Enterprise Systems are applications that support business operations, data exchange and flows, data analytics, and reporting, and the common enterprise systems are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Enterprise Social Platforms (ESP). all systems are beneficial to businesses and can be a competitive advantage of a company when they are used efficiently. SugarSquared, Inc. that manufactures candy in Riyadh should adopt ESP due to the large number of employees working in three different locations (Pollard, Turban, Wood, 2018).

     Enterprise Systems

Businesses are implementing enterprise systems to acquire wider access to business knowledge, support business processes, information flows, data analytics in complex organizations, and reporting. In addition, enterprise systems integrate different applications, protocols and formats to integrate business processes. Furthermore, the systems improve employee productivity and reduce duplication of company data. Enterprise systems can allow businesses reduce the cost of information technology and lessen the manual input of data. Moreover, enterprise systems provide companies with some benefits, such as more work quality, more efficient employee collaboration, teamwork support, better response to the marketplace (Giachetti, 2016). 

For example, sales, deliveries and accounts receivable, by sharing data across business departments and employee hierarchies. Enterprise systems can substitute many systems that can’t interact with other systems and process data independently to support particular units or processes. For instance, enterprise resource planning maintains the whole sales process that comprises of pre-sales activities, inventory sourcing, sales orders, deliveries, billing and payments. Consequently, enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise social platform (ESP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management systems (CRM) are all examples of enterprise systems (Pollard, Turban, Wood, 2018).

Even though, these systems are so beneficial to organizations, there are some difficulties encountering companies using these applications. For example, complexity from integrating various organizational facets i.e. organizational facets varies from one company to another, time-consuming needed to coordinate an enterprise integration, need for consulting, vendor, or value-added reseller (VAR) help i.e. a company that adds services or features to an already existing product. Eventually, the difficult to get new modules that fit with legacy systems which are older information systems that used to fulfill critical needs for decades, but not anymore because of challenges such as maintenance high costs and inflexibility etc. (Giachetti, 2016).  

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Enterprise resource planning integrates applications, like sales, purchasing, human resources, inventory management, and finance. These functions systems integrate in an ERP system, thus the integrated software units, like purchasing, sales, quality management, and accounting, exchange and share data. Every unit consists of various applications that perform end-to-end processes. For instance, the purchasing unit consist of software applications necessary for creating purchasing contracts e.g. purchasing orders, inspection sheet, receipts etc. In addition, ERP systems work on various operational and administrative tasks like creating a orders scheduling or an account payable. Moreover, ERP can be customized to fit different businesses such as petrochemical, banking etc. (Seethamraju, 2015).

Supply Chain Management (SCM).

A supply chain is the process of gathering people, tasks, equipment, data, and other needed resources to manufacture a product and deliver it to a customer. Supply chain management is the efficient managing process of the supply chain activities in order to provide a competitive advantage for a company. Supply chain activities consist of product development, , material sourcing, manufacturing, and logistics as well as the information systems that manage these activities. Data flows allow supply chain companies manage their operations and production plans strategically as well as the day-to-day move of shipments, materials, and goods through the process of supply chain. The supply chain process includes the production, transportation and storage of materials or goods (Stadtler, 2015).

Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Customer relationship management systems are designed to improve sales departments’ productivity and to find out an effective method to increase sales. Sales opportunity management is one of the CRM’s functions, and by which a company can learn more about its customers’ needs and their buying behavior, thus a company combines this data with the market data in order to support the quality of its marketing plans and its sales forecasts. Furthermore, CRM system can be integrated with other systems and accessed through mobile devices to let employees update compare their information and get an access to needed information from any client site or location. In addition, CRM enhances mass e-mails and automates sales process workflow to develop employee productivity (Hassan, Nawaz, Lashari, & Zafar, 2015). 

Enterprise Social Platform (ESP).

SugarSquared, Inc. should use an Enterprise Social Platform (ESP) system since it has three locations and quite a large number of employees and it can buy the system from one of the many companies that provide the system such as ClickMail, Dotdigital, Expertsender. ESP is a service that enables organizations to extend SharePoint collaboration software into an enterprise business-focused Facebook-style social networking solution. The system is transforming how organizations create, maintain, and improve competitive advantage through sharing knowledge efficiently. ESP is not only a Facebook look alike but also with its mobile toolset allows a mobile workforce to keep being productive and collaborate instantly. ESP is a private (owned by a company) social media, platforms, software, or apps designed especially for use by business members in order to accomplish a strategic mission (Giachetti, 2016).

The system has three main advantages: first, is the knowledge management i.e. how leaders and senior can exchange knowledge among organization’s employees efficiently. Secondly, is collaboration where organization employees can work as a team due to ESP even if they are working in different locations or even in different cities. Thirdly, is employee pressure i.e. ESP can be an instrument to improve workplace culture because it can minimize the employee pressure since an employee feels that he/she is collaborated and sharing tasks and responsibilities with other colleagues and leaders. ESP has privet social channels such as sharepoint, Yammer, and Jive and Chatter (Pollard, Turban, Wood, 2018).   

ESP’s sharepoint provides employee with social network platforms and wikis for the company. Also, it allows employees to share space to store documents from their mobile or from any desktop so they don’t have to stick to one particular device. Moreover, it enables colleagues to stay up-to-date and share their duties even the tiny details, save old versions, and pursue updates. Furthermore, it uses Yammer as the main collaborative tool as well as using Office Graph – that uses signals from e-mail, documents, social conversations, sites, meetings, instant messages, and more to map relationships between people and concepts – with Oslo to provide navigation through other tools (Giachetti, 2016).

ESP’s Yammer that is determined by a user’s Internet domain that allows only individuals with permitted email addresses to join their own networks. It is similar to Facebook’s features like newsfeeds, direct messaging, and threaded conversation. Additionally, it helps employees, customers, and customers exchange information, communicate, and collaborate across units, locations, and business apps. The privet social channel has an Enterprise Graph that shows how users relate to each other. Eventually, is Jive that provides a communicating tool and makes monitoring and engagement social media easier and Chatter that offers smart search for employees to solve problems (Pollard, Turban, Wood, 2018).    

   Conclusion.

Enterprise Systems are software applications that help business processes, information flows and exchange, reporting, and data analytics, and the four Enterprise Systems are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) that works on integrating the business main functions, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that takes care of customers in order to improve sales, Supply Chain Management (SCM) which manages supply chain activities, and Enterprise Social Platforms (ESP) that works as a collaboration social platform among a company’s employees. SugarSquared, Inc. the candy manufacture in Riyadh should embrace ESP due to the great staff they have in various area of the city (Giachetti, 2016).   

References

Giachetti, R. E. (2016). Design of enterprise systems: Theory, architecture, and methods. CRC Press.‏

Hassan, R. S., Nawaz, A., Lashari, M. N., & Zafar, F. (2015). Effect of customer relationship management on customer satisfaction. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 563-567.‏

Pollard, C., Turban, E., Wood, G. (2018). Information technology for management: On-demand strategies for performance, growth, and sustainability (11th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 9781118890790

Stadtler, H. (2015). Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.‏

Seethamraju, R. (2015). Adoption of software as a service (SaaS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Information systems frontiers, 17(3), 475-492.‏