacturing industry. By the 1990’s this system was highly favored as a back-office functional system for accounting and human resources.
Administrative and support services involves supporting the storage, maintenance, and retrieval of all information that supports the administrative services within a business. Administrative systems within an ERP business environment, often involves three categories:
– Classic ERP Systems: administrative and support services under an ERP system is one that is directly supported by the enterprise resource planning system.
– Dependent ERP Systems: systems that support or interact directly with the ERP system. This system is accomplished by extracting data from the ERP system to report or enter transactions into the ERP system on a batch basis. The total requirements for dependent systems is the development of a software interface between the ERP dependent system and an ERP system for data extraction, reporting, or bulk transaction activities.
– Independent ERP Systems: these are systems that are not directly tied into the ERP System, but which supports some administrative services. However, support and admin services should consider that in the future, there could be a need to extract from or create information for a full ERP system interface.
The administrative support that has core responsibility for working with ERP systems, generally includes information management, human resource management, financial accounting, research management, distribution, manufacturing services, customer relationship management, supply chain/inventory departments and many other business areas.
ERP administrative and support services are ever evolving through the input of updated and improved functions, including new efficient uses in transaction processes. The ERP applications can be used across a myriad of industries for customer-facing, asset and administrative management.
An important feature for any enterprise resource planning activities is to facilitate the flow of accurate information which is data-driven. ERP software suites are designed to collect, organize, and disseminate data from various levels of businesses or organizations, in order to provide administration and support management with accurate performance indicators in real time.
The more information that businesses store in the cloud, the more vital ERP data can be relied upon within the business and potentially for mobile users. Additional features of an ERP will greatly reduce non-value-added work, reduce costs, saves time, and you can put data into one administrative system that can be integrated with other support systems, all of which can be shared across many business levels.
To find out what ERP software requirements you need, an administrative and support business must first decide what its strategic objectives are. Through its overall structure and business model objectives, a business should identify each department’s function-by-function processes.
An ERP software vendor can help with this process, all in order to centralize your business to help a company achieve its goals. Naturally, training is the next step in order for the business to take advantage of all of its capabilities. Many administrative and support businesses can use an ERP system that can be easily interfaced with existing software programs, such as Outlook and Microsoft Windows and the IT managers can install it both to support the end use for the server and for the client side.
The basic tier levels for ERP systems, includes the following:
Tier 1: this tier level is designed for software for large businesses with multiple locations and whose revenue is in excess of $200 million dollars.
Tier 2: this software tier level is the mid-sized tier for businesses that have revenues in the $20 million to $200 million dollars range.
Tier 3: this ERP software level is designed for businesses whose revenue is under $40 million dollars.
Tier 4: This ERP tier software level is considered the basic accounting systems.
Enterprise resources planning solutions for administrative and support services benefit their daily operations and will grow with them. All businesses large and small benefit from ERP software installation to help improve their productivity and their budget.