Introduction: ERP – The Quiet Revolution?

Enterprise system software is a set of packaged application software modules that can be used by organizations as their primary engine for integrating data, processes, and information technology, in real time, across internal and external value chains.

Abstract

Organizations invest in enterprise system software from vendors such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and i2 Corporation to gain access to powerful computer-based information systems more cheaply than through custom-built software development. What they acquire is a highly flexible software product, containing solutions to the needs of many of the vendor's existing customers, that impounds deep and detailed knowledge of many good and less good ways of conducting a wide range processes in a broad range of industries. The difficulty for the licensing organization is to identify the right combination of processes for its own changing needs and to implement those processes in its own organization.