Operational excellence is the quest to reliably meet and exceed customer expectations with cost effective and efficient operations. It is the pursuit of conducting business to continuously improve the quality of goods and services, reduce costs, increase speed, and enhance flexibility to achieve competitive superiority (Laudon and Laudon, 2006).
Enterprise systems enable businesses to achieve operational excellence through increased profitability and sales margin; enterprise systems create an environment in which organizations can monitor their sales demand and predict future sales, applications retrieve vital information and support management in their decision making process. Reduced operating costs, maximized cost savings and cycle times are sustained in the short and long term (Laudon and Laudon, 2006).
Businesses develop heightened quality of products and services through use of enterprise systems to support innovations, improve customer service and retention. Enterprise systems bring increased visibility and responsiveness to business operations and integrate manufacturing with the broader enterprise by creating a product schedule that automatically factors in manufacturing lead times and capacity requirements. It generates a production plan that considers business objectives and relevant manufacturing and supply constraints and manages stability despite demand variation by comparing forecasts with planned deliveries (Laudon and Laudon, 2006).
Enterprise systems achieve operational excellence by integrating and coordinating diverse functions and business processes in the firm, for example the use of supply chain management