How Multinational Companies Use ERP Systems - Essay Example

This means that there must always be an efficient way in which multinational companies can have a way of enhancing the integration and harnessing of all their separate management divisions and roles. It is in this direction that technological solutions such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) have always been used to collect, store, manage and interpret data from different functional divisions and roles of the organization (Daneva and Wieringa, 2009).

Processing transactions with ERP
Processing transactions within the organization with the use of the ERP has been known to involve three major types of services which are consulting, customization, and support (Ceiton Technologies, 2013). Through these three processes, it is possible to integrate transactions in the areas of transactional database, management portal, search, workflow management, external access, and business intelligence system. For multinational companies, the estimated time to complete consulting has been noted to take a year (Daneva and Wieringa, 2009). Customization has also been noted to involve even more time as it requires that each client will have an implementation process that suits their specific work need. In several multinational companies, processing transactions that are done under the three services mentioned earlier will be undertaken in a cyclical manner involving process preparation, configuration, customization, extensions, and data migration.

Reporting information to stakeholders
In most multinational companies, the use of ERP is directly connected to supply chain management and value chain systems. Meanwhile, these are two business activities that are not performed in isolation but in relation to both internal and external stakeholders (Holden Leadership Center, 2009). Because of this, reporting information from the implementation of ERP has always been a necessity for multinational companies. As an effective way to report information to stakeholders, three major models that come together from the general model of an ERP system are used. These are workflow automation, electronic mail, and database creation. Under workflow automation, there is the automation of the company’s work activities which is directly reported to the systems of all concerned stakeholders. This is usually backed up with an electronic mail which gives clarification to the organizational processes, after which a database is created to ensure that reference and documentation are promoted (Ceiton Technologies, 2013).

Conclusion
From the discussions above, it can be concluded that the ERP is a technological tool that has come to make transaction processing and information liaising to stakeholders very easy. Read More