Because my recent work project is related to ERP, I want to talk about my understanding of ERP, and I hope readers can give me some other understandings or suggestions. First, the supply chain and ERP mentioned that ERP must not bypass the supply chain. After all, ERP serves the enterprise supply chain, so if you want to talk about ERP, you have to talk about the supply chain first. According to my own shallow cognitive understanding, supply chain refers to the product and service network composed of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and final consumers. Different industries have different supply chain components, and different enterprises have different roles in this network and different influences on the supply chain.

The supply chain that the current ERP system can generally manage should be the enterprise itself and its upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain, starting from enterprise procurement and ending at enterprise customers. Since ERP can be traced back to MRP II and MRP, its original management demand is the management of physical product warehouses and orders, and then it gradually expands and enriches. Just because its source is the management of the sales and production process of physical products, more ERP systems can be seen in manufacturing enterprises (such as machinery and household appliances manufacturing enterprises) and circulation enterprises (such as chain stores). It is also doomed that the ERP system itself is mainly concerned with the production and operation functions of enterprises, rather than marketing and research and development.

second, the implementation of ERP system according to the author's own experience, the implementation of ERP system in enterprises needs to be combined with the following aspects: the characteristics of the industry where the enterprise is located, the position and role of the enterprise in the supply chain, and the actual situation of the enterprise now. Any enterprise that wants to implement it needs to consider the self-research/procurement of ERP system from these three points, as well as its implementation steps and processes in the enterprise.

1. industry characteristics: whether the resources that determine ERP management are self-developed or purchased, enterprises need to consider industry characteristics when implementing ERP systems. The products, services and methods provided by enterprises in different industries will be different, and the value generated by enterprises will be consumed by customers in different forms, which determines the characteristics of production and operation of enterprises and will directly affect the functions, modules and business of ERP. In the machinery manufacturing industry, its enterprises mainly assemble various materials through various processes in the production process, so the bill of materials and production management are particularly important. In the petrochemical industry, material changes have taken place in the production process. Generally speaking, there are fewer analogies of purchasing content products and fewer types of output, so the perspective of inventory and budget is more prominent. In the logistics industry, the operation of enterprises has nothing to do with production. At this time, the resources that enterprises need to manage are their transportation capacity, including transportation equipment and transportation personnel. In service industries, such as tourism and catering, there is no concept of physical inventory in the traditional sense, and it is necessary to abstract the supply and demand capacity of enterprises from the beginning, and then do management.

It is precisely because of these differences that existing ERP SaaS service providers often propose solutions and versions for a certain industry, and enterprises are more inclined to purchase industry-specific ERP systems. The characteristics of these industries are finally reflected in ERP, which is the particularity of its modules and business processes. In the implementation of ERP, the construction of modules determines the resources it needs for ERP management.

2. position and function: the scope of ERP management is determined by the position and function of the enterprise in the supply chain. In the supply chain network, all different types of members interact with each other. However, due to the different number and substitutability of different types of members in different industries, they are strong and weak in the supply chain for a single enterprise, and their position and role in the supply chain determine their bargaining power and influence.

Take the home appliance industry as an example. The above picture comes from the book Supply Chain Management, and the author enriches its home appliance distribution channels on the basis of the pictures in the book. In the home appliance industry, brand manufacturers are generally the leading enterprises, and brand manufacturers are the core as a whole. Brand manufacturers can directly manage franchised stores as enterprise resources and become a part of ERP system management. It is precisely because of the different positions of enterprises in the supply chain that the suppliers, sales customers and sales key organizations that enterprises need to evaluate and manage in the supply chain will be different, which determines the scope of ERP management and the rate of obtaining terminal sales feedback.

3. Actual situation: Deciding the stage of ERP management ERP implementation is a phased process, which is determined by the actual situation of the enterprise. The upper limit of how much value a B-end system can bring to an enterprise is determined by the enterprise's cognition of the field in which the system is responsible and its organizational form. The B-end product itself can only determine the lower limit of this value, which is why more and more SaaS enterprises tend to put services as "solutions" in their sales process, because tools alone can't solve practical problems well.

For B-end products, we can't get rid of the objective constraints of enterprise scale and management level, and when the enterprise scale, complexity and management level rise to a new stage, B-end products will inevitably need to assist enterprises in managing increasingly complex business. It is not the product itself or the production and research team itself that ultimately determines the depth and breadth of enterprise B-end products, but the level of enterprise development. B-end products should not be divorced from reality and talk about the future and trends. The ERP system is even more so. Whether purchasing or self-researching, before implementing ERP, we must fully realize the complexity of the enterprise's current purchasing, distribution and production business, as well as the management level and organizational structure of the enterprise. Taking my own project as an example, the system I am responsible for is the dealer ERP system from the perspective of dealer positioning. In the actual promotion process, it is found that the evaluation of this system in the dealers of mom-and-pop stores has been bad. The reason is that the business of the mom-and-pop dealers themselves is very simple, with few employees and no clear division of labor. There are less than a hundred pieces in stock, and after-sales companies contract them to third-party after-sales companies, with more than a dozen kinds of goods and durable goods sales, so the billing volume is very small.

for this kind of mom-and-pop shop dealers, their accustomed telephone communication with paper billing is enough to meet their current business, and their demand for business digitalization is very low. No matter how well we provide the ERP system for dealers, it is difficult for mom-and-pop shop dealers to feel the value improvement brought by the system. The evaluation on the side of medium and large dealers has always been good, because the size and business of the enterprise itself really need to be managed systematically, and there are many employees, a clear division of labor, a large inventory, some after-sales responsibilities, a variety of goods and a large amount of bills, all of which determine that the paper form cannot be effectively managed. The ERP management system for dealers, which the author is responsible for, helps dealers to manage their basic business such as purchasing, inventory and sales, and gradually deepens and broadens the responsible modules, and the larger the dealers, the more they look forward to the subsequent module development. In addition to the above three points, the implementation of ERP actually needs the support of high-level enterprises, and even needs to adjust the organizational structure and production relations of enterprises accordingly to ensure the success of ERP implementation.

iii. ERP implementation route in the author's project experience, the author realizes that ERP practice is a process of continuous improvement, which is in line with the development of enterprises. The author concludes that the characteristics of the development route of ERP practice are as follows: first manage the physical resources, then manage the process, and then manage the ability (the management of the ability needs to abstract the ability first), then support the business, and then plan the business. Then predict the business, simplify the business first, and then realize it in depth

Take a manufacturing enterprise as an example, its ERP implementation will generally start from four directions: procurement, warehouse, sales and finance, and then mainly increase production management and cost management and guide enterprise activities with various plans, and then mainly increase more in-depth production business such as workshop, capacity and quality ... Of course, due to different enterprises, its implementation steps and contents are different, and then the author will also practice it himself.