Enterprise Resource Planning Tools Research Articles

Enterprise Resource Planning Tools Management in Private Higher Education in South Africa

In this research on Enterprise Resource Planning Tools Management in Private Higher Education in South Africa, the study objective was to determine critical issues influencing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools selection in academic management in Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. A mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) research methodology was used to triangulate the results of the research from an interpretive position. The research analyzed and reported on subjective and quantitative data to ascertain knowledge about the participants’ recognition of critical issues affecting the management of ERP tools in academic management in PHEIs in South Africa. In this study, the following groups of participants were purposefully sampled: students, lecturers and management staff working in the three PHEIs in Gauteng. The study found that academic attainment in PHEIs could be enhanced through ERP tools management in ICT integration. The research outcomes suggest that there is enhanced coaching and students' personal interactions through online conference tools, a practice that may be backed up and carry the same weight and recognition as physical learning contact hours. Issues of integration in the selection of any robust, dynamic PHEI tools may call for a firm’s financial readiness and company-wide consultations with potential users of the system. Any HE ERP system that does not have a student portal, without integrated online issues of applications, checking of results, enhancement of teaching and learning but partly integrating one or two departments in isolation to others, may not be considered fit or robust as a higher educational ERP tool.

Affective Enterprise Resource Planning Tools in Academic Management

In this thesis on Enterprise Resource Planning Tools Management in Private Higher Education in South Africa, the study utilized multiple sources of data collection in a mixed manner, namely; use of interviews and focus groups (in-depth interviews) in qualitative investigations and questionnaires in a quantitative study in order to determine critical issues influencing the adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools in academic management in Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. A mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) research methodology was used pragmatically in the study paradigm to triangulate the results of the research from an interpretive position. The research analyzed and reported on subjective and quantitative data to ascertain knowledge about the participants’ recognition of critical issues affecting adoption of ERP tools in academic management in Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. In this study, the following groups of participants were purposefully sampled: students, lecturers and management staff working in the three PHEIs in Gauteng. The study found that academic attainment in PHEIs could be enhanced through effective ERP tools management in ICT integration. In light of the research outcomes, the study highlighted students’ personal interactions through online conference tools, a practice that may be backed up and carry the same weight and recognition as physical learning contact hours. The qualitative and quantitative data analysis raised a debate that HE ERP systems must or may integrate all those particular factors that coordinate and interact as changes made in one factor should also reflect in another factor or module. ERP tools security features should be instituted at all levels of the main tools. Issues of integration in the selection of any robust, dynamic PHEI tools may call for an organization’s financial readiness and company-wide consultations with potential users of the system. Bringing in such a discussion in preparation to single out tools that may be selected over time may be an issue that is seldom shared by top HE executives, as other decisions in the ERP tools selection may seem to be imposed upon departments. HE ERP that does not have a student portal, without integrated online issues of applications, checking of results, enhancement of teaching and learning but partly integrating one or two departments in isolation to others, may not be considered fit or robust as a higher educational ERP tool.

Continuous Integration of Field Level Production Data into Top-level Information Systems Using the OPC Interface Standard

On the way to the fourth industrial revolution, one major requirement lies in reaching interoperability between hardware and software systems. Especially real-time propagation of shop floor information in top-level production planning and control systems as well as the consolidation of distributed information into a consistent data basis for comprehensive data analysis are still missing in most production environments. Existing approaches to serve interoperability through standardized interfaces are limited by proprietary data exchange protocols and information models.Within industrial manufacturing and automation, standardization attempts between these systems are primarily focused on industrial interfaces like OPC/OPC-UA. However, the aggregation of data created by devices like sensors or machinery control units into useful information has not been satisfactorily solved yet as their underlying models are carried out using different modeling paradigms and programming languages, thus intercommunication is difficult to implement and to maintain.In this work, an integration chain for data from field level to top-level information systems is presented. As Manufacturing Execution Systems or Enterprise Resource Planning tools are implemented in higher programming languages, the modeling of field level information has to be adapted in terms of a semantic interpretation. The approach provides integration capabilities for OPC-conform data generated on the field level. The information is extracted from low level information systems, transformed according to object-oriented programming paradigms and object-relational standards and finally integrated into databases that allow full semantic annotation and interpretation compatible to a common information model. Hence, users on management levels of the enterprise are able to perform holistic data treatment and data exploration along with personalized information views based on this central data storage by means of a reliable and comfortable data acquisition. This increases the quality of data and of the decision support itself, as more time remains for the actual task of data evaluation.

An Applied Approach to Teach Hospital Information Systems Development Using an Open Source ERP Framework

The objective of the paper is to represent an international pilot project to teach development of free and open source hospital Information systems at the national level using a live pre installed Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. We have developed live image with pre installed free and open source ERP framework -Tryton® (A fork of openERP®) and a free and o pen source health and hospital information system GNU Health® that supports electronic medical records (EMR) which is developed on top of the ERP framework as the second layer. We considered the two layer system as a domain specific application development framework for further agile development of information systems in the healthcare information technology area. Participants were health informatics professionals invited from ministry of health from selected developing countries to participate in the ERP training program at United Nations University International Institute for Global Health (UNUIIGH) to learn agile development of open source hospital information system based on the ERP concept to adopt the solution in pub lic hospitals and clinics in their respective country. During three days extensive course, participants used a live image of pre installed ERP system and a cloud hosted ERP configured as a distributed clinical information system to support the training and they learned how to configure the solution in a practical and step by step procedure. We have evaluated the course including feedback from the participants through a questionnaire and interview. The result showed a great potential of live open source ERP tools to support the training. It is expected that the results can be used for improvement of development of the other courses in other universities and institutions especially for subjects covering implementation procedures and critical success factors of free and open source ERP framework adoption in hospitals and Health centers with more focus on rural areas. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. S election and peer-review under responsibility of the Faculty of Information Science & Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Ma laysia.

Impact of Enterprise Resource Planning Tools & Techniques in Management Education

Historically, business education is fragmented with different bodies of knowledge taught in separate functional courses. Although students become specialists in specified area, they many times miss the complete picture where interdependencies and interconnectedness among various business processes create efficient synergies in achieving business goals. The purpose of this research paper is to understand deeper nuances of an integrated educational environment & its impact on student communities, Faculty or teaching community & administration, society at large. Impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in management education can be analyzed basis three major phases, namely: Phase I: Teaching ERP based Courses & provide guidance to educators on ways to effectively teach, in order to accomplish the synergistic goals of hands on exercises by students using the ERP package, illustrating real-world business processes & integration, re-designing the curricula in different functional courses. Phase II: Implementation of ERP based integrated Learning Management Systems (LMS) to carry on with day to day activities of the management of education. Phase III: Improving pedagogical tools, techniques & processes in an integrated manner to improve brand equity of the institute.

A roadmap of financial measures for IT project ROI

Organizations have spent billions of dollars in implementing and subsequently repairing, removing, or altering enterprise-wide IT systems for managing finances, customer relationships, human resources, manufacturing resources, and supply chains. Of all IT systems, those for enterprise resource planning (ERP) are among the most difficult to implement. These products provide turnkey automated processes while sharing common data across an organization. Unsuccessful or grossly underestimated efforts to implement ERP tools have resulted in massive financial failures and corporate process disarray for many organizations. Various financial techniques can help organizations select the right projects and better manage the implementation of enterprise systems. The roadmap describes key practices in the fields of financial management and quantitative analysis.

A roadmap of financial measures for IT project ROI

Organizations have spent billions of dollars in implementing and subsequently repairing, removing, or altering enterprise-wide IT systems for managing finances, customer relationships, human resources, manufacturing resources, and supply chains. Of all IT systems, those for enterprise resource planning (ERP) are among the most difficult to implement. These products provide turnkey automated processes while sharing common data across an organization. Unsuccessful or grossly underestimated efforts to implement ERP tools have resulted in massive financial failures and corporate process disarray for many organizations. Various financial techniques can help organizations select the right projects and better manage the implementation of enterprise systems. The roadmap describes key practices in the fields of financial management and quantitative analysis.

The role of ERP tools in supply chain information sharing, cooperation, and cost optimization

The transaction based integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provides different tools that can support supply chain integration but at the same time it has several features that obstructs the integration with business partners. We concentrate on the inventory management aspects of supply chain coordination reviewing the recent quantitative modeling and organizational results available in literature. We summarize the results of a detailed numerical and sensitivity analysis based on our previously published models for supply chain cooperation and joint optimal ordering and shipment policies for the buyer and supplier. These results can be used in enterprise software to measure the potential monetary value of policy coordination, to promote cooperation, and minimize the total supply chain system cost. Our further goal is to combine quantitative tools with organizational and management factors, and to integrate them in a multi-level framework of policy coordination.