Through an interactive mix of presentation, hands-on demos, and live customer and partner testimonials, Phillips and Kurian showed how this next-generation application infrastructure puts innovation front and center.

“With the release of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, more than 90,000 current customers gain a foundation for innovation to further differentiate their organizations from competitors and efficiently identify and respond to changes in their business,” stated Kurian. “Offering further integrations within and across the product line and major technical innovations in every product category, Oracle is helping customers realize the promise of modern IT efficiency.”

Unique Design Principles
Kurian explored how Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g can bring immediate benefits to organizations, including helping to build more agile and intelligent business applications and exploit new hardware and software architectures for greater efficiencies in IT. He explained the key underpinning of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g—four unique design principles built into every product:

* Complete—so you can work with a single, strategic partner for all middleware requirements
* Integrated—so your middleware is certified to work with your Oracle Applications, Oracle Database, and other Oracle products
* Hot-Pluggable—to work with your existing infrastructure and applications with interoperability that goes beyond industry standards
* Best-of-breed—to give you confidence across every product line that you’re using an industry-leading solution

Kurian spoke about the time and effort that went into the 11g release and how this is significant to customers. “In doing all this work we also paid an extraordinary amount of attention to quality,” stated Kurian. “Fusion Middleware 11g has gone through 13 million hours of testing and 1.4 million hours of stress and cluster testing, and because we provide an automated upgrade from 10g to 11g, it makes it much easier for customers to go to this unified suite of middleware.”

The culmination of these efforts is apparent in the significant new capabilities and enhancements in the key product areas of the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g release:

* Oracle SOA Suite 11g provides the framework for agile, adaptable, and reusable processes, so you can respond faster and more effectively to business opportunities. The Native SCA implementation, Event-Delivery Network, Complex Event Processing, and End-to-End Instance Tracking, along with other new features and enhancements in SOA Suite 11g, help you lower costs, improve efficiencies, and increase visibility.
* Oracle WebLogic Suite 11g provides a foundation for your application grid architecture to help you efficiently deliver maximum performance, reliability, and agility at any scale. GridLink for RAC, ActiveCache, and Enterprise Grid Messaging are just a few of the innovations in WebLogic Suite 11g that enable enterprises to deploy applications that can quickly and cost-effectively scale to meet changing business needs.
* Oracle Identity Management 11g delivers an agile security model that enables you to secure enterprise information, streamline compliance, and automate administrative tasks. This release delivers the industry’s first service-oriented security approach to identity management.
* Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g is the only complete, open, and manageable portal platform for creating richer connections between people, ideas, and processes. New and enhanced features that enable IT and business users to build and manage online business communities and accelerate strategic decision-making include Oracle WebCenter Spaces, Oracle WebCenter Services, Oracle Business Dictionary, Oracle Composer, Task Flows, and prepackaged integrations.

VIA   oracle.com

The United Nations may be on the verge of installing an ERP system from SAP AG, potentially resulting in one of the largest public-sector deployments to date for the German software vendor.

A UN spokesman said Friday that SAP had won the right to negotiate a deal with the organization, but that a contract had not yet been finalized.

According to a report by Reuters, a German newspaper, citing unnamed sources at the UN, published a story on Wednesday saying that the deal could be worth as much as $300 million to SAP.

SAP already has a large presence in the public sector. For example, some of its ERP customers within the U.S. government include the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, a DHS unit that combines the former Customs Service and Border Patrol.

People + technology for your best decisions

Good decisions are the building blocks of great business performance. The performance management system from Cognos, an IBM company, integrates software, services, best-practices, and partners.

The result – a common understanding and accountable actions based on answers to your performance management questions:

• How are we doing?
  Measuring and monitoring performance with scorecards and dashboards tracks your key metrics.
• Why?
  Reporting and analysis let you see data, gain context, understand trends, and spot anomalies.
• What should we be doing?
  Planning, budgets, and forecasts let you set and share a reliable view of the future.

Be the Performance Manager

Many factors influence your company’s performance. But few areas under your management are more important than your organization’s decision-making ability.

Getting answers and acting on them means integrating reporting and analysis, planning, and measuring and monitoring—across your organization. This integrated approach is the Cognos performance management system.

By integrating information, technology, and people, your decision-makers can become performance managers. Performance managers look at metrics, plans, and reports in their functional area to make the best possible decisions.

They also use this same approach to connect with others. For example, if Marketing decisions improve demand, then Sales and Operations needs to know to ensure the supply is ready.

In this way, your good decisions cause other good decisions. The end result is better alignment, accountability, and performance.

Source : Cognos

WALLDORF, Germany – July 16, 2008 – SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that all SAP customers will be transitioned to its recently released support offering, SAP® Enterprise Support, as of January 1, 2009, further demonstrating a dedication to providing solutions and support offerings that meet the evolving needs of customers. Launched earlier this year to new customers (see May 6, 2008 press release, titled “SAP Announces Next-Generation Support Offering”), SAP Enterprise Support is the next generation of support offerings that supports mission-critical business processes and heterogeneous software environments. In the six months since its release, the offering has experienced positive market adoption, with more than 350 customers signed on. As part of this transition, current customers will begin experiencing some of the added benefits of SAP Enterprise Support, beginning in July at no additional cost, with graduated pricing beginning in January.

Replacing previous support offerings, including SAP® Standard Support and SAP® Premium Support, SAP Enterprise Support provides SAP support through a 24/7 service-level agreement, continuous quality checks, support advisory and advanced support for implementing SAP® ERP enhancement packages and support packages. An enterprise edition of SAP® Solution Manager enables proactive risk reduction while helping to increase the business value of SAP solutions. SAP’s leading operations methodology, Run SAP, helps customers beyond the go-live phase and focuses on application management, business process operations and administration. With SAP Enterprise Support, customers are provided an unrivaled comprehensive support offering at a cost that is below the average of maintenance fees found elsewhere.

“SAP Enterprise Support is the natural evolution of SAP’s previous support offerings, and is an indication of ongoing trends in software support services,” said Elaina Stergiades, senior research analyst, Software Support Services, IDC. “Enterprise customers are demanding a more robust support solution from their support providers and SAP is answering that call with SAP Enterprise Support. Integrating advanced tools with proactive support capabilities can free support staff to focus on high-value interactions with IT departments and end users. In addition, enterprises are looking for their support services providers to offer end-to-end capabilities for their environments. With SAP Enterprise Support, SAP will be able to provide a more complete software support solution for its customers.”

SAP Enterprise Support Addresses Evolving Needs of Today’s Global Companies
The ongoing growth of SAP’s robust product offerings, the pervasiveness of business networks and mass adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) have challenged traditional support models. Announced formally at SAPPHIRE® 2008, SAP’s annual customer conference, SAP Enterprise Support goes beyond bug fixes and support packages to provide companies with a holistic offering that helps to reduce the risk and maximize the value that customers receive from their IT investments. SAP Enterprise Support provides guidance and support related to end-to-end solution operations and identifies opportunities for increased efficiencies and business process improvements to optimize overall operations. The offering delivers support beyond a single element of the landscape in order to help customers operate solutions vital to their business, and addresses continuous innovation and investment protection so that customers can successfully deliver mission-critical business processes.

IT departments in companies of all sizes are under increased pressure to better meet and support the needs of the business. In particular, IT organizations are faced with the key challenge of minimizing system downtime and maintaining a stable core while implementing and managing differentiating innovation, from composite applications involving both SAP and non-SAP solutions. IT organizations that can efficiently manage a flexible infrastructure are better positioned to be a strategic partner to the business. With SAP Enterprise Support, IT organizations are poised to more easily address pressure to reduce operational costs by reducing time and money spent managing and operating their IT landscape.

Transition Timeline for Existing Customers
Demonstrating an ongoing commitment to relationships with customers and working with input from the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) and the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) to solicit feedback, SAP has introduced a graduated timeline that meets the needs of customers making the transition to SAP Enterprise Support. SAP customers will begin experiencing some of the benefits of SAP Enterprise Support immediately at no additional cost. Beginning in January 2009, there will be a graduated pricing program that incrementally moves customers from their current pricing agreement for SAP Standard Support or SAP Premium Support to the SAP Enterprise Support pricing model of 22 percent of maintenance base by 2012 (for all solutions licensed prior to July 1, 2008, subject to contractual terms and conditions). For example, subject to specific contractual limitations, a typical customer paying 17 percent of maintenance base for SAP Standard Support in 2008 will pay a rate of 18.3 percent of maintenance base for SAP Enterprise Support in 2009.

“SAP consulted with multiple ASUG members for guidance in creating a transitional plan to SAP Enterprise Support that took into consideration organizations of all sizes and implementation stages – hence the graduated timeline,” said Mike O’Dell, CIO of Pacific Coast Companies, Inc. and chairperson of the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG). “At ASUG, we do whatever it takes for our members to succeed. And providing experience-driven education is a cornerstone of delivering on that promise. As customers embark upon the SAP Enterprise Support transition, we at ASUG are eager to play a prominent role in educating our members about the SAP Enterprise Support program and the potential impact it can have on the business.”

For SAP customers still operating on SAP® R/3® 4.6c and 4.7, SAP has lengthened the period of extended maintenance currently offered as part of the company’s 5-1-2 maintenance schedule (see July 20, 2004 press release, titled “SAP Extends Successful Maintenance Strategy”). This added period of one year makes the move to SAP Enterprise Support cost-neutral as customers plan their transition to SAP ERP from SAP R/3.

“As the market leader in business software solutions, SAP serves a customer base of the world’s most innovative leading companies, and they need a support offering that is equally innovative,” said Uwe Hommel, executive vice president, SAP Active Global Support, SAP AG. “SAP customers are embracing and taking advantage of the increased flexibility and agility of an SOA strategy, as well as complementing their SAP solution landscape with composite applications and third-party solutions. SAP Enterprise Support, unlike any other offering, addresses all of these elements, beyond traditional support, to enable companies to more rapidly and efficiently achieve the benefits of SOA – while keeping their core systems running smoothly. SAP remains committed first to customer success and SAP Enterprise Support is yet another innovative offering that helps our customers become best-run businesses.”

Source : SAP

SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS – July 02, 2008 – Business Objects, an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and the world’s leading provider of solutions that optimize business performance, today announced that research analyst firm IDC has ranked Business Objects as the number one vendor for business intelligence (BI) tools with a 14.2 percent market share, and combined with SAP the company leads the market with a 19.2 percent share. The market analysis, titled “Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2007 Vendor Shares: Query, Reporting, Analysis and Advanced Analytics Market Stable in the Face of Economic Turmoil,” (IDC # 212921) finds Business Objects to have demonstrated leading market shares and revenues, and reports that BI remains one of the top investment priorities for companies globally.

“IDC’s 2007 BI tools report marks the eighth year that Business Objects has been listed as the software revenue market leader in this market,” said Dan Vesset, vice president of business analytics research, IDC. “This report focuses on business intelligence tools, excluding Business Objects revenue from related product segments such as data integration tools and performance management applications. These additional tools and applications provide Business Objects customers with the option to expand their total business analytics architecture with additional software from the same vendor. Combined with strong BI capabilities from the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, Business Objects provides business users with critical insight – regardless of whether they are SAP or non-SAP customers.”

According to the IDC report, Business Objects also made history as the first BI vendor to reach the $1 billion revenue mark. Business Objects reached this milestone through customers’ continued adoption of its BusinessObjects™ XI platform and expanded offerings in the broader business analytics software market. In addition, the company extended its product portfolio through the acquisitions of Cartesis for financial performance management, Inxight for content analysis and Fuzzy Informatik for data quality management.

“At Business Objects, our mission is to transform the way the world works by connecting people, information and businesses,” said Marge Breya, general manager and executive vice president, Business Intelligence Platform, Business Objects, an SAP company. “Our number-one ranking in IDC’s annual BI tools report is great validation of our ability to execute on new products and technologies that optimize business performance. We will continue to break the barriers of traditional BI to enable every person connected within an organization to have trusted, immediate access to the business information they need to do their jobs – just as easily as they have access to e-mail and the Internet.”

In 2008, Business Objects has already delivered the largest platform release in company history, making it the first vendor to bring data integration and data quality together in one product. Together with the BI foundation from SAP NetWeaver® and the Business Objects BI platform, Business Objects continues to deliver the leading business intelligence for SAP environments today.

The IDC report also states that the introduction of SAP NetWeaver® Business Intelligence Accelerator also contributed to SAP’s strength of offering and position in the ranking, as did its data warehousing capabilities. SAP was listed separately from Business Objects in IDC’s report on the 2007 BI tools market since the acquisition was completed in January 2008. SAP and Business Objects will appear in the 2008 market report as a single entity.

Source : SAP

Company Repeatedly Recognized as Preferred Employer in Global Markets

WALLDORF, Germany – July 23, 2008 – SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced it has received multiple recognitions as a preferred employer in India, China, Mexico and Europe. These acknowledgements of SAP as a compelling career destination follow recognition in Germany and Japan earlier this year and continue a string of recognitions heralding SAP as a top employer in global markets over the past year.

In India, SAP received recognition once again as one of the “Best Workplaces” by the Great Place to Work® Institute. According to the “Best Workplaces in India” Study, 2008, SAP Labs India is one of the top 50 best workplaces in the country across various industry sectors and is among the top five employers in the information technology (IT) software category. In China, SAP was recently honored as an IT Industry Employer of Choice at the “Top Chinese IT Employers of 2007” award ceremony, sponsored by the leading IT publication, China Information World, and the industry consulting company, CCID Consulting. This was the first award of its kind for the Chinese IT industry. In the Americas, SAP Mexico earned a distinct ranking as a “Super Enterprise” in “The Companies Everybody Wants to Work For” ranking by TOP Companies. SAP Mexico was ranked as number 22 overall and number four within the IT & Services Segment.

SAP also ranked 16th in a European survey and, as a result, was named as one of the “50 Best Large Workplaces in Europe to Work for,” according to the Great Place to Work® Institute. This came on the heels of SAP’s recognition as “Germany’s Best Employer” in the category of “Companies With More Than 5,000 Employees” for the fourth consecutive year in 2008 (see February 13, 2008 press release titled, “SAP Named ‘Best Employer’ in Key Global Markets”). Earlier this year, SAP Japan also ranked among the top 20 companies for the second time.

High survey rankings awarded by existing SAP employees in various locations demonstrate the continued importance the company places on its talent management and attraction. Personal responsibility for achieving superior customer orientation, innovation and quality awareness, as well as striving to deliver first-class products, were cited as the definitive characteristics that make SAP a great place to work.

“Today’s world-class talent expects a world-class working environment,” said Claus E. Heinrich, executive board member, SAP AG. “We have the highest appreciation for our team members across the globe, and we are honored to be recognized in turn as their preferred employer. The contributions from our diverse employee base continue to drive the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that sets SAP apart as a company.”

As a global leader in business and IT innovation, SAP invests in talent development by offering a variety of global employee enhancement programs. A “Skills on Demand” library provides employees with access to more than 13,000 e-learning courses, skill briefs, job aides, books, simulations and other learning materials that helps employees to expand their skill sets. In 2007, SAP launched the Career Success Center (CSC), a global resource that allows employees to plan, manage and develop their careers in-line with the needs of the business. The company also established SAP Inspire, an initiative that encourages employees to effectively turn creative ideas into winning business.

About SAP
SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 47,800 customers (excludes customers from the acquisition of Business Objects) in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol “SAP.” (For more information, visit www.sap.com)

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

Copyright © 2008 SAP AG. All rights reserved. SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

Note to editors:
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SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS – June 11, 2008 – Business Objects, an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and the world’s leading provider of business performance optimization solutions, today announced the availability of BusinessObjects™ Predictive Workbench, offering data mining and predictive analytics integrated with BusinessObjects XI 3.0, the industry’s first unified business intelligence (BI) platform. BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench enables people to identify patterns in historical business data and the variables that drive relevant business trends. Decision makers can use this insight to extrapolate future scenarios and work proactively in anticipation of market changes. With Predictive Workbench, Business Objects makes predictive analytics a mainstream feature on the industry’s most widely deployed information infrastructure.

In the current economic climate, it is critical that organizations better understand what drives their business and can accurately assess trends across all lines of business, using that insight to both optimize future business performance and avert potential danger. BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench empowers organizations to harness existing performance data to identify trends and patterns, and play out “what-if” scenarios as they develop business strategies moving forward. These forward-looking capabilities can help companies address the problems and challenges faced during an economic recession.

“The new analytics and forward-looking capabilities can dramatically improve our sales and operational planning process through increased confidence in our data analysis,” said George Neill, IT Director, Organic Valley. “With BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench, we can help keep the lid on transportation costs by being able to better evaluate our options for moving our dairy products to high demand areas. We can also look for patterns and anomalies in our data so we can improve our long term strategic planning efforts. By doing so we can understand, and confidently justify our best next-steps, backed by concrete analysis of what has and has not worked for us in the past. The ease of use and power of the data mining tools are exactly what our data analysts need to get answers much faster than we have previously, reducing their stress while increasing their productivity.”

Using powerful data mining technology, BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench enables customers to pore over historical business information and create predictive models that can be utilized to solve both horizontal and industry-specific business problems. The predictive models help organizations achieve specific business goals, such as maximizing marketing efforts, designing optimal pricing plans, improving operational efficiencies and, most importantly, gaining agility and competitive differentiation. For example, BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench can determine the critical success factors in previous marketing campaigns, thus helping marketing executives to design stronger, more cost-effective future campaigns. In addition, credit companies can more easily identify fraud patterns, and banks can analyze customer behavior and use that data to offer the right type of financial services to the right customer segments.

Intuitive Predictive Intelligence and Support for Mixed IT Environments
The combination of BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench and BusinessObjects XI 3.0 uniquely provides customers with the ability to scale and meet discovery needs of organizations of all sizes. The user-friendly visual workflow interface shows and mines all data, so there is no need to invest time and resources into creating long code or algorithms to discover trends and make forecasts. At their fingertips, users have detailed reporting tools, a rich library of algorithms, point-and-click visualizations, intuitive discovery, advanced predictive analytics and tools for query, reporting and analysis.

BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench supports customers with mixed IT environments by mining data sources across heterogeneous IT systems and offering more flexibility for customers to build robust predictive models. New integration of SPSS with the Business Objects BI platform, previously announced as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement (see December 3, 2007 press release, titled “Business Objects Raises the Stakes in Business Intelligence With SPSS Predictive Analytics”), now allows Business Objects customers to leverage their existing BI solution by tapping into the rich Business Objects “semantic layer” which includes metadata from various databases.

“Business Objects is at the forefront of the business intelligence industry, and this latest innovation gives customers the power to translate historical business data into a solid business strategy for the future,” said Marge Breya, executive vice president, Business Intelligence Platform, Business Objects. “Learning from the past in order to improve future prospects is now within everyone’s reach. Today we are making available a significant new level of predictive intelligence and are doing it in a way that is intuitive and natural for the business user. Predictive Workbench provides deeper insight and puts a powerful tool into the hands of business people to help optimize performance for their organization.”

Availability
BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench is generally available today from Business Objects and its broad set of partners and software resellers. For more information, please visit: http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/predictive_workbench/.

Source : SAP

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is a way to integrate the data and processes of an organization into one single system. Usually ERP systems will have many components including hardware and software, in order to achieve integration, most ERP systems use a unified database to store data for various functions found throughout the organization.

The term ERP originally referred to how a large organization planned to use organizational wide resources. In the past, ERP systems were used in larger more industrial types of companies. However, the use of ERP has changed and is extremely comprehensive, today the term can refer to any type of company, no matter what industry it falls in. In fact, ERP systems are used in almost any type of organization – large or small.

In order for a software system to be considered ERP, it must provide an organization with functionality for two or more systems. While some ERP packages exist that only cover two functions for an organization (QuickBooks: Payroll & Accounting), most ERP systems cover several functions.

Today’s ERP systems can cover a wide range of functions and integrate them into one unified database. For instance, functions such as Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relations Management, Financials, Manufacturing functions and Warehouse Management functions were all once stand alone software applications, usually housed with their own database and network, today, they can all fit under one umbrella – the ERP system.

Integration is Key to ERP

Integration is an extremely important part to ERP’s. ERP’s main goal is to integrate data and processes from all areas of an organization and unify it for easy access and work flow. ERP’s usually accomplish integration by creating one single database that employs multiple software modules providing different areas of an organization with various business functions.

Although the ideal configuration would be one ERP system for an entire organization, many larger organizations usually create and ERP system and then build upon the system and external interface for other stand alone systems which might be more powerful and perform better in fulfilling an organizations needs. Usually this type of configuration can be time consuming and does require lots of labor hours.

The Ideal ERP System

An ideal ERP system is when a single database is utilized and contains all data for various software modules. These software modules can include:

Manufacturing: Some of the functions include; engineering, capacity, workflow management, quality control, bills of material, manufacturing process, etc.

Financials: Accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets, general ledger and cash management, etc.

Human Resources: Benefits, training, payroll, time and attendance, etc

Supply Chain Management: Inventory, supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, claim processing, order entry, purchasing, etc.

Projects: Costing, billing, activity management, time and expense, etc.

Customer Relationship Management: sales and marketing, service, commissions, customer contact, calls center support, etc.

Data Warehouse: Usually this is a module that can be accessed by an organizations customers, suppliers and employees.
ERP Improves Productivity

Before ERP systems, each department in an organization would most likely have their own computer system, data and database. Unfortunately, many of these systems would not be able to communicate with one another or need to store or rewrite data to make it possible for cross computer system communication. For instance, the financials of a company were on a separate computer system than the HR system, making it more intensive and complicated to process certain functions.

Once an ERP system is in place, usually all aspects of an organization can work in harmony instead of every single system needing to be compatible with each other. For large organizations, increased productivity and less types of software are a result.

Implementation of an ERP System

Implementing an ERP system is not an easy task to achieve, in fact it takes lots of planning, consulting and in most cases 3 months to 1 year +. ERP systems are extraordinary wide in scope and for many larger organizations can be extremely complex. Implementing an ERP system will ultimately require significant changes on staff and work practices. While it may seem reasonable for an in house IT staff to head the project, it is widely advised that ERP implementation consultants be used, due to the fact that consultants are usually more cost effective and are specifically trained in implementing these types of systems.

One of the most important traits that an organization should have when implementing an ERP system is ownership of the project. Because so many changes take place and its broad effect on almost every individual in the organization, it is important to make sure that everyone is on board and will help make the project and using the new ERP system a success.

Usually organizations use ERP vendors or consulting companies to implement their customized ERP system. There are three types of professional services that are provided when implementing an ERP system, they are Consulting, Customization and Support.

Consulting Services – usually consulting services are responsible for the initial stages of ERP implementation, they help an organization go live with their new system, with product training, workflow, improve ERP’s use in the specific organization, etc.

Customization Services – Customization services work by extending the use of the new ERP system or changing its use by creating customized interfaces and/or underlying application code. While ERP systems are made for many core routines, there are still some needs that need to be built or customized for an organization.

Support Services- Support services include both support and maintenance of ERP systems. For instance, trouble shooting and assistance with ERP issues.

Advantages of ERP Systems

There are many advantages of implementing an EPR system; here are a few of them:

A totally integrated system
The ability to streamline different processes and workflows
The ability to easily share data across various departments in an organization
Improved efficiency and productivity levels
Better tracking and forecasting
Lower costs
Improved customer service

Disadvantages of ERP Systems

While advantages usually outweigh disadvantages for most organizations implementing an ERP system, here are some of the most common obstacles experienced:

Usually many obstacles can be prevented if adequate investment is made and adequate training is involved, however, success does depend on skills and the experience of the workforce to quickly adapt to the new system.

Customization in many situations is limited
The need to reengineer business processes
ERP systems can be cost prohibitive to install and run
Technical support can be shoddy
ERP’s may be too rigid for specific organizations that are either new or want to move in a new direction in the near future.

source:http://www.tech-faq.com/erp.shtml