Day 2 Articles (Serkan Kocak)

1- ERP Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are formed to integrate information from several sources (departments) into a unified system. And the software of ERP allows collection and consolidation of this information across the enterprise.
An application of ERP; to eliminate paper based information system, to have efficient vendor relations, is given as an example to application areas. Tracking transactions brought very important advantage to the firm “consistency” by the implementation of ERP.
However, there are also some drawbacks; legacy paper based systems to single enterprise level program will take long time, duplication of data, not having management functions in storing data (to define the meaning of data stored).
The cost of the system can not be predicted because it depends on how many people will use it and how big is the company.
And the future step is to have a more intelligent program which has more managerial analysis inside.

2- Decision Making in the Evaluation, Selection and Implementation of ERP Systems
ERP projects can be thought as one of the most important projects which’s success or failure has a great impact on organization. So that evaluation, selection and implementation are very important for these project which’s methodologies are discussed in this paper.
After having some information (advantages) about ERP systems paper continues with the decision making models:
1) The Classical Model: to maximize goal achievements best alternative should be chosen
2) The Administrative Model: the ones who meet minimum requirements can be chosen
3) The incremental Model: the small incremental changes by making successive limited comparisons done
4) The Adaptive Model: mix of administrative and incremental model to find best
5) The Irrational Model: Decisions are not done according to a problem; decisions are product of organizational events.
6) The political Model: the decision making when the organizational goals become politics.

3- The ERP Purchase Decision: Influential Business and IT Factors
In this paper authors focuses on the influences of set of businesses and IT factors that are associated with the purchase of ERP systems.
After having brief information about ERP, the importance of business characteristics and ERP Package Capabilities is searched in literature. It is claimed that the ability to better meet various competitive goals, desire to reengineer business processes, and access to integrated data, are the three business capabilities that affects ERP purchases. And also IT capabilities such as: replacing with aging main frame systems with more modern, and reduction of information flow costs, and lastly Y2K kind of special problem solutions, are shown as IT factors that affect purchase.

4- Assessing the ERP Software
Larson Company, which are using an ERP system, wants to get something integrated to manage their supply chain totally in one system. Larson realized that SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft are the major players in this market, which are ranked highest degrees in supply chain management modules. And also the other players of supply chain management market are analyzed. The existence of third-party software providers are mentioned and their expanding, partnering with specific ERP vendors are highlighted. At the end the weakness of ERP as not meeting the needs or inefficient functionality is stated.