1. Problems existing in the process of traditional ERP technology and its application
a) Traditional ERP technology.
ERP is enterprise resource planning, which refers to a management platform based on information technology and systematic management ideas to provide decision-making and operation means for enterprise decision-makers and other employees. ERP reflects the requirements of the times for the rational allocation of enterprise resources and maximizes the creation of social wealth, and has become an important tool for enterprises to survive and develop in the information age.
ERP is a kind of management idea, and it is also an enterprise management software for the integration of material resource management (logistics), human resource management (financial resource management (capital flow), and information resource management (information flow). ERP integrates enterprise management concepts, business processes, basic data, human and material resources, computer hardware and software, and realizes cross-regional, cross-departmental, and cross-company integration of real-time information. In addition to the standard functions of traditional management systems, it also includes a variety of features such as quality, process operation management, and adjustment reports.
2) Problems existing in the application process.
1.The lack of uniformity in data standards leads to the existence of information silos. Traditional ERP is a system architecture that integrates various systems such as manufacturing system, chain management system, financial system, personnel management system, etc. Due to the different business characteristics and management requirements of different enterprises, it is rare to have an independent software vendor to meet all the needs of enterprise management with a complete system. The reality is often that enterprises purchase different modules of systems from different vendors (and may even develop some module systems themselves), and finally the overall ERP architecture of the enterprise becomes a "patchwork" product.
From the perspective of a single module, these systems seem to be able to meet the individual needs of different modules, but the business of the enterprise is never a separate and separate activity of each module, but a process of production, supply, marketing, management and other business collaboration. In the process of business development, the data generated by the enterprise must need to flow a large number of different modules between the systems, and the problem of the ERP system "pieced together" is highlighted: due to the lack of unified data standards between the systems, the flow of data between different systems is often blocked, and the data that can be shared is only part of the highly structured data, and a large number of original semi-structured and unstructured data can only be stranded in an information island. The value and empowerment of data itself will have nowhere to be used. In addition, in order to realize the data connection between different systems, enterprises often need to use manual methods to "transport" data, which consumes a lot of labor costs and is easy to produce errors. It should be pointed out that in recent years, OCR (optical character recognition), RPA (machine process automation) and other technologies were once considered to be able to solve the problem of information islands between systems, but in fact, these technologies treat the symptoms but not the root cause, and can not really solve the problem of data docking between systems, and with the change of business and management needs, these technologies often have to change or even overturn, with high cost but limited results.
2.The solidification of the system architecture makes it difficult to upgrade. Traditional ERP is designed based on the concept of purchase, sales and storage, which is a result-oriented management idea, which is good at the flow of data records and documents to help enterprises integrate business and finance, but it is difficult to track materials in the whole production process and meet the needs of enterprises for process management. In today's rising requirements for management refinement, the traditional ERP-based management method has obvious defects in process management, scheduling, production planning, etc.
Traditional ERP is basically developed based on a monolithic architecture, which encapsulates the functions of all modules into a unified project. While easy to develop, deploy, and test, the modules are heavily coupled and the boundaries are often unclear. As the overall ERP architecture becomes larger, the relationships between the modules become more complex, and the entire architecture needs to be redeployed and tested to modify one of the modules. Therefore, the ERP system developed by monolithic architecture is difficult to maintain and the scalability is poor, when the enterprise has new management needs, it is necessary to carry out drastic reform of the entire ERP system, the cost is high, so many enterprises give up the reform and upgrade of the ERP system and use other systems to assist in management.
3.It is difficult to meet the external collaboration requirements of enterprises. If an enterprise wants to achieve high-quality management of products, it is inseparable from the control of the whole production process of products, which requires the collaboration of data and processes between enterprises in the value chain. With the expansion of enterprise scale and the upgrading of product management requirements, the management needs of enterprises are no longer limited to the enterprise, but need to cross the enterprise boundary to manage the whole production process. Traditional ERP is designed based on a monolithic architecture, which is oriented to the internal management needs of enterprises, and different enterprises use different systems, which makes it difficult to connect. It can be seen that traditional ERP solves the problem of internal integration to some extent, but it is powerless to meet the collaborative demands outside the enterprise.
Second, the new generation of ERP technology and the solutions and practical applications it provides
a) A new generation of ERP technology.
The new generation of ERP technology refers to the continuous integration of management ideas and enterprise management by relying on information technologies including big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, etc., to realize the integration between different internal systems and between enterprise systems and external systems. The development trend of the new generation of ERP is to further integrate with e-commerce, customer relationship management, chain management, etc.
1.The integration of the new generation ERP with the ** chain. While improving the internal efficiency of enterprises, the new generation of ERP emphasizes the adjustment of customer service-driven logistics operation processes and the implementation of first-chain management in collaboration with business partners (merchants, customers, etc.). The new generation of ERP focuses on the coordinated management of external resources of the enterprise, such as merchants, customers and operators, which is more in line with the concept of modern chain management. As the basis for enterprises to carry out e-commerce, the new generation of ERP provides a solid information platform for enterprises to achieve modern chain management.
2.Integration of next-generation ERP with information management technology, e-commerce technology. On the one hand, the new generation of ERP should realize the integration of management ideas into enterprise management; On the other hand, it is necessary to realize the integration between the ERP system itself and between ERP and other application systems. First of all, the purpose of integration is to solve the application interaction between management ideas, management methods and management systems; Secondly, the integration is mainly to achieve the integration between ERP and other functional subsystems, including further integration with CRM (customer relationship management), e-commerce, collaborative commerce, PDM (product data management), MES (manufacturing execution system), workflow management system, and strengthen DW (data warehouse) and OLAP (online analysis and processing) and other functions. According to the different integration contents, they can be divided into data sharing, business handover, message delivery, and composite.
b) Solution.
The emergence of new technologies provides new tools for enterprise management, and also makes the construction of ERP have new ideas and methods. The application of new technologies such as big data technology and cloud platform technology has given a new generation of ERP a new system architecture and characteristics, specifically in the following aspects:
1.Architecture: Monolithic architecture to microservice architecture. Unlike the traditional monolithic architecture development approach, the new generation of ERP uses a microservices architecture for development. In a microservice architecture, different modules are divided into different microservices. The microservice architecture decouples the modules, so that each microservice can run, build, and deploy independently, and use a lightweight communication mechanism to communicate with each other. In the new generation of ERP system developed by using microservice architecture, user enterprises can divide system functions into different microservices according to their own management needs, modify and upgrade them respectively, without destroying the overall architecture, and add new microservices to the architecture when enterprises have new requirements. Therefore, the new generation of ERP can carry out more flexible upgrades and changes according to the development needs of the enterprise, and realize the synchronization of functions while maintaining the stability of the overall architecture.
2.Basic: On-premise to cloud platform. The new generation of ERP is developed based on the cloud platform, which is not deployed on the enterprise server, but is provided by the software provider through the cloud platform. In the traditional ERP model, the software vendor delivers the ERP to the user after completing the tasks such as development, deployment, and testing, and does not carry out further development and maintenance. In the new generation of ERP, the software provider is more like a service provider, which provides enterprises with different modules of services through the cloud, and enterprises only need to use these services through the client, and no longer need to set up their own servers, saving the cost of operation and maintenance. At the same time, enterprises can "subscribe" to various services on the cloud according to their own needs, and the best business can also update the services already used by enterprises on the cloud, and the flexibility of the ERP system has been further strengthened.
In addition, the unified data interface on the cloud can make the systems of different entities have a better and more convenient connection mode, and the collaborative production between different enterprises becomes possible, and enterprises can control the whole process of product production through the cloud platform. The ERP system on the cloud platform is no longer constrained by the business scope of the enterprise, and the scope of the ERP system can go beyond the business scope of the enterprise. ERP services are also in place as businesses expand.
3.Core: Database-to-data lake. In traditional ERP, the data collected by the module system will be stored in the corresponding database of the module, and different modules have different data structures and databases, which are not interconnected with each other. At the same time, due to the limitation of the database structure, the data that can exist in the database of each module is often only a small part of the data accumulated in the actual operation of the enterprise, and a large part of the semi-structured and unstructured data is discarded in the process of system processing.
Next-generation ERP uses data lakes to store data. Unlike databases, which store data in a structured way, a data lake stores data in its original, unstructured way, without processing or analyzing the data, but accepting and retaining all data from the data source for future extraction. This feature of the data lake also enables the accumulation of large amounts of data in the production operation of enterprises to be deposited, rather than being discarded as in the past. With the application of big data analysis technology, a large amount of raw data processed in the data lake will have the opportunity to provide support for the management analysis of the enterprise dimension from different dimensions and different levels of granularity.
3) Practical application.
At present, some enterprises in China have begun to use new technology to build ERP systems to help enterprises upgrade their management.
Figure 1 Highly ERP system architecture.
Highly is an enterprise with compressor manufacturing as its main business, entering a new era, Highly will intelligent manufacturing as an important part of the enterprise strategy, and at this time the market demand for compressors has also changed, diversified, personalized product demand requires enterprises to produce with smaller batches, shorter cycles, higher quality, traditional manufacturing methods have been unable to adapt. In this context, Highly promoted the establishment of Nanchang Highly large-scale air-conditioning compressor intelligent manufacturing project, which takes the construction of assembly line as the core, the personalized needs of customers as the guide, and the first-class chain of parts as the synergy, so that product manufacturing can be digitalized, intelligent and automated. The new ERP system established by Highly (see Figure 1) has achieved good docking with multiple module subsystems, broken down the barriers between systems, and supported the company's business analysis by establishing a data center to store data. Relying on the cloud network, Highly Intelligent Manufacturing realizes the integration of production, supply and marketing planning, and can realize precise control from customer demand, sales orders, procurement, manufacturing to delivery. In addition, Highly can coordinate and coordinate different production bases to achieve centralized control and efficient collaboration, which greatly shortens the supply cycle, thereby improving the response speed of customers and improving the explosiveness of seasonal production. Through the construction of lean chain, Highly extends the chain management system to all localized suppliers, realizes collaboration with suppliers based on the cloud platform, directly regulates the production and logistics plans of parts suppliers, and can trace the quality of the whole chain.
3. Summary and outlook
As the main platform for the integrated management of enterprise business and finance, ERP has made great progress in the era of accounting computerization and accounting informatization, and has been widely used in all walks of life. In the era of intelligent accounting, the financial management of enterprises is becoming more refined and timely, and the "old bottle" of ERP can still be loaded into the "new wine" such as cloud platform technology, big data technology, and artificial intelligence technology, providing a steady stream of power for the management of enterprises.
At present, the new generation of ERP has been partially applied in some enterprises (such as cloud platform ERP, etc.), but such applications are still in a state where the degree is not deep enough and the scope is not wide enough, and it is still necessary for the further construction and promotion of the new generation of ERP. The microservice architecture and cloud platform operation of the new generation of ERP also make it more flexible, and new technologies are more likely to be connected to the ERP system in the form of microservices in the future, and the vitality of ERP will also be stronger.
This article was originally published in Finance and Accounting, October 2022 by Hu Renyu Lan Tian.
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