Product based vs Service based copanies

Product Based Company:

· Product based company will develop a product for the global clients i.e. there is no specific client for such product.

· The requirements for such products are taken from the ‘market trends’ and analyzed with the ‘industry experts’.

· These product based companies develop the product for all end users and sell them in the market.

· These companies produce the products such a way that they meet the needs of customers which is available at a reasonable cost.

· The product based companies will analyze the future requirements which targets to all kind of people and they come up with the solution.

· They release the product into the market and accept the challenges from the customers or users to develop the efficiency of the product.

· Product based companies may face a high levels of risk and they may not have sufficient budget to develop the product.

· The product that is developed by the company should specify to meet their target customers.

· Some of the examples of the product based companies are

a. Google

b. Amazon

c. Sun

d. Microsoft

e. Yahoo

f. IBM

g. HP

h. SAP

i. CTS

Service Based Company:

· A Service Based Business is one where the management is focused on provision and consumption of services.

· Service based companies can be either product based or project based.

· These companies depend on the clients i.e. they will develop a product or an application according to the commercial business agreement.

· The Service oriented companies will employ the ‘Service Oriented Architecture’ to develop the application or product.

· Service Based Company will be involved in the development of Application which will used to serve the various sectors such as Insurance, Health care, Retail, Banking etc.

· Service based companies takes the requirements from the clients and they develop the product based on the specific client requirement.

· These companies will employ the ‘domain experts’ in order to analyze the client area of requirement.

· Services provided by these companies have the following principles of service-orientation:

1. abstraction

2. autonomy

3. composability

4. discoverability

5. formal contract

6. loose coupling

7. reusability

8. statelessness

· The following are different streams (areas) where the service oriented companies will contribute to

a) Web services

b) Tourism services

c) Advertising

d) Insurance services

e) Customer services

· The Service Oriented Software Systems are virtual peer-to-peer networks of autonomous software components behaving like the services in real world mass service systems.

· Some of the service oriented applications are listed below

E-business and E-commerce

E-learning

E-entertainment

E-government

E-health

Documentation on ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

What is ERP?

· ERP Stands for Enterprise Resource Planning.

· ERP system is build based on the Client/Server Architecture.

· ERP is a computer-based integrated software architecture that is used to improve the organizations performance, resource planning, management control and operational control.

· ERP architecture purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

· An ERP system will cover all the core functionalities of the organization such as Finance, Supply chain Management, customer relationship, human resources etc…

· ERP system ensures that all the data is in one central location and everyone can access.

· An ERP system should have the following features

1. Should be integrated and operate in real-time with no periodic batch updates.

2. All applications should access one database to prevent redundant data and multiple data definitions.

3. All modules should have the same look and feel.

4. Users should be able to access any information in the system without needed integration work.

· The main objective of the ERP system is to integrate information and functional processes of an organization to make effortless access and workflow.

· The main goals of the ERP system are

§ Customer satisfaction

§ Productivity improvement

§ Increased competitiveness

§ Waste reduction

§ Effort duplication

· The major vendors of ERP system are

a. SAP

b. Oracle

c. People soft

d. JD Edwards

e. Baan Corporation

ERP Software’s

· There are various software’s that are built based on the ERP Architecture. They are categorized into two different types. They are

àOpen source ERP Software

àProprietary ERP Software

1) Some of the examples of Open Source ERP Software are

webERP—PHP, MySQL based

JFire—Java based

BlueErp—PHP based

SQL-Ledger—Perl, SQL based

Tryton—Python

OFBiz—Apache, Java

2) Some of the examples of Proprietary ERP Software are

JD Edwards—enterprise one from Oracle

Maximo (MRO)—from IBM

ERP Adage/LN/LX/SL/SX/VE—from Info Global Solutions

Microsoft Dynamics AX/GP/NAV/SL—from Microsoft

Ramco on Demand ERP—from Ramco Systems

SAGE Pro ERP—from the Sage Group

Why Companies use ERP

· There are various reasons why many organizations implement ERP system. Some of them are

1) ERP helps to reduce operating costs:

o ERP software attempts to integrate business processes across departments onto a single enterprise-wide information system.

o The major benefits of ERP are improved coordination across functional departments and increased efficiencies of doing business.

o By implementing ERP systems we can reduce operating costs of the organization such as

-- Lower inventory control cost

-- Lower production costs

-- Lower marketing costs

-- Lower help desk support costs.

2) Facilitate Day-to-Day Management Tasks:

o Day-to-Day management is another important use of the ERP system.

o The Complete data will be available at the central repository for easy access to the database.

o By ERP systems management can have updated access to information for decision making and managerial control.

o ERP software helps track actual costs of activities and perform activity based costing.

3) Support Strategic Planning: ERP systems also help in making the Strategic Planning in an organization such as

o Assessing needs and resources

o Defining target audience

o Set goals and objectives

o Strategies for planning and designing

o Measure and evaluating the process outcomes and results.

4) Integration of various systems: Different systems are integrated into ERP system so that everyone has something to do with the system. The integrated systems that are included in ERP are as follows.

o Inventory Management

o Purchasing

o Vendor Integration

o Customers Relationship Management (CRM)

o Payroll

o Accounting

o Customers

o Sales

o Internet/sms (WAN/LAN)