Enterprise systems: three ways to provide value for companies

Enterprise Systems

How Enterprise Systems Deliver Value to Companies

The design, implementation and use of enterprise systems vary significantly across industries and companies yet all share a commons et of attributes, characteristics and value delivered to organizations they support. By definition an enterprise system acts as a centralized system of record for all activities that are essential for a business to operate and deliver value, galvanizing many diverse functions into a series of consistent, cohesive, well-integrated series of processes, procedures and workflows (Mathrani, Mathrani, Viehland, 2013). The most common types of enterprise systems include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in addition to analytics platform layers as well, all of which are becoming commonplace in enterprises (Mekawie, Elragal, 2013).

Three Ways Enterprise Systems Deliver Value

Of the many ways that enterprise systems can be used for delivering value to an enterprise, the three most common are making value chains more customer-centered and capable of responding to diverse customer demand requirements; greater supply chain integration and visibility throughout the entire supplier network to support faster development and launch of new products (Mekawie, Elragal, 2013); and support for entirely new business models the majority of which are increasingly digitally-enabled through a combination of online and offline channels (Mathrani, Mathrani, Viehland, 2013). All three of these areas where enterprise systems deliver measurable and financially significant results all also share a common foundation of requiring greater insight and intelligence into who the customers are today for an organization and how they are changing in the future. As enterprise systems have become more adept at becoming a system of engagement as a result. Each of the three areas where enterprise systems are delivering significant value are explained here.

First, making value chains more customer-centered is possible with the enhanced support for more distributed applications and greater support for complex workflows and more finely-tuned making, selling, production and fulfillment strategies. Enterprise systems galvanize these many potentially competing areas of a business together to make the entire value chain more efficient and profitable. Unifying processes together to a common strategic vision is essential for profitable operation of a business (Pantazi, Georgopoulos, 2006).

The second way enterprise systems deliver greater value to enterprises is in integrating ERP, supply chain, CRM, pricing and fulfillment systems into a single, unified system of engagement (Mekawie, Elragal, 2013). This approach to delivering value is inherent in how the new product development and introduction (NPDI) process is relied on for over 60% of high tech manufacturers' revenue for example (Mekawie, Elragal, 2013).