Transitioning from Legacy Systems to an Enterprise Resource Planning System:

In business, it is important for companies to be able to communicate effectively. Each department of a company relies on the other departments as they add to the value chain. One way for a company to integrate its different departments is enterprise resource planning. ERPs are software programs that allow companies to join together data across operations on a company wide basis (Jessup and Valacich 248). ERPs store company information in a common database and allow all departments to access it from one central location (Koch). Companies without ERPS may contain many legacy systems, each operating with different

Today Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is extensively adopted by many organizations regardless of kind and size, mainly because it provides enterprise-wide view of information across all their business operations and help organizations achieve consistency across all their functional departments. The potential benefits of ERP system implementation include improved coordination across functional areas, increased efficiency, reduced operational costs, rapid access to information for decision making, managerial control and support for strategic planning.

Adoption of an ERP system enables an organization to eliminate dozens or even hundreds of separate systems and replace them with a single, integrated set of applications for the entire enterprise.

To be successful in today's competitive and continuous evolving information technology (IT) market companies must be able to utilise their skills, information and knowledge to the highest efficiency level possible. Utilisation of and control over these factors will aid companies in acquiring and maintaining competitive advantages over others operating in the same competitive IT market. The implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system would be perfect to suit a

Enterprise resource planning enables firms to replace different departmental information systems and database silos with systems that collectively work as a single cross functional database. ERP systems are available for every key business function such as order processing, production control, HR, warehouse, marketing, finance and much more. By having a common technology and database platform throughout the firm, systems and processes from various departments can be integrated that achieve superiority in terms of enhanced cost, operational and productivity benefits. Implementing an ERP system requires careful planning to achieve the targeted benefits and minimize the risk of project failure.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation is regarded as complex, cumbersome and costly, and, very often, it exceeds the initial estimated resources. The process involves a thorough examination of the business processes in the organisation; selection of the best available software solution that matches the requirements of the enterprise; configuration of the selected systems;, training of staff; and customisation of the selected software solutions including

ERP packages are heavily used by larger retail chains. Designed to facilitate the administration and optimization of internal business processes across an enterprise, ERP packages have become the competitive tool for most large retail organizations. ERP software uses a single database that allows the different departments to communicate with each other through information sharing. ERP systems comprise function-specific components that are designed to interact with the other modules such as the Order Entry, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Purchasing, Distribution etc.

Enterprise Resource Planning systems are integrated software applications that assimilate internal and external information that is required to manage an organization efficiently and effectively. The system encompasses finance, accounting, manufacturing, sales, service, and customer relationship management and automates these activities with a unified software system. The main purpose of an ERP system is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions within an organization. ERP systems also aim to simplify the sales process by automating the entry requirements and making it easier for different business functions to access the

Enterprise resource planning (ERP): This is a business process administration programming that permits an association to utilize an arrangement of coordinated applications to deal with the business and computerize numerous back office capacities identified with innovation.

For the last two decades, Enterprise Resource Planning systems significantly attracted the industries’ attention. However, ERP implementations is considered one of the most difficult to implement difficult to maintain systems. Hence, there are some critical factors which impact the success or failure of ERP implementation. These factors do not only affect the process of ERP implementation but may also impact the business as whole and in some cases it will result

According to Snider et. al. (2009), ERP is a system where it stores various department data in central repository. ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning is integrated information system software where the different core business processes are processed in real-time environment. Mabert et. al. (2003) ERP systems gives access to real time data based on seamless integration of cross functional data with improved business practices, better workflow and standardization of various day to day business processes. ERP software can be best described as set of integrated business modules or applications used to perform various business functions including finance, sales, purchase, inventory, general ledger, production, human resources and many other business related processing. ERP main core competence is to integrate all the independent & dependent business process into information systems into a streamlined manner to get an optimized system performance. ERP system shares common data information to the different departments and users with department specific & user specific information to run their business function in a controlled way. ERP system is designed to manage different enterprise process, workflow and activities through independent software modules while regularly updating the central database repository (Quiescenti et. al. 2006). An ERP is not only business integration software where as an approach of running successful business during changing and challenging

ERP is all about the central collection of data for wide distribution. So instead of having several databases for separate departments with an endless inventory of disconnected spreadsheets ERP will bring together everything in order for all users from CEO to accounts payable clerks to create store and use same data derived through common processes.It has a certain level of security and centralized data repository so that everyone knows that the data is correct and complete. Data integrity is assured at a level from a quarterly financial statement to a single outstanding receivables report without deploying error.

ERP software is designed to model and automate many of the basic processes of a company, from finance to the shop floor, with the goal of integrating

The business world is characterized by heavy technology. Firms are relying on technology to handle numerous processes. It is for this reason that organizations are hunting for integrated systems that can combine all subsystems into a big one capable of sharing common database. Thus, enterprise resource planning (ERP) plays a great role here. The ERP system incorporates several information structures into one system. IT firms can have three main information systems namely manufacturing, human resource and finance. This software integrates data from these subsystems into a single one as well as enhancing data sharing. Any company intending to adopt the systems should consider whether or not it is increasing efficiency (McGaughey &

ERP system integrates technology that ensures the operation are managed and used effectively by organization (Maguire et al., 2010). This system enables an organization can observe the different departmental functions in one database. It improves and shortens the business process, so restructure is essential for existing business.