1.1 Introduction
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is an enterprise-wide application software package that integrates all necessary business functions into a single system with a common database. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems integrate and streamline the business processes of an organization across departmental and geographical borders. In its basic definition, ERP is an enterprise-wide information system that integrates and controls all the business and technological processes in the entire organization. The business environment is dramatically changing. Companies today face the challenge of increasing competition, expanding markets, meeting customer expectations and improving security in the office environment.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
An Office was described as a place where all the official or paper work are done or performed. But in this era of information technology, office is no longer referred to a place but it as set of function for doing office work or activity (Nwoke: 2013). An office helps us to perform different task such as collecting the data, recording them, analyzing them, presenting them in an organized and scientific way, etc. All the functions of management like planning, organizing, directing, or controlling are controlled by office which also involves paper work. Office is the brain of an organization. Without a proper management, an organization will lack the ability to function properly (Peculiar: 2015). So, an organization needs someone to manage the organizational activities.
Management is a common process in all organized activities. Whenever there is certain number of people working together for a common goal, some kind of management becomes essential. The direct effort of a personnel toward the achievement of goals of organization is management.
According to Chung & Snyder (2000), ERP is “a packaged business software system that enables a company to manage the efficient and effective use of resources (materials, human resources, finance, etc.) by providing a total, integrated solution for the organization’s information-processing needs”. This software facilitates, if well-implemented, the integration of all the functional information flows across the organization into a single package with a common database. Therefore, it allows easy and immediate access to information regarding inventory, product or customer data, prior history information, parking space, surveillance and access control.
Today, many public and private organizations worldwide are implementing ERP systems in place of the functional legacy systems that are not anymore well-compatible with modern business environment. However, according to Ahituv et al., (2002), the process of moving from functional applications to an ERP system is difficult and challenging. Additionally, the switch to ERP system is expensive and it requires development of new procedures, training and converting data. Enterprise resource planning systems, also called enterprise systems (ES) are among the most important business information technologies that emerged during the last decade. While no two industries’ ERP systems are the same, the basic concept of ERP systems is focused on standardization and synchronization of information, and as a result, improved efficiency. The benefits of ERP systems include coordinating processes and information, reducing carrying costs, decreasing cycle time, and improving responsiveness to customer needs.
This increases the pressure on companies to lower total costs in the entire supply chain, shorten throughput times, drastically reduce inventories, expand product choice, provide more reliable delivery dates and better customer service, improve quality, and efficiently coordinate global demand, supply, and production. As the business world moves ever closer to a completely collaborative model and competitors upgrade their capabilities, to remain competitive, organizations must improve their own business practices and procedures. Companies must also increasingly share with their suppliers, distributors, and customers the critical in-house information they once aggressively protected. And functions within the company must upgrade their capability to generate and communicate timely and accurate information. To accomplish these objectives, companies are increasingly turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed that the manual office systems always put pressure on people to be correct in all aspect of their work especially the Admin. With manual systems the level of service is dependent on individuals and this puts a requirement on management to run training continuously for staff to keep them motivated and to ensure they are following the correct procedures. When a business grows beyond a certain a level, it becomes tedious and complicated to follow up all the processes taking place in it. Not only is it difficult to follow up the business processes of the organization such as accounting and inventory, it also becomes quite difficult to keep track of events such as parking and entry of people into the organization.
The events taking place in the organization can be tracked through surveillance and access control. This calls for the use of an event-based ERP system. It is a system that automates a number of events taking place in the organization such as parking and employee entry. This project set out to develop such a system.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System for Medium Office. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Define the medium office and suggesting the structure and operations of that office
- Provide an event-based ERP system for the organization based on the operations identified above.
- Accurately stores medium office available facilities and retrieves medium office history when needed.
1.5 Significance of Study
ERP provides two major benefits that do not exist in non-integrated departmental systems a unified enterprise view of the business that encompasses all functions and departments; and an enterprise database where all business transactions are entered, recorded, processed, monitored, and reported. This unified view increases the requirement for, and the extent of, interdepartmental cooperation and coordination.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the design and implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System for Medium Office using Fidelity Bank PLC as a case study.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Database: A collection of logically related data to meet the information need of organization.
DBMS: Database management software that enable the user to define, maintain Control the database.
