Hardware and Software Requirements for Implementation of ERP in Technical Education Institutes in India

ERP provides an integrated solution within which all facets of an organization and its data can interoperate. Most of the big ERP firms market products for higher technical education. For the most part, these vendors have taken a corporate solution and refashioned it to fit the specific needs of the nonprofit academic sector. In this paper we study and analysis of Hardware and Software Requirements for Implementation of ERP in Technical Education Institutes in India through venders of EPR and system administrators in educational institutes. Index Terms – Database, Database Layers, Modules, Systems, erp, implementation —————————— —————————— INTRODUCTION ERP Systems nterprise resource planning systems or enterprise systems are software systems for business management, encompassing modules supporting functional areas such as planning, manufacturing, sales, marketing, distribution, accounting, financial, human resource management, project management, inventory management, service and maintenance, transportation and e-business. The architecture of the software facilitates transparent integration of modules, providing flow of information between all functions within the enterprise in a consistently visible manner. Corporate computing with ERPs allows companies to implement a single integrated system by replacing or reengineering their mostly incompatible legacy information systems. American Production and Inventory Control Society (2001) has defined ERP systems as “a method for the effective planning and controlling of all the resources needed to take, make, ship and account for customer orders in a manufacturing, distribution or service company.” We quote several definitions from the published literature to further explain the concept: “ERP (enterprise resource planning systems) comprises of a commercial software package that promises the seamless integration of all the information flowing through the company–financial, accounting, human resources, supply chain and customer information” (Davenport, 1998). “ERP systems are configurable information systems packages that integrate information and information-based processes within and across functional areas in an organization” (Kumar & Van Hillsgersberg, 2000). “One database, one application and a unified interface across the entire enterprise” (Tadjer, 1998). “ERP systems are computer-based systems designed to process an organization’s transactions and facilitate integrated and real-time planning, production, and customer response” (O’Leary, 2001). The concept of the ERP system can be illustrated, following Davenport (1998), with the diagram in Figure 1. ERP Systems Architecture ERP vendors, mostly experienced from the MRP and financial software services fields, realized the limitations of the old legacy information systems used in large enterprises of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of these old systems were developed in-house while others were developed by different vendors using several different database management systems, languages and packages, creating islands of noncompatible solutions unfit for seamless data flow between them. It was difficult to E International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 2, Issue 7, July-2011 2 ISSN 2229-5518 IJSER © 2011 http://www.ijser.org increase the capacity of such systems or the users were unable to upgrade them with the organization’s business changes, strategic goals and new information technologies. An ERP system is required to have the following characteristics: Modular design comprising many distinct business modules such as financial, manufacturing, accounting, distribution, etc. Use centralized common database management system (DBMS) The modules are integrated and provide seamless data flow among the modules, increasing operational transparency through standard interfaces They are generally complex systems involving high cost They are flexible and offer best business practices They require time-consuming tailoring and configuration setups for integrating with the company’s business functions The modules work in real time with online and batch processing capabilities They are or soon they will be Internet-enabled Different ERP vendors provide ERP systems with some degree of specialty but the core modules are almost the same for all of them. Some of the core ERP modules found in the successful ERP systems are the following: Accounting management Financial management Manufacturing management Production management Transportation management Sales & distribution management Human resources management Supply chain management Customer relationship management