Page 154 - DCAP302_ENTERPRISE_RESOURCE_PLANNING

Enterprise Resource Planning

notes 6. Will it enable me to achieve the same business volume with reduced manpower?
7. Will it enable me to re-engineer my business processes?

The above questions, although very obvious, should form the basis of the decision to adopt an
ERP implementation and should at all times be the final goal. The other factors that should be
taken into consideration are:

1. Need for quick flow of information between business partners
2. Effective management information system for quick decision-making
3. Elimination of manual preparation of various statutory statements
4. Need for a high level of integration between the various business functions

evaluating the “as – is” situation of your Business

In this step, one needs to thoroughly understand what existing business processes the organization
is following to transact its business. The various business functions should first be enumerated.

Example: Procurement, production, sales, etc.
Now the processes used to achieve the business transactions should be listed in detail. The
technique of process mapping can be used here. The process map should give you the following
details for any business process:

1. The total time the business process takes to complete
2. The total number of decision points involved
3. The number of departments / geographical locations that the business process involves
4. The flow of information
5. The number of reporting points

Deciding upon the desired would – be situation for your Business

In this step, we decide on what we want our business processes to finally look like. Here we use
the techniques of benchmarking to ensure that the targets set are comparable to the best in the
industry. Benchmarking can be done on various aspects of the business like cost, quality, lead
time, service, etc.

re-engineering of the Business processes to achieve the desired results

To achieve the new business processes we re-engineer the existing processes in such a manner
that
1. The business process cycle time is reduced significantly

2. The number of decision points are reduced to the bare minimum
3. The flow of information is streamlined, i.e. there is no unnecessary to – and - fro flow of
information between departments.

148 LoveLy professionaL university