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rmation.' (p.359). ERP is critical for today's organization to sustain businesses, especially when ERP systems are being integrated with the Internet for electronic commerce. Whether organizations are big or small, ERP has become the standard for system integration (Boykin 2001 qt. Shehab et al 2004).

Today, ERP is considered to be the backbone of SCM in strategic and managerial consideration (Tarn et al 2002; Koh, Saad and Arunachalam 2006; Chen 2001). ERP technologies focus on sales-force automation, data warehousing, document management, and after sales service and support. Furthermore, ERP today addresses the majority of the issues faced by organizations earlier including e-supply chain integration, risk and uncertainty (Koh, Saad and Arunachalam 2006). Fundamentally, ERP treats application systems, organizational systems and technological systems as one. Unlike traditional SCM, stand-alone activities are interlinked in ERP systems to reflect the cohesiveness of the enterprise. Suppliers and customers share information, as well as use the information system to access delivery status, stock information or delays in real time. Organizations with ERP systems enjoy the benefit of ease of use, integrative function, communication flow, customization, improved decision-making, improved processing time, operations and interface integration that reduces planning inaccuracies (Gupta 2000) (See Figure 5 for ERP Characteristics).

Despite these facts, critics are sceptical of ERP's efficiency. According to Wagle (1998), ERP systems have many pitfalls too. Although, ERP helps management to make informed decisions through integrated Information Systems, setting up of ERP systems, process redesigning and training for change management incur costs. Others (Themistocleus and Corbitt 2006; Koh, Saad and Arunachalam 2006) are of the view that ERP systems are only part of the production and automation solution as they are limited to 'co-existing' with other software used by today's technological organizations. Depending on the ERP systems chosen (Baan, SAP, and PeopleSoft etc.), ERP systems may or may not be compatible with the organization's own IT infrastructure, resulting in inefficiency rather than efficiency.

To resolve, Themistocleous and Corbitt (2006) suggest organizations to choose ERP software before integration. The vendor should be able to customize the software that supports business process integration with many variations and scenarios. The multiple business process scenarios will help management to configure an SCM system fit to their individual business. This process is called Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Basically, EAI is a subset of Business Process Integration (BPI) which companies today choose to organize change processes. This usually involves integration of organizational functions, processes, applications and inter and intra-organizational systems. Thus, EAI enables organizations to ease into technical and behavioural transition (Themistocleous and Corbitt 2006).

Other ERP technologies are various, depending on the type of business and organizational structure. Some of the major names in this industry include SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Baan. Apart from these major players, the rest of the marke本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。