Part III : The information business

In the concluding part of a three-part series on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, M Alagappan* explains how and where ERP works — or doesn't — in real-life, real-time situations

René Goscinny (b 1926) and Albert Uderzo (b 1927) created the comic strip character Astérix the Gaul in 1959. They went on to write 30 books with total sales of approximately 250 million copies.

Now let us compare these colossal figures with those of Amazon.com. Amazon.com received seven million pre-orders for 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince', the sixth book in J K Rowling's epic Harry Potter series. Amazon.com offered its US customers guaranteed delivery of the book on the release date, for the same price as standard shipping, with free delivery for Amazon Prime members. What's more, last week when the book launched, it achieved this, with no major hiccups.

Amazon.com has no brick-and-mortar stores, no warehouses and little or no inventory. What it does have is information — objective, up-to-date, sliceable, dice-able, intelligent information about its customers and their behaviour.

Amazon.com showcases how information is being exploited by new, agile companies to dominate, define and set standards in a competitive business place. In this article we will see how new-age companies like Amazon are trying to achieve this end.

This is the third and concluding part of the three part series of articles on ERP. It will address second wave ERPs, bolt-on software (third party tools) for ERP, the recent shake up and consolidation in the vendor industry and a brief on integration of ERPs with data warehouses and CRM.