Page 17 -

PREFACE

This is a book about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems; it is also about
how a business works and how information systems fit into business operations. More
specifically, it is about looking at the processes that make up a business enterprise
and seeing how ERP software can improve the performance of these business pro-
cesses. ERP software is complicated and expensive. Unless a company uses it to
become more efficient and effective in delivering goods and services to its customers,
an ERP system will only be a drain on company resources.
Our experience in teaching about ERP systems has revealed that undergraduate
business students do not always understand how businesses operate, and advanced
undergraduate students—and even many MBA students—do not truly grasp the pro-
blems inherent in unintegrated systems. These students also do not comprehend
business processes and how different functional areas must work together to achieve
company goals. As a result, many students do not understand how an information
system should help business managers make decisions.
Consequently, we set out to write a book that does the following:
• Describes basic business functional areas and explains how they are related
• Illustrates how unintegrated information systems fail to support business
functions and business processes that cut across functional area boundaries
• Demonstrates how integrated information systems can help a company pros-
per by improving business processes and by providing business managers
with accurate, consistent, and current data

We have found that our focus on business processes has been well received.

The Approach of This Book
A key feature of our book is the use of the fictitious Fitter Snacker Company, a man-
ufacturer of nutritious snack bars, as an illustrative example throughout the book. We
show how Fitter Snacker’s somewhat primitive and unintegrated information systems
cause operational problems. We intentionally made the systems’ problems easy to
understand, so the student could readily comprehend them. Potential solutions for
solving integration problems are illustrated using SAP’s ERP software.
The fourth edition of Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning reflects the
current state of the ERP software market and other areas of the information technol-
ogy market that affect ERP systems, while adding updated examples of how compa-
nies are using integrated systems to solve business problems and achieve greater
success. The book has eight chapters:
• Chapter 1, “Business Functions and Business Processes,” explains the pur-
poses for, and information systems requirements of, main business functional
areas—Marketing and Sales, Supply Chain Management, Accounting and

Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.