ERP System Architecture
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ERP system architecture
1.1. Functional perspective
The ERP system is a standardized software package designed to
integrate a company's processes. The ERP is made up of a centralized
database and several modules intended to support the main areas of an
organization.
Figure 5. Catalog of business information systems
We can group the applications into four areas:
1) The clients
we can observe the commercial management and customer
relationship systems. Normally, they would have to record all the
contacts and operations that the company has with its clients, be they
marketing, visits from representatives, after-sales service, etc. They
can also include the relationship with the sales channels, if the sale is
not direct and, currently, the interaction and response systems that
customers establish with the company, whether loyalty programs,
management of incidents and complaints, or even social networks.
They also serve to measure the effectiveness of the sales force. These
systems are called customer relationship management ( CRM ).
CRM is the acronym used for Customer Relationship Management and
refers to the set of practices, business strategies and technologies focused
on customer relationships.
The CMR Falabella Card was born on May 23, 1979, as a new means
of payment to acquire goods and services in Falabella stores in Chile,
due to the growing demand for credit by its customers, since before
this they operated in Chile the Paris and Ripley Warehouse Cards.
During the 1990s, with the internationalization of Falabella, this card
began operations in Argentina (1993) and Peru (1996) with good
customer acceptance.
In 1997, it signed an alliance with Farmacias Ahumada , positioning it
as the first Card with access to sales in Pharmacies in Chile.
2) Providers
No company is self-sufficient nor can it serve its customers with its own (6)
Suppliers, producers,
resources alone. But in addition, currently, many processes that were warehouses, transporters, stores
and even customers.
previously internalized are outside or shared with other providers.
Typical supply chain management ( SCM ) systems include the
processes of forecasting production and demand for raw materials and
semi-finished products, inventory replenishment, storage and
transportation to intermediate warehouses and to the final consumer.
These processes and systems are shared between the different members.
chain 6 bros online.
Supply chain management ( SCM ) involves tracking materials,
information, and finances throughout the process from supplier to
manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, and consumer.
Up to this point we have talked about currently well-consolidated
systems, although with different levels of presence and success in the
market. Also systems that are frequently sold integrated, that is, an
ERP such as SAP or Oracle contains both a CRM solution and an
SCM solution.
3) Managers and shareholders
At the top of the figure are the relationship systems between partners or
PRMs; This part is less obvious. They must serve to manage
relationships with "other agents" or intermediaries that help us gain or
maintain new clients and suppliers or provide value-added services that
complete our service offering. That's why they are called partner
management systems ( PRM , or partnership relationship
management ).
Examples
An example could be the monitoring systems for chronic patients or the
referral of patients in which a hospital, family doctors and social and health
service centers participate. Another example is loyalty programs, in which airlines,
hotels, restaurants or shopping centers participate. In the industrial world, these systems
are often part of your SCM or CRM.
4) The employees
In the lower part of the figure we find an unequal and disintegrated set
of applications or partial solutions:
• decision support systems (DSS or decision support systems ), such as a
system that optimizes a carrier's routes;
• information systems (BI or business intelligence ), which range from
management dashboards to large-volume data analysis or business
intelligence systems;
• knowledge management systems (KM or knowledge management ),
which allow tracing "who knows what" or where information can be found
within the company; pure intranets and employee services portals ,
to request a vacation or sign up for a course.
In fact, in the market for each group of needs it is possible to find a
large number of partial solutions . Although, again, large business
systems providers are incorporating solutions of this type among their
packages.
For all these reasons, company information systems have evolved into
information systems between companies and between employees, with
web-based technologies and under the label of electronic business
suites ( e-business suites ).
1.2. Technological perspective
The different applications of the ERP system share a centralized
database, producing the integration of information between all
applications. Centralization implies that the data used by the different
processes of the organization are entered once in a single place and
automatically update all the information related to it.
ERP packages can incorporate their own database or use other standards
on the market. It is recommended to use a standardized database
because it offers the opportunity to be shared by other applications.
The architecture of the ERP system has to be open, flexible, scalable and
integrable with other business applications.
An open architecture allows you to add, update and change its
components. It has to be flexible to facilitate the expansion and/or
adaptability of other modules later. It must be scalable because the
expansion of the system must be done without losing quality of the
services offered. It must integrate the set of applications within a
company: integration so that information is consistent and integration
of business processes between different applications.
The ERP architecture has to support multiple hardware platforms, since
many companies have heterogeneous systems. It must involve the use of
a module freely without affecting the rest.
ERP systems are applications for use in a client/server environment in
three layers. The use of client/server technology creates a
decentralized environment, makes it scalable and allows us to offer
optimal configurations in hardware, database management and open
systems. This open architecture format makes it easier for companies
to select hardware equipment and operating systems so that they can
take full advantage of technological advances. The systems are
designed to run various operating platforms, such as UNIX, MS
Windows NT, Windows 2000, IBM AIX and HP-UX systems.
Figure 6. Three-tier client/server architecture
• Presentation level : The graphical user interface (GUI) or
browser for entering data or accessing system functions.
• Application level : the business rules, functions, logic and
programs that act on data from database servers.
• Data level : management of the organization's operational or
transactional data, including metadata; Above all, the RDBMS
standard with SQL is used.