Until recently, nearly every company had an expectation that the manufacturing ERP system should be sufficient to run the business. However, despite the name: enterprise resource planning (ERP), most ERP systems rarely cover all processes enterprise-wide. The reality is that software vendors build them to focus on core operations. The planning capability is typically limited to high-level budgeting while providing placeholders for business users to populate estimates from external sources. In this context, perhaps a more fitting name would be financial resource and document tracking (FRDT) system. To become genuinely enterprise-wide and provide robust planning capabilities, most systems require additional modules, customization, special reports, and bolt-on sub-systems. This approach might initially seem odd. However, it’s quite reasonable once you consider the rationale for designing them this way.
