As organisations have grown and evolved, so have the IT systems required to support their individual business operations, however, these have typically become isolated with limited inter-operation between other systems. Enterprise Resource Planning applications attempt to resolve this isolation issue by uniting a multitude of business functions into a single, collaborative homogenous environment.

Typical ERP systems interoperate with manufacturing, supply chain management, financial analysis, project management, human resources management and customer relationship management systems and combining this with workflow support, all information is accurately and immediately available for effective business operation.

As the impact of corporate governance increases globally, organisations with isolated, disparate systems have difficulty complying with the legislative and regulatory requirements. Reported information may be inaccurate and this inaccuracy may lead to prosecution by the regulatory bodies. Using an ERP system to bring together all the disparate repositories alleviates this problem and provides assurance that effective corporate governance can be achieved.

An effective ERP system not only integrates isolated systems, but also provides a secure and reliable environment for the dissemination of consolidated effective and accurate information throughout the organisation.

Human Resources are an organisation’s most valuable asset. Throughout their entire working life within an organisation, data is constantly generated by the employee, the company and external organisations. All this data need to be recorded within a secure and reliable system and it is vital the integrity of this data is maintained throughout its lifetime. Inaccurate data needs to be eliminated and duplicate data needs to be consolidated to reduce the risk of errors. All this personal data needs to be maintained and controlled for regulatory, legislative and internal process requirements. Employees also need to be paid!

Human resource and payroll systems need to support functional areas such as time reporting and attendance, expenses, payroll information, skills and competency development, recruitment, employee motivation and development, career planning, recruitment and streamlined intelligent data transfer for employment. All this data needs to be stored securely within the system and the personal nature of the information requires and organisation to ensure that only authorised people can access the information.

An effective HR and payroll system not only provides a secure environment for the storage of personal data, but it also provides an effective barrier against unauthorised access. Integration with other systems is vital to ensure relevant information is made available as and when needed to provide effective management for the operational side of the business.

The competitive nature of business operation today and the increasing number and speed of business transactions relies heavily on the availability of corporate data repositories to store, retrieve and transfer information direct to key decision makers.

To allow them to make strategic decisions, the information on which they make their decisions needs to be presented to them, when they need it and it needs to be accurate, current and relevant.

However, organisations typically store data in separate, unrelated repositories and this can result in duplication, which itself can result in errors within the data. The speed and availability of this data can also be a problem. The use of multiple repositories very quickly compromises the integrity of the data and it is therefore imperative that a single source of data is maintained and that all individual sources of data are consolidated into a single, definitive and accessible source.

A software application which integrates multiple legacy repositories into a single data source also needs to provide the workflow integration to define the rules for data consolidation and delivery. Security is also a major concern – access to corporate data needs to be controlled to ensure that specific data is only available to those people who need it.

An effective business intelligence application must provide support for a collaborative and integrated suite of components that work together to deliver all the requirements of the business and its key decision makers.

Financial management runs through all aspects of organisational operation. It touches every business function to some extent and the legislative and regulatory requirements on all companies means that financial audit, analysis and reporting is now a vital and more visible function for all financial operations.

Financial control of business functions requires business managers to have direct access to their critical financial information, when they need it. They need to make their strategic decisions to manage their business operations using the most accurate and relevant data - old or inaccurate data could have devastating effects for the business.

Typically financial reporting applications consider business performance, payment flows, taxations, fixed assets, analysis, report generator, invoice processing, scanning and EDI, credit control and cash control. Data for these functions is sourced from other systems within the corporate environment and integrated into the financial system.

An effective financial application needs to effectively integrate with existing legacy applications and accurately analyse relevant information to allow the financial system to present timely, relevant and accurate information to key decision makers and operational managers.