What Is ERP ?

As one of the longest standing ERP vendors, we often get asked “what is ERP?”.

ERP is an industry acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning. Broadly speaking, ERP refers to automation and integration of a company’s core business to help them focus on effectiveness & simplified success.

SYSPRO defines the meaning of ERP

The Information Technology industry is renowned for its adoption of acronyms, which are often widely used, but not fully understood. The term ‘ERP’ itself is not self-explanatory and refers to the business software that has been designed to record and manage your enterprise data.

An ERP System automates and integrates core business processes such as taking customer orders, scheduling operations, and keeping inventory records and financial data. ERP systems can drive huge improvements in the effectiveness of any organization by:

  • assisting you in defining your business processes and ensuring they are complied with throughout the supply chain;
  • protecting your critical business data through well-defined roles and security access
  • enabling you to plan your work load based on existing orders and forecasts
  • providing you with the tools to give a high level of service to your customers
  • translating your data into decision making information

Read more about SYSPRO Resource Planning Software

Benefits of ERP for your Business

  1. Integration across all business processes – To realize the full benefits of an ERP system it should be fully integrated into all aspects of your business from the customer facing front end, through planning and scheduling, to the production and distribution of the products you make.
  2. Automation enhances productivity – By automating aspects of business processes, ERP makes them more efficient, less prone to error, and faster. It also frees up people from mundane tasks such as balancing data.
  3. Increase overall performance – By integrating disparate business processes, ERP ensures coherence and avoids duplication, discontinuity, and people working at cross purposes, in different parts of the organization. The cumulative positive effect when business processes integrate well is overall superior performance by the organization.
  4. Quality Reports and Performance Analysis – Analysis on ERP will enable you to produce financial and boardroom quality reports, as well as to conduct analysis on the performance of your organization.
  5. Integrates across the entire supply chain – A best of breed ERP system should extend beyond your organization and integrate with both your supplier and customer systems to ensure full visibility and efficiency across your supply chain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvYx46EA8iY

SYSPRO Modules for ERP Solutions

SYSPRO modular ERP Solutions – flexible, affordable, scalable ERP

Our ERP solutions are developed and sold as modules, traditionally falling under the main categories of accounting, manufacturing and distribution. A number of reporting and analysis tools have been added over the years as well as some specialized modules. The typical modules include:

Accounting Distribution Manufacturing Reporting & Analysis
Accounts Receivable Inventory Control Bill of Materials / Routing SYSPRO Reporting Services
Accounts Payable Purchase Orders Work In Progress Sales Analysis
Cash Book Order Entry / Invoicing Requirements Planning Executive Dashboards
Electronic Funds Transfer Counter Sales Factory Documentation SYSPRO Analytics
General Ledger Blanket Sales Orders & Releases Engineering Change Control
Lot Traceability
Assets Register Product Configurator
ABC Costing Quotations / Estimating SYSPRO Factory Scheduling (Graphical planning board)
Landed Cost Tracking
Return Merchandise System
Trade Promotion Management
Forecasting
Families & Groupings
Inventory Optimisation

 

Specialised Modules

Specialised modules cover more advanced or technical areas, and these include:

  • Document Flow Manager
  • SYSPRO Process Modelling
  • Office Automation
  • Interface / EDI
  • Contact Management
  • Projects & Contracts
  • SYSPRO Point of Sale
  • SYSPRO Workflow
  • SYSPRO e.net Solutions including business objects and web-based applications.

SYSPRO ERP Software Deployment

It’s been said that the most arduous part of implementing an ERP system is in the actual selection of the system but, regardless of the system you finally choose, you’ll also be faced with deciding how the system will be deployed. Trending terms regarding ERP Software deployment include industry jargon such as Cloud, Software as a Service (or Saas), Infrastructure as a Service (or IaaS), Hosting and even Managed Services. These all add up to similar offerings, but with significant differences. You will need to understand the different options in order to make the right decision for your needs.

Traditionally, organizations implementing systems for the first time have faced hefty upfront infrastructure costs. Today, however, technology allows for infrastructure to be outsourced. This means that your software applications, data and resources reside on servers that are hosted and managed elsewhere. You then connect to your system using the Internet.

Understanding the pros and cons of in-house vs outsourced will go a long way to helping you make an informed decision.

Take a look at our cloud page to see a simplified summary of some of the different options available to you and you can then let us know if you’d like some more detailed information sent to you.

ERP Cost considerations

ERP cost or pricing considerations can be complex as every customer has unique requirements when it comes to the number of users, software deployment and services required. There is no one price fits all, however, the following checklist highlights the various cost considerations you should be aware of when implementing an ERP system.

1. Deployment Type

  1. SaaS
    1. Monthly subscription for both infrastructure and software
    2. Cost of services
  2. Hosted
    1. Rental cost of hardware and infrastructure
    2. Cost of services
    3. Initial software license payment and annual license renewal
  3. On-premise
    1. Cost of hardware and infrastructure
    2. Initial software license payment and annual license renewal

2. Hardware (if required, based on deployment type)

  1. Servers
  2. Clients
  3. Printers
  4. Cabling
  5. Mobile devices

3. Software (See notes on software licensing)

  1. Operating system
  2. Number of users
  3. Add-ons
  4. Upgrades
  5. Annual License Fee
  6. Data migration/conversion

4. Implementation

  1. Consulting
  2. Business modeling
  3. Project Management

5. Training

6. Support

7. Ongoing System Project Management

SYSPRO Software licensing:

  • SYSPRO licenses its software to make it easy for customers to choose the functionality they need, when they need it.
  • The software is licensed by module, and by the number of concurrent users. Allowing you to buy just the modules you need for a select number of users. Then as your needs grow, you can buy additional modules and increase your number of users.

Enterprise Technology

We build your software to be agile and to keep pace with the growth and direction of business software. Your investment is kept top of mind when embracing technology so that our software ensures:

  • your systems remains current – our software keeps on track with latest technological innovations
  • you have all the room you need for growth – SYSPRO ERP software accommodates multi-national organizations with hundreds of subsidiaries, and operates in high-volume single server instances.
  • your staff remain productive – User friendly, intuitive interface that can be customized by user.
  • your ERP software interfaces with other applications your company makes use of ensuring better control and management reporting
  • you are flexible enough to interface with customer and supplier systems, if required, ensuring better order and delivery performance
  • you have a choice of deployment options to suit your business and your budget
  • your data is completely secure in a MS SQL Database
  • your processes are strictly adhered to using our workflow services
  • you can access you system anytime, anywhere from the device of your choice

SYSPRO’s software is unique because it is based on a single code base, rather than being a mixture of different applications acquired over time. The software is developed around business objects, components or blocks of code that represent a specific set of business rules and processes. Because of its component-based architecture, SYSPRO’s functionality can be continually extended through the addition of new components, whether they are internally developed additions, or new technology from a partner.

 

Security

SYSPRO’s ERP Software gives you peace of mind by providing the following extensive security features:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSjQsCjzaJI

  1. Tailored Security Measures – You can configure the system security to be as simple or as finely tuned as your operating environment requires.
  2. Controlled Access – Standard security features include password control and group and operator maintenance facilities. Administrators can also control access down to certain business processes, companies, modules, menus, and program functions and activities.
  3. Data Visibility – SYSPRO’s ERP Security features give you visibility to transactional data for key codes such as warehouse, banks, salespersons, ledger etc.
  4. Audit Trails – Master data amendment journals and transactional audit trails provide records of data changes and the users responsible. The job logging facility provides an audit trail of user access and processing activity.
  5. Electronic Signatures – Enable administrators to secure transactions by authenticating the operator who is performing the transaction. This can be configured to create a summary and detailed log of all transactions.