Information systems play a vital role in improving the competitiveness of a company. There are many types of enterprise information software packages which are available in the market since the year of 90s till today (Mandal & Gunasekaran, 2003). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is one of them. Due to intense competition around the world, many of the manufacturing company had decided to implement ERP. It assures one application, one database and is possible to unified interface across the entire organization. Many companies had not abstained from investing a large amount of money on ERP system, though the ERP implementation had high failure rate and well publicized (Ehie & Madsen, 2005). This paper will discuss the role and purpose of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Specifically, the paper will discuss the reasons for companies who have chosen to implement ERP. Moreover, the paper will discuss the challenges faced by companies who implement ERP and lastly the impact of the implementation of the ERP to the overall Accounting Information System in a company.
“What do companies such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, Alcoa, and Nokia have in common?” (O’Brien & Marakas, 2006:258). These companies have implemented the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as a transactional backbone and their businesses today are running at a breakneck speed compare to those time when it used to operate on a 25-year-old back office systems. Companies are giving a major credit to the ERP system that have assisted companies to reduce inventories, lower costs, shorten cycle times and overall improve the company’s operations. ERP systems are used as a conceptual framework and catalyst for changing companies’ business processes since the era of 1990s where throughout the world most companies had started to implement ERP systems. ERP systems assist as a cross-functional enterprise backbone that
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