Identify and describe three major enterprise applications.

Identify and describe three major enterprise applications.

Answer: Enterprise systems, customer relationship management, and supply chain management are three enterprise applications. Enterprise systems are based on a suite of integrated software modules and a common central database. Enterprise systems utilize enterprise software to support financial and accounting, human resources, manufacturing and production, and sales and marketing processes. Enterprise systems provide many benefits including an enterprise-enabled organization, improved management reporting and decision making, a unified information systems technology platform, and more efficient operations and customer-driven business processes.

Supply chain management systems help an organization better manage its supply chain, including planning, sourcing, making, delivering, and returning items. Supply chain management software can be categorized as a supply chain planning system or as a supply chain execution system. A supply chain planning system enables a firm to generate demand forecasts for a product and to develop sourcing and manufacturing plans for that product. A supply chain execution system manages the flow of products through distribution centers and warehouses to ensure that products are delivered to the right locations in the most efficient manner. Supply chain management benefits include improved customer service and responsiveness, cost reduction, and cash utilization.

Customer relationship management systems help firms maximize the benefits of their customer assets. These systems capture and consolidate data from all over the organization and then distribute the results to various systems and customer touch points across the enterprise. Customer relationship management systems can be classified as operational or as analytical. Operational CRM refers to customer-facing applications, such as sales force automation, call center and customer service support, and marketing automation. Analytical CRM refers to customer relationship management applications dealing with the analysis of customer data to provide information for improving business performance. Benefits include increased customer satisfaction, reduced direct marketing costs, more effective marketing, and lower costs for customer acquisition and retention.

Identify at least six benefits and four challenges of enterprise systems.

Six Benefits of Enterprise Systems

Answer: Benefits include: increasing operational efficiency; providing firmwide information to help decision-making; standardized business processes; greater responsiveness to customer needs; greater accuracy in fulfilling product demand; reduction of inventory and inventory costs; reduction in order-to-delivery time; improving business processes; removing redundant processes and systems; lowering costs through centralized processing; and improved decision making

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Four challenges of enterprise systems.

Challenges include: the expense of the software and related costs; the time required for implementation; deep-seated technological changes required, the deep-seated organizational changes required; overcoming organizational resistance; switching costs; data cleansing work required.