Posted by : trraju on Oct 31, 2003 - 05:35 AM General

AS businesses grow, they face numerous challenges to improve their performance in real time. Automating the business processes by adopting enterprise business solutions, which promise increased efficiencies, is one way enterprises can improve their bottomline while staying competitive.
As the need to increase efficiency and productivity becomes critical, enterprises have realised that they have to rely on technology to help perform better.

Hence, the birth of enterprise business solutions such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human resources management (HRM) and supply-chain management (SCM) as well as a host of financial and accounting systems that promise better business performance.

Each of the business enterprise solutions is specifically developed to address the requirements of specific function areas and to utilise the resources available in those function areas more effectively.

In the HR function area, for example, there's the HRM solution to capitalise on the human potential of any enterprise. As for the financial and accounting function area, there are accounting and financial solutions that will make accounting and financial reporting a more accurate task. With each function area having a technology-dependent business solution, efficiency and productivity are almost guaranteed.

And these enterprise business solutions are utilised in areas like the intranet, extranet, Internet, cluster-based implementation as well as the client-server architecture for the benefit of both an organisation's internal as well as external clients.

Some of these solutions have even gone through "rebirths" and evolutions to address more specific and focused enterprise needs. The ERP solutions, for example, has an ERP II version, fine-tuned to address needs that are more specific to an enterprise.

With proper implementation and full utilisation of these tools, and using software applications that are highly scalable, enterprises will be able to see returns on their investments.

Benefits for the enterprise, in the long run, may outweigh the capital investments made to implement such systems. And solutions that are utilised well eventually provide the returns on investments within a shorter time period than expected.

Many reports and surveys undertaken by research as well as software firms show that companies are planning to buy new applications in the near future despite the slowdown on spending in this business critical areas over the last few years. This sums up the reports and show just how much companies are dependent on technology to keep up with their competitors.

Taking the ERP market, for example, market researcher IDC has projected a compound annual growth of 11 per cent for the worldwide ERP market from 2001 to 2006, reaching US$39.6 billion (RM150.48 billion) at the end of the forecast period.

Comparatively, the CRM market, IDC says, is expected to register about 18 per cent growth from 2000 to 2005, attaining revenues of US$14 billion.

And similarly, the SCM market is also projected to forecast growth.




These forecasted growth for the enterprise business solutions are in line with the overall growth expected to be spent on information technology initiatives, especially in regions where governments and private enterprises alike are embarking on several IT projects.

The e-government initiatives in Asia, for example, will see investments in software, hardware as well as IT infrastructure doubling or tripling.

In this special issue on Enterprise Business Solutions, readers can expect articles on how such solutions are widely used by businesses across various industries, get a first-hand look at specific organisations that have implemented such solutions in the case studies, read the challenges and benefits they have gone through in implementing such solutions, understand the security issues at stake, see how organisations maximise on their human potential with these solutions, learn about the types of solutions available in the market as well as read what experts have to say.

As processes, technology and the human performance components are integrated well, any enterprise in this borderless world will be able to grow its business and remain competitive to face challenges.