Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about ERP technology’s coming of age. In the 1960s, the mainframe computer spawned inventory control packages to get the ball rolling, followed by material requirements planning (MRP) packages in the 1970s. It wasn’t until the 1980s that software packages began to emphasize process optimization, specifically with manufacturing processes. Most business systems, at that time, focused on one particular business process; and as a result, companies purchased different systems for each business process and ultimately had to rekey data from one system to another to get information to the right people at the right time. This led to numerous human errors, slow processes, inconsistent information, and ineffective reporting. With the advent of ERP systems in the late 1980s/early1990s, companies could purchase a single system that encompassed most, if not all business processes in one package, thus minimizing data integrity issues. Over time, ERP vendors began developing add-ons such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management); these systems were referred to as Extended ERP. In the last few decades, ERP systems have secured themselves as an organization’s information foundation; and with the emergence of the cloud, ERP technology is on the move again.
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