What makes an ERP, an ERP?

It seems to me that the acronym ERP is as much of a catchall for describing a mish-mash of cohabitating business applications as the term “dude” is a common way for saying hello.


If you don’t believe me, try asking any owner-operator of a small business or a CEO to describe their systems environment. It turns out any sort of a dog’s breakfast of accumulated products, bolt-ons and cling-ons (or "hairballs" as Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson refers to them) will suffice for an ERP. No wonder the promise of an ERP system for many companies has dramatically missed expectations. It seems many of us cannot even agree on what an ERP system is.


So what is it? Well, the term ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, and it exists when a single database contains all of the data required to support multiple core business applications.


For starters, this usually includes Sales, Financials, Operations and Human Resources. Most current day ERPs include a Data Warehouse to support business analytics as well.


Traditionally ERP systems were something available to only the large enterprise businesses due to the high price tag associated with licenses, infrastructure, implementation and ongoing maintenance.


With the emergence of SaaS alternatives, ERP is now available via the cloud and provides a cost effective alternative for the small to mid-sized customer that works just as well as the big boys' on prem ERP.


Thanks for reading.


Dave Rice, TrueCloud CEO


http://www.truecloud.com.