
Introduction to Enterprise Resource Planning Systems 9
payable, cost-centre and cash updated. The system performs nearly every informative transaction resulting
from the sale (Figure 1.7).
4
ERP began as a term to describe a sophisticated and integrated soft ware system used for manufac-
turing. In its simplest sense, ERP systems cre ate interactive environments designed to help companies
manage and analyse the data associated with manufacturing, such as inventory, orders, accounting and
so on. Although this basic denition still holds true for ERP systems, and is expanding. IT savvy users,
increasing customer expectations, changes in manuf