Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Content Management
Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP seeks to integrate business applications. In a typical ERP implementation, there would multiple modules that deal with manufacturing, accounts receivable, accounts payable and so on. These modules can exchange information among themselves.
ERP typically deals with structured data as traditional applications did. Enterprise Content Management seeks to bring all enterprise content under its ambit. It seeks to control even unstructured content like emails, word-processed documents, graphic objects and so on.
The ERP objective of integration met with problems when organizations chose different modules from different vendors.
For example, the HR module offered by vendor X might be considered better than that offered by vendor Y; but the financial module of vendor Y might be preferred over that from vendor X. The different vendors might not help with integrating their products with those of others.
That meant leaving the modules separate, unless there was adequate in-house expertise to program the needed interfaces.
On the other hand, Enterprise Content Management systems focus on integration of content, not on functional applications.
Typical Modules in ERP Systems
MANUFACTURING module supports manufacturing related activities such as plant engineering, scheduling production and materials requirements, managing workflow and processes, quality control and cost control.
SUPPLY CHAIN module is concerned with ensuring timely supplies of acceptable quality materials by improving inventory control and purchasing functions, supplier performance monitoring, etc.
CUSTOMER RELATIONS module facilitates such marketing-related activities as sales and distribution functions, commission calculations and customer support.
FINANCIALS is the module that attends to the traditional accounting and cash flow management functions, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, cash flow control and general ledger.
There are other modules for functions like Human Resources Management (including payroll), Project Management and Data Warehousing.
ERP and ECM
ERP seeks to combine all the traditional business applications, making them exchange information among themselves. This can help not only to reduce data entry but also facilitate lean operations leading to more significant cost advantages. And lower costs translate into a competitive advantage for a business.
Enterprise Content Management - ECM - focuses on creating a searchable repository of all enterprise content, consisting of both structured and unstructured content. It might do this by copying all content to a data warehouse, or by creating an XML-based interface to the application databases.
The ECM objective is to help users query all content to generate more reliable decision-support information. Unstructured content is equally relevant for making informed decisions as structured content.
ECM systems also have the objective of facilitating compliance with regulations and e-discovery of evidence in litigation.
The focus of ERP and ECM thus tends to be different with ERP focusing on transaction processing while ECM seeks to manage the content being generated all across the enterprise, by both assembling it in one place and making the assembled content available at all places.
ERP focuses on traditional transaction systems while Enterprise Content Management systems seek to create a more comprehensive knowledgebase that accommodates structured and unstructured content. The ECM content repository is optimized for querying and analysis to help users extract high quality decision-support information from the content.