Enterprise Resource Planning is a software program used for planning to manage the resources of the company like financial resources, material and man power. The purpose of this software is to facilitate the easy workflow and flow of information within the company without having any changes in objectives and policies of the company. This system resides on a centralized server and is distributed across various modular hardware and software components that provide services on Local Area Network (LAN). This is integrated software which needs real-time updates with no periodic data entry practice.
ERP system can handle many areas like manufacturing, distribution, logistics, planning, accounting and supply chain, inventory of a company. This system is having its operations in both back office systems and also in front office systems like customer relationship management that directly deal with customers and general public. In this process all production and operational departments are clubbed in to one achieve the company objective, apart the areas like logistics, supply chain management, manufacturing warehouse etc.
Open Source
Open Source means, any program or code made available to use or modify to the users or other developers to develop the program by using the latest technology. Open Source also refers to give license or authority to create or change or modify or use any program or technology or software. Open Source ERP software is widely used by many business firms and companies.
Every firm should have a goal to implement such software to develop the company in all fields. ERP is a broadly implemented platform across most of the companies in the world to boost up their procedures and objects with new technology and system. It is toughest task for the company, to choose the appropriate service provider for Open source software like ERP which changes the company's progress and which increase the credibility of the company in the market. But, before going for outsourcing, company should go through some critical steps. Let's go through it for a while and know much about Open Source ERP software.
Necessity of ERP
The very first thing, every firm who is going to implement ERP and plan for outsourcing should think that do they really need ERP in their company? Is it can really fulfill the particular set of company's requirements? If you are familiar to your present procedures and applications, you want to get better results by updating the same. As the business grows, the applications using to compete the development are also increases, but each application controls its own database. This is where ERP system helps more using common database for each of its application.
Define the requirements
Requirements of firm vary according to their businesses. Manufacturing firm has different requirements and infrastructure firms have some different requirements. So, that every firm first define their requirements, if it's a manufacturing firm they need a system to track their records of order, sourcing of material, work in progress materials, and suppliers details etc. This process will do easier to recognize the requirements and categorize which are the right ones to consider according to their business systems.
These two steps are very important to a firm before searching to open source ERP software. Open source ERP software is a better choice for any organization for a having a single database for a wide range of its functional modules which make the system to work more efficiently and profitability to the company.
