1) Explain the scope, Technology and Benefits of ERP and the

modern enterprise.
Ans:-
Scope –
The various areas normally covered under the concept of ERP are :
1. Financials: Financial accounting, treasury management, enterprise
control and asset management.
2. Logistics: Production planning, materials management, plant
maintenance, Quality management, Project systems, Sales and
distribution.
3. Human Resources: Personnel management, training and development,
skill inventory.
4. Workflow: Workflow integrates the entire organization with flexible
assignment of tasks and responsibilities to locations, positions, jobs,
groups or individuals. It integrates every employee in the ‘value
chain’ by providing a versatile inbox(universal inbox) at his or her
workplace, which can be configured individually.
Technology –
1. With technology making such rapid strides, companies have to
frequently change their application system due to technology
obsolescence.
2. Investment made in proprietary hardware and operating system has to
be replaced with fresh investment in open systems.
3. With the emergence of client/server architecture, companies were
able to extend the computing power to the end user and scale their
investments in the central servers over a period of time.
4. Since ERP vendors are servicing large numbers of clients in a number
of industries they can make a sizable investment around R & D
activities.
5. Some of the companies invest millions of dollars and are closely
involved in the latest technological advancements and hence are able
to exploit the technology for business benefits.

Benefits of ERP –
ERP brings together people who work on shared tasks within the
same enterprise or in their dealings with suppliers and customers.
Enterprises have to ensure a smoother flow of information at all levels
and between all parts of their organization, to access up-to-date
information. Workflow integrates business processes.

Some of the tangible benefits reported by industry are:

• Reduction of lead time by 60 per cent
• 99 per cent on-time shipments
• Doubled business
• Increase of inventory turns to over 30 per cent
• Cycle time cut to 80 per cent
• WIP reduced to 70 per cent.

Apart from these tangible benefits, there are intangible benefits like:
• Better customer satisfaction
• Improved vendor performance
• Increased flexibility
• Reduced quality costs
• Improved resource utility
• Improved information accuracy
• Improved decision-making capability.
2) State and explain significance and principle of business
engineering.
Ans.:–
Significance of business engineering:
1. In the early nineties, ’downsize’ becomes the battle-cry for
consultants and managers in corporate America. As the urge to
consolidate new organizations flourished, business engineering
came to replace the outdated and overly simplistic views implied
by downsizing.
2. While many pro-downsizing commentators spoke of obliterating
existing organizations, consultants provided guidelines on how to
restructure leaner, more efficient companies.
3. Such insights then paved the way for a new company infrastructure
based on combination of process-oriented business solutions and
information technology.
4. This new company infrastructure was designed to meet the
challenge of creating a business environment that would optimize
the performance and remain flexible enough to accommodate
change.
5. Now business engineering has gained acceptance throughout the
world. Many companies have created special groups, often led by
senior executives that focus solely on BE.
6. The reason why so many companies are engaged in extensive
reengineering efforts is that the society is shifting from an age
where labour and machinery drove productivity to an age where
productivity depends on knowledge and information.
7. In short, we now live in the age of information. This shift has
created major social, technological, and market changes all of
which have led to the increasing importance of BE.
Principles of business engineering:
1. In the past, companies benefited from economics of scale, that is,
the reduction of production costs brought about by the increased
output, which allowed them to offer standard products and
services to large, relatively stable consumer markets and to
concentrate in optimizing tasks in well defined areas.
2. Competitions and increased customer power have now
undermined the importance of economics of scale.
3. The current relationship between a company and its customers is
no longer limited to just the buying and selling of a product. It
encompasses the whole gamut of business activities, from
customer service, consulting and pricing to production and
shipping.
4. With more goods available to them than ever before, consumers
can now be more selective. This selectively has caused executives
to reexamine their business processes.
5. They have discovered that organizational structures, job
definitions, and work flow created to manage the growth era of the
1950-1970s are now outdated and require drastic change.
6. Business engineering makes companies more customer-focused
and responsive to change in the market. It achieves these results
by reshaping corporate structures around business process.
7. BE implements change not by the complete automation of a
business but rather by the redefinition of company tasks in holistic
or process-oriented terms.
8. Only companies with innovative staff, products, and services as
well as short development cycles, will be able to retain their share
of the market or hope to get a bigger slice of the pie.