I thought I should make a post with short explanation of the term ERP.
ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It is a term that was coined by Lee Wylie at Gartner in 1990 as an extension of the term MRP (Material Requirements Planning). While MRP focusses on inventory ordering and supply chain management, ERP encompases the entire organization.
I use the term ERP to refer to any system that includes the accounting data. So, I even consider Quickbooks to be an ERP system. However, SAP or Acumatica are better examples of ERP. A true ERP system covers a lot more than accounting, such as:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Accounting
- General Ledger
- Cash Management
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Internal Accounting
- Budgeting
- Overhead Cost Allocation
- Fixed Assets
- Distribution
- Sales Orders
- Purchase Orders
- Inventory
- Bar Coding
- Manufacturing
- Engineering
- Bills of Material
- Work Orders
- Shop Capacity Scheduling
- Quality Control
- Product Life-Cycle Management
- Multi-Currency
- Multi-Company
- Human Resources
- Project Management / Contract Management
- Resource Planning
- Costing
- Billing
- EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) interfaces with customers and vendors for automatic ordering
- Customer and Vendor self-service portals