Indiana University South Bend
K507–Enterprise Resource Planning – 2008 Fall – ERP Project
Comparative analysis of ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft
Koenraad Adams, Eric Piazzoni, and In-Saeng Suh koenraadadams@hotmail.com, ericpz@gmail.com, isuh@iusb.edu
Abstract
This is a study of the comparative analysis on the enterprise resources planning (ERP) vendors, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. We research on functionalities, cost, features, and target market for each vendor.
Keywords: ERP, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, SME
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School of Business and Economics
Indiana University South Bend
1. Introduction
ERP system is an integrated information system to support the business within different organizational parts of an enterprise. The leading global providers are SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. ERP packages are designed to be customizable to concrete needs of an organization and to its legacy systems. The customization of ERP modules for a concrete user is performed with special tools and using specific or standard programming languages. Due to already mentioned general ERP characteristics, customization and implementation usually require specialized knowledge and significant resources.
SAP was founded on April 1, 1972, by five IBM employees. It developed its first product (financial accounting software) in close cooperation with its first customer. The company grew initially around ERP and solidified its market leadership by being a pioneer in the move from mainframe to client-server computing with its R/3 ERP solution introduced in the 1990s. From there, SAP expanded into a much broader set of applications for other functions in the enterprise: customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), product life-cycle management (PLM), and supplier relationship management (SRM). By bundling and integrating these applications, SAP became known for high-quality, comprehensive enterprise solutions,
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