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n is vital to any company since it helps company planahead and reduce the time on decision-making, and then improve efficiencies. Decisionsupport capability can be a key to the success of an organization. Providing aconsolidated analysis of the data and user-friendly reporting capabilities will helpusers make intelligent and correct decisions and gain advantages over theircompetitors. If an organization does not take advantage of decision support systems, itcan not take complete advantage of the data and may lose its competitive edge.Most ERP systems today have highly integrated databases. Report writers can
access data from multiple ERP modules and then integrate them into reports. Manyvendors also have business intelligence (BI) tools to access their data modules directly.The most current information technology is to congregate all needed data from the
ERP system and then load them into a data warehouse or a data mart, and then link toBI tools (such as OLAP, data mining, query and reporting) and report writers to createa more consistent and knowledge-centric data reports. This BI and ERP integratedframework adds value to enterprise systems. Enterprise-wide transaction data can becollected and then analyzed for decision-making usage.This paper identifies the value of integrating ERP and BI systems and how theywork together to provide a better decision support capability. This paper firstdiscusses the content and the challenges facing ERP systems and their needs for BI.It then identifies the power and the capabilities of BI. Comparisons of existing BIproducts are conducted next. The next section provides an integrated architecture forERP and BI, and then its benefits and concerns. The final conclusion is provided in thelast section.
2. Enterprise resource planning systems
2.1 Implications of ERP systems
ERP is a software-driven business management system that integrates all facets of thebusiness, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. ERP systems canbe used to manage operational business information for corporate resource planning.
ERP can be applied to areas such as finance, HRs, manufacturing and logistics, supplychain management, and data analysis. ERP can provide the following businessfunctions (Yen et al., 2001).
. Finance. General ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, fixed assets,treasury management, cost control.
. HR. HR administration, payroll, self-service HR.
. Manufacturing and logistics. Production planning, order entering, warehousemanagement, transportation management, project management, plant
maintenance, customer service management.ERP systems usually have the following key components: client server system,enterprise database, and application modules (Yen et al., 2001). According to Yen et al.
(2001), an ERP system is supported by client/server technology and its applications arecommonly deployed in distributed and dispersed manner. Some ERP systems provideweb-based interface. ERP system is always implemented via a core database system.
BI and ERP
integration
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All applications in the ERP system interact with the database, which ensures the
integrity of the enterprise data. ERP vendors provide diverse modules for corporation’s
units, such as finance/accounting, HR, sales, manufacturing and logistics, etc. Most
application modules can be integrated for ERP processes.
ERP systems make large enterprises rely on information technology more than