ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

Name: Zubair Rasheed

Originally the term ERP was referred to the way how a large organization planned to use its resources. Previously, ERP systems were used in large industrial companies. However, ERP use has changed drastically over a period of few years. Today the term can be applied to any type of company of any size (large or small) operating in any kind of field also today  it is commonly used by non-profit organizations, government agencies, and other institutions.

Prior to the ERP evolution, every department in an organization had their own isolated software application that did not interface with any other department software. Such isolated structures could not synchronize the inter-department processes and hence hindered the organization’s overall productivity, speed, and performance. These issues led to things such as lack of synchronization among the departments, incomplete understanding of the enterprise functioning, unproductive decisions, etc. For example, the financials department could not coordinate with the procurement team to plan out purchases as per the availability of money.

In simple words ERP is a system that is used to combine all the information and operations of an organization into a single unit or more appropriately we can say that information technology (IT) integrates with an organization core business process to streamline and accomplish specific business objectives of that organization. In order for system to be recognized as an ERP, it must provide a business with functionalities that have features like flexibility, modularity & openness, broadness, the finest business processes, and global focus. ERP provides the management executive with a comprehensive overview of the complete business execution of the organization and help them influence their decisions in a productive way.

ERP is a huge software architecture which supports the distribution of geographically scattered enterprise information across all the functional units of an organization. ERP includes many components like the hardware and software. ERP normally uses a database to store the data for various functions throughout the organization. For instance, functions such as Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Finance, Manufacturing Warehouse Management, and Logistics were all previously standalone software applications, generally housed with their own applications, database, and network. Today, they can all work under a single umbrella – the ERP architecture.

Deploying a comprehensive ERP system across an organization leads to performance increase, work flow synchronization, standardized information exchange formats, complete enterprise functioning overview, speed enhancement, etc. An ideal ERP system that would qualify as the best model for the enterprise- wide solution, if it includes the below organizational processes together:

Manufacturing:
Engineering, resource & capacity planning, material planning, work flow management, shop floor management, quality control, bills of material, manufacturing process, etc.

Financials:
Accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, general ledger, cash management, and billing (contract/service).

Human Resource:
Recruitment, benefits, compensations, training, payroll, time and attendance, labor rules, people management.

Supply Chain Management: 
Inventory management, supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, claim processing, sales order administration, procurement planning, transportation and distribution.

Projects:
Costing, billing, activity management, time and expense.

Customer Relationship Management: 
Sales and marketing, service, commissions, customer contact and after sales support.

Implementing an ERP system in an organization is an extremely complex process. It requires systematic planning, expert consultation, and a well-structured approach. Depending upon the size of the organization the implementation scope might become so broad that it may take years to implement the ERP in a large organization. Implementing an ERP system eventually requires business process reengineering (changes on staff and work processes). It is commonly advised that special ERP implementation experts be consulted, since they are specially trained in deploying these kinds of ERP systems.

There are three types of professional services that are provided when implementing an ERP system, they are Consulting, Customization, and Support.

• Consulting Services: They are responsible for the initial stages of ERP implementation where they help an organization to being their new system to life with product training, workflow, improvement in ERP’s use in the specific organization, etc.
• Customization Services:  They extend the new ERP system’s use or change its use by creating customized interfaces and/or underlying application code.
• Support Services – include both support and maintenance of ERP systems, for instance, troubleshooting and assistance with ERP issues.
  
  

Following are some of the advantages and disadvantages of an ERP:

Advantages of ERP system:

1. Complete visibility into all the important processes across various departments of an organization which is very important for senior management.
2. Automatic work-flow from one department / function to another to ensuresmooth completion of processes.
3. A single reporting system to analyze the statistics/ numbers/ status etc. in real time, across all the departments.
4. Since same software is used across all departments – this can avoid individual departments having to buy and maintain their own software systems.
5. Certain ERP vendors can extend their ERP systems to provide Business Intelligence functionalities..
6. Advanced e-commerce integration is possible with ERP systems that can handle web based order tracking/ processing.
7. Since ERP is a modular software system, it’s possible to implement either a few modules (or) many modules based on the requirements of an organization. If more modules implemented, the integration between various departments might be better.
8. ERP systems are more secure as centralized security policies can be applied to them and all the transactions happening via the ERP systems can be tracked.
9. ERP systems provide visibility and hence enable better and faster collaboration across all the departments.
10. It is possible to integrate other systems (like bar-code reader, for example) to the ERP system through an API (Application Programing Interface).
11. ERP systems make it easier for order tracking, inventory tracking, revenue tracking, sales forecasting and related activities.

Disadvantages of ERP system:

1. The cost of ERP planning, implementation, customization, configuration and testing, is too high.
2. Too little customization may not integrate the ERP system with the business process & too much customization may slow down the project and make it difficult to upgrade.
3. The cost savings/ payback may not be realized immediately after the ERP implementation.
4. Theadditional indirect costs like new IT infrastructure, upgrading the WAN links, etc.
5. Migration of existing data to the new ERP systems is always difficult to achieve as with integrating ERP systems with other stand-alone software systems.
6. Once an ERP systems is implemented it becomes a single vendor lock-in for further upgrades, customizations etc.

 

Management Information System in NADRA

By: Muhammed Ghazanfar Devjiani
 

Overview
 
National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is a national sector of the Government of Pakistan that is liable for distributing identification cards to the citizens of Pakistan. Engaging more than 11,000 associates of workers and devising more than 400 inland bureaus and five international offices, NADRA is one of the biggest civil services in the country. According to the organization itself, NADRA also grasps the record for preserving the biggest biometric citizen catalogue in the world
 

Nadra Management Information system
 
In order to develop civil recordkeeping system, CRMS was hosted by NADRA at Union Council Level. In this scheme event of Birth, Marriage, Divorce and Death are taken, which is very dynamic in nature. The pilot missions were propelled in 100 UCs of Lahore and till today more than 4,192 UCs are onboard. NADRA has delivered software, certificate paper and also imparting training to UCs Secretaries. The plan is up-and-running from more than last 3 years. Converting data into meaningful information for better and timely decision 480 computer touch screen kits have been installed all over Pakistan to facilitate the citizens providing them with following offerings
 

• Utility bills payment
• Cell phone scratch cards
• CNIC verifications

It is perhaps the biggest fully incorporated databank in the sphere that is having together an Automatic Finger Identification System (AFIS) & a Facial Recognition System.

Features of NADRA’s MIS
 

• National Data Warehouse
• Storage Volume of more than 60 Terabytes
• Handling Speed of 18 Trillion Instructions/Sec
• Trilingual Support of English/ Urdu/ Sindhi
• AFIS with a corresponding speed of 16 million/sec
• World largest Facial Library of more than 47 million images (ICAO)
• Network Frames
• Linked with more than 8000 PCs
• Fortified Global, VSAT, and DVB RCS/2 WAN Links
• Automated coupons are issued and data is inscribed on the RFID chip directly by means of handheld.
• Facts based ticketing system can be executed using this expertise.
• Payment of fines will be made through Kiosk.

All About PIPA and SOPA

Article by: Adam Dachis
Referred by: Siddique Khan
 

"The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two bills that sound like they have a mildly positive aim but, in reality, have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA, effectively shelving it indefinitely, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language is vague enough to target sites you use every day, like Facebook and Google, making these bills a serious problem. Here's what you need to know about the bills and what you can do about them.
 

 What Are SOPA and PIPA All About, and Why Should I Care?
 

The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. The methods are ineffective. Here's what they are and why they're problematic.
 

SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn't actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn't effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.
 

The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.
 

There is, however, an important difference between SOPA and PIPA. SOPA targeted any site that contributed to copyright infringement, even if it was simply facilitating the act by providing a tool that could be used for illegal purposes (regardless of intention). PIPA, on the other hand, requires the targeted site to have no significant use beyond copyright infringement. Basically, PIPA can only be used to censor a site if it's more likely to be a source of illegal content than not. This is still problematic because a tool designed to accept user-generated content is, to some extent, at the whims of its users. If infringing content is found, rights holders already have theDigital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help them request the legal removal of that content. They also have the ability to sue infringes for damages, as we've previously seen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) when they, for example, sued a 12-year-old for downloading music. SOPA and PIPA provide a means to censor the tool that provided a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. This puts a lot of power in the hands of rights holders and has significant potential for abuse.
 

This is, of course, our interpretation of these bills. Because we love the internet and oppose censorship, we have an obvious bias. While we believe the right thing to do is to oppose these bills, you should make an informed decision on your own. For more information, please read the exact content of both the SOPA and PIPA bills.